Release Event for Mandy's Father by Juliette Harper

Welcome to the release event for Mandy's Father by Juliette Harper! This is the fourth book in the Lockwood Legacy series and is now available for sale.

About the Book:
With new discoveries in Baxter’s Draw and the unexpected arrival of a mystery cousin from Boston, the women of the Rocking L have their hands full in Mandy’s Father, the fourth installment of The Lockwood Legacy. Unresolved dangers from the past must be faced and present tragedies endured. Will Kate, Jenny, and Mandy emerge unscathed from these challenges, or will their lives be forever altered? Join Juliette Harper as she once again offers her trademark combination of mystery, romance, and adventure, set against the backdrop of the Central Texas Hill Country.

Goodreads | Amazon | Smashwords

Don't miss out on the first three books in the Lockwood Legacy! And the first book, Langston's Daughters is FREE!

Goodreads | Amazon | Smashwords

Goodreads | Amazon | Smashwords

Goodreads | Amazon | Smashwords

I have featured the other books in the Lockwood Legacy series. You can check out the posts here.

About the Author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. As a writer, Juliette's goal is to create strong female characters facing interesting, challenging, painful, and at times comical situations. Refusing to be bound by genre, her primary interest lies in telling good stories.

Five of Juliette's series are currently available. The best-selling Lockwood Legacy, is a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father's suicide. The first four novels are Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw, Alice's Portrait, and Mandy’s Father. The fifth, Irene’s Gift, will be available in September 2015.

Descendants of the Rose is the first installment of the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries. The second book, Lost in Room 636, will be available later this year. Selby's business card reads "Private Investigator," but to say the least, that downplays her real occupation where business as usual is anything but normal.

And don't miss the hilariously funny "cozy" Study Club Mysteries, a light-hearted spin off of The Lockwood Legacy. Set in the 1960s, this series takes on the often absurd eccentricities of small town life with good-natured, droll humor. The first book, You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet, is already listed in the Amazon store with You Can't Put a Corpse in a Parade coming soon.

Juliette's latest creative efforts are in the short fiction arena. Her debut "Before" series is a collection of light, sweet romance stories that can be read in less than an hour. The first installment is Before Marriage.

Fermata: The Winter and Fermata: The Spring are the first and second installments of a four-novella post-apocalyptic survival series. Five years after an unknown virus divided the world into the living and the dead, four survivors stumble into a winter sanctuary. Brought together by circumstance, but bound by the will to stay alive, a concert pianist and a girl from South Boston forge a friendship and a purpose to cope with their new reality.

Juliette is planning other short stories and novellas in the coming weeks and months. These pieces are available for Kindle only and will include companion shorts to her other series as well as stand-alone works.

Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan, worked as a journalist and university history instructor before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 2002.

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks) | Facebook

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This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Baxter's Draw by Juliette Harper: $100 Teaser Tour

Welcome to the teaser tour for Baxter's Draw, the second book in The Lockwood Legacy series by Juliette Harper. This is an adult contemporary mystery that is also very focused on family, small town and ranch life as well as some clean romance.  

Check out the excerpt and then enter the giveaway at the bottom for the $100 Amazon gift card! 

About Baxter's Draw by Juliette Harper:

Kate, Jenny, and Mandy. The daughters who inherited Langston Lockwood’s millions and his mysteries. In this, the second book of The Lockwood Legacy, the women uncover not just the secret of Baxter’s Draw, but the secret of their father’s hidden life. Return to the Rocking L for the next part of the sisters’ journey to discover the truth about their family and to understand their own roles in The Lockwood Legacy.

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Smashwords

Excerpt:

Lockwood Legacy Series

Langston Lockwood, or at least the shadow of who he had been in life, leaned against the front gate of the Rocking L and stared at his eldest daughter drinking coffee on the front porch.

He absent-mindedly pushed his hat back and scratched his head. It never occurred to him when he blew his brains out in the barn with his favorite pistol that he’d spend the afterlife with an itchy scalp.

“Morning, Boy,” an older man said, joining him at the gate.

“Morning, Daddy,” Langston replied.

Milton Lockwood pushed his own hat back on his forehead and stared at the granddaughter he never knew in life. “That one’s a Lockwood.”

“That she is,” Langston said. “I sure as hell was hard on her.”

“You were hard on everyone,” Milton said, turning his head to spit.

“I learned from the best,” Langston answered. “They’re surprising the hell out of me, those girls.”

“How’s that?”

“I figured the way I wrote the will they’d tear each other up like wildcats. Damned if they didn’t go make a family,” he said, disgust dripping off the words. “And now they’re taking up with men. Moving’em on the ranch. And Sister is talking about planting grapes. Goddamn grapes, like we was farmers or something. They even care about their Daddy doing grave spins?”

“You got a burr under your saddle this morning, Boy,” Milton said mildly. “You’re dead. You don’t call the shots on this place now any more than I do. That gal yonder is the boss of the Rocking L.”

“When did you get so even tempered?” Langston growled.

“I’ve been dead a hell of a lot longer than you have, Boy,” Milton observed. “Tends to make a feller kinda mellow.”

“They’re going up to Baxter’s Draw, Daddy,” Langston said. “It’s all gonna come out.”

“Like I said, Boy, you’re dead. Stuff comes out once you’re dead.”

“You know what I expected to find on this side, Daddy,” Langston said. “Everything I wanted was right under my damned nose all those years and I never knew it. Now those girls are going to find out everything I did.”

“That’s why men like you and me don’t rest in our graves, Boy,” Milton said sadly. “We have to watch the consequences of everything we did play out. I was a bastard of a father to you so you were a bastard to them.”

“That wasn’t the whole reason and you know it,” Langston said. “Who would have thought we’d get along better haunting this place than we ever did alive?”

They watched as Kate, her sisters, and three men mounted their horses and rode through the pasture gate headed up to Baxter’s Draw.

“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I don’t have my pride,” Langston said.

“We gonna go with’em?” Milton asked.

“I don’t think I can watch this, Daddy,” Langston said.

“Makes no difference to me,” Milton answered, spitting in the dirt again. “Not like I got any place to be.”

Don't miss out on the first book, Langston's Daughters, only .99 cents in ebook!

Amazon | Barnes and Noble (Nook) | Smashwords| Kobo | Goodreads

About the Author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. Like the characters of their debut series, The Lockwood Legacy, Juliette is a merging of their creative energies.

Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan from a long line of hardheaded Scots, knows the world of the Lockwoods like the back of her hand.

“We decided to write under a pen name because neither one of us by ourselves could have created Kate, Jenny, Mandy, and their world,” says Pauletti. “Juliette is a little bit of us both. We want to be her when we grow up.”

“Patti teases me that I just don’t want to own up to writing a book with romance in it,” Williamson adds, “but that’s not true. I like the Lockwood women and the way they tackle everything life throws at them. And before we’re done, they’ll be ducking a lot. I imagine coming into the office every day and saying, ‘Okay Juliette, what’s going to happen now?’ She tells us, and we get it down on paper.”

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks)

Giveaway: 

$100 Amazon Gift Card (INT)

Ends March 25, 2015

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Check out the cover reveal and giveaway for Alice's Portrait, book three in the Lockwood Legacy! series.

Release Event: Langston's Ghost: Aftermath by Juliette Harper

Welcome to the release event for Langston's Ghost: Aftermath by Juliette Harper. This is a short story of 25 pages that can be read in about 45 minutes. It is a companion story to the Lockwood Legacy books and the events in the plot are concurrent with those recounted in Langston's Daughters. You can read either first as there's no spoilers in this book. Langston's Ghost: Aftermath is now available for .99 cents on Amazon. Have you read any of the books in the Lockwood Legacy series?

About the Book:
Langston Lockwood contemplates his suicide with great care, envisioning every possible outcome of his actions. He crafts a last will and testament designed to ensure that his iron-willed control over the lives of his daughters remains intact even from the grave. But he does not count on waking up in exactly the same spot where he died, or finding his own father waiting for him. In this first installment of The Lockwood Legacy Short Story series, Langston finds out the afterlife is not what he expected and that his own role in the events still unfolding on the Rocking L ranch is not over.

Goodreads | Amazon

About the Author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson.

As a writer, Juliette's goal is to create strong female characters facing interesting, challenging, painful, and at times comical situations. Refusing to be bound by genre, her primary interest lies in telling good stories.

Five of Juliette's series are currently available. The best-selling Lockwood Legacy, is a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father's suicide. The first three novels appeared in early 2015: Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw, and Alice's Portrait. The fourth, Mandy's Father, in hot demand by readers, will be available in early July.

Descendants of the Rose is the first installment of the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries. The second book, Lost in Room 636, will be available later this year. Selby's business card reads "Private Investigator," but to say the least, that downplays her real occupation where business as usual is anything but normal.

And don't miss the hilariously funny "cozy" Study Club Mysteries, a light-hearted spin off of The Lockwood Legacy. Set in the 1960s, this series takes on the often absurd eccentricities of small town life with good-natured, droll humor. The first book, You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet, is already listed in the Amazon store with You Can't Put a Corpse in a Parade coming soon.

Juliette's latest creative efforts are in the short fiction arena. Her debut "Before" series is a collection of light, sweet romance stories that can be read in less than an hour. The first installment is Before Marriage with the second, Before the Affair, to be released shortly.

Fermata: The Winter is the first in a four-novella post-apocalyptic survival series. Five years after an unknown virus divided the world into the living and the dead, four survivors stumble into a winter sanctuary. Brought together by circumstance, but bound by the will to stay alive, a concert pianist and a girl from South Boston forge a friendship and a purpose to cope with their new reality.

Juliette is planning other short stories and novellas in the coming weeks and months. These pieces are available for Kindle only and will include companion shorts to her other series as well as stand-alone works.

Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan, worked as a journalist and university history instructor before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 2002.

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks) | Facebook 

Alice's Portrait by Juliette Harper: Cover Reveal and Giveaway

I'm excited to share the cover reveal of Alice's Portrait by Juliette Harper, book three in the Lockwood Legacy series. This is an adult contemporary mystery that is also very focused on family, small town and ranch life as well as some clean romance.

Check out the excerpt and don't forget to enter the giveaway at the end of the post!

About the Book:

A year after Kate, Jenny, and Mandy Lockwood inherit The Rocking L, the sisters try to concentrate on their collective and individual futures. In the previous book in The Lockwood Legacy series, Baxter’s Draw, the women made startling discoveries about their father’s secrets, but are mistaken in their belief that everything has now come to light. In Alice’s Portrait, the ghosts of Langston Lockwood’s past once again confront his daughters, forcing them to re-evaluate their understanding of their father and of what it means to be a Lockwood.

Excerpt:

Instead of fighting back, Langston took off his hat and ran a tired hand through his graying hair. “Don’t talk about Alice,” he said. “You don’t know enough to talk about her. As for your Mama, there won’t be any peace for me over what I did to her, but she’s at peace, Jenny. I can at least tell you that.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better, Daddy? Really? I know Mama is at peace because she was a kind, gentle woman. As for you, I hope you walk the earth for eternity and enjoy your own tailor-made brand of hell.”

“I reckon I probably will,” he said, the words filled with tired regret. “I always thought if there was an afterlife I’d find my Alice, but she isn’t here. I probably deserve that, but it’s bitter gall, little girl. It’s bitter gall all the same.”

“I’ll ask you again. What do you want, Daddy?” Jenny said, her voice ice cold.

“What I want is for you to make your peace with it, Jenny,” he said. “You got my temper and my gifts. Those things come from me and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. You’ve got real talent. Only thing I could draw was my Alice, but you see the world with clear eyes. My art came from anger and pain, but yours comes from your soul. Let that out, daughter. That’s what I want.”

“You don’t know a damned thing about my soul,” she snapped.

“The hell I don’t,” he said mildly. “I was like you once, before I let life drive me over the edge. Fiery, passionate, idealistic. Being like me won’t hurt you, Jenny. You’re too strong. Katie, she’s tough and capable; she’s a thinker and her heart is as big as Texas when she opens it. But you, daughter? You’d spit the devil in the eye and dare him to cart you to hell. God knows you spit me in the eye.”

“You drove me away from my home! I was 17. I was alone and scared but I had to get the hell away from you. Do you have any idea what that was like for me, Daddy?”

“You should thank God I drove you away, girl,” Langston said. “Everything you went through out there is why you can be here now. Lead your life, Jenny. You and that Baxter boy, you got a future. There’s no coincidence him being a Baxter, you just don’t realize it yet.”

“Damn you,” she said. “Josh is right. You are haunting us. Dead or not, tend to your own business.”

“The dead always haunt the living, girl,” he said, standing up. “You got a hell of a lot more ghosts to worry about than me. Deal with them.”

As he started for the door, Jenny said to his back, “Daddy, did you ever love me?”

Langston turned, his hat in his hand. “I loved all my girls,” he said. “Problem was, I hated myself too much to show it. Look under the bridge, Jenny. You’ll find what you need to know there.”

Don’t miss out on the first book, Langston’s Daughters, only .99 cents in ebook!

Amazon | Barnes and Noble (Nook) | Smashwords| Kobo | Goodreads

Baxter's Draw, book two in the Lockwood Legacy is out now!

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Kobo |Smashwords

About the Author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. Like the characters of their debut series, The Lockwood Legacy, Juliette is a merging of their creative energies.
Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan from a long line of hardheaded Scots, knows the world of the Lockwoods like the back of her hand.“We decided to write under a pen name because neither one of us by ourselves could have created Kate, Jenny, Mandy, and their world,” says Pauletti. “Juliette is a little bit of us both. We want to be her when we grow up.”

“Patti teases me that I just don’t want to own up to writing a book with romance in it,” Williamson adds, “but that’s not true. I like the Lockwood women and the way they tackle everything life throws at them. And before we’re done, they’ll be ducking a lot. I imagine coming into the office every day and saying, ‘Okay Juliette, what’s going to happen now?’ She tells us, and we get it down on paper.”

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks)

Giveaway:

$50 Amazon Gift Card (INT)

Ends 4/14

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Release Event & Giveaway: You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet

We're excited to announce the release for You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet by Juliette Harper! This is the first book in A Study Club Mystery series and it's now available for sale on Amazon and Smashwords for only .99 cents!




Dear Readers,



Yes, the day has arrived. My first cozy mystery, You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet, is now available in ebook form for 99 cents. If you’ve read the third book in The Lockwood Legacy, you’ve already met the main characters in this story.



Clara Wyler, Sugar Watson, Wilma Schneider, and Mae Ella Gormley are feisty old women in Alice’s Portrait. In Shag Carpet, they’re feisty young women with big 1960s-era Texas bouffants lacquered in place with a thick coat of Aqua Net hairspray.



When I wrote Alice’s Portrait these women absolutely demanded page time of their own. I confess, this book is a homage to a group of ladies who helped raise me. My Mother was a member of the Daedalian Study Club in Junction, Texas. I can’t actually tell you what a “Daedalian” is, and since my father consistently referred to them as the Dandelions, I have some difficulty to this day getting the name right.



While they may not have been as flamboyant as the women in Shag Carpet, they were all larger than life and had no concept of the need to be liberated since they were perfectly in charge in the confines of their own world. In a small West Texas ranching community, it’s difficult to “oppress” a woman who’s a better shot with a 30-30 than any man in her life.



These are the kind of women who help pull a kid goat during a difficult labor at 4 o’clock, have supper on the table at 6 o’clock, and show up for the Saturday night dance dressed to the nines at 8 o’clock. I loved and admired them all and I was scared to death of them.



The Study Club Mysteries is my droll look at the eccentricities of small town life, especially in the 1960s, which is a decade that colors my childhood memories.



As you know, I am actually two people and clearly these experiences are drawn from one half of me, but the other half recognized, appreciated, and polished the humor. This book is an absolute labor of love and was more fun to write than I can possibly describe. And if you think this one is funny, wait until you get to read the next one, You Can’t Put a Corpse in a Parade!



Cheers,
Juliette

-----------------------------

About the Book:
Wanda Jean Milton discovers her husband, local exterminator Hilton Milton, dead on her new shag carpet with an Old Hickory carving knife sticking out of his chest. Beside herself over how she’ll remove the stain, and grief-stricken over Hilton’s demise, Wanda Jean finds herself the prime suspect in the case. But she is also a member of “the” local Study Club, a bastion of independent Texas feminism 1960s style. Club President Clara Wyler has no intention of allowing a member to be a murder suspect during her administration. Aided by her younger sister and County Clerk, Mae Ella Gormley; Sugar Watson, the proprietress of Sugar’s Style and Spray; and Wilma Schneider, Army MASH veteran and local RN, the Club women set out to clear Wanda Jean’s name — never guessing the local dirt they’ll uncover in the process.

Amazon | Smashwords | Goodreads

                                                  --------------------------------------------

About the author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet is the first installment of Harper’s debut cozy Study Club Mysteries, an hilariously funny look at the often absurd eccentricities of small town life. The second book, to be released in coming months, is called You Can’t Put a Corpse in a Parade.



The droll series, set in the 1960s, is a light-hearted spinoff of Harper’s Lockwood Legacy a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father’s suicide. Three of the novels are currently available: Langston’s Daughters, Baxter’s Draw, and Alice’s Portrait. The fourth book, Mandy’s Father, will appear in Summer 2015.



And don’t miss Harper’s first foray into the world of the supernatural, Descendants of the Rose, Book 1 in the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mystery series. The second Selby Jensen book, Lost in Room 636 is also scheduled for a Summer 2015 release.



Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan, worked as a journalist and university history instructor before becoming a full-time freelance writer in 2002.

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks) | Facebook

Giveaway:
One (1) winner gets a $25 Amazon Gift Card (INT), one (1) winner gets Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw and Alice's Portrait in paperback (US) and one (1) winner gets Descendants of the Rose in paperback (US)

Ends June 10th

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Cover Reveal & Giveaway: You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet by Juliette Harper

I'm excited to share the cover for You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet by Juliette Harper! This is the first book in A Study Club Mystery series. It's set to release in June 2015. I love the title! Check out the excerpt and then the fabulous giveaway at the end!

About the Book:

Wanda Jean Milton discovers her husband, local exterminator Hilton Milton, dead on her new shag carpet with an Old Hickory carving knife sticking out of his chest. Beside herself over how she’ll remove the stain, and grief-stricken over Hilton’s demise, Wanda Jean finds herself the prime suspect in the case. But she is also a member of “the” local Study Club, a bastion of independent Texas feminism 1960s style. Club President Clara Wyler has no intention of allowing a member to be a murder suspect during her administration. Aided by her younger sister and County Clerk, Mae Ella Gormley; Sugar Watson, the proprietress of Sugar’s Style and Spray; and Wilma Schneider, Army MASH veteran and local RN, the Club women set out to clear Wanda Jean’s name — never guessing the local dirt they’ll uncover in the process.

Excerpt:

Sugar Watson took a long drag on her Camel and critically appraised the height of Clara Wyler’s black bouffant. “You want me to go a little higher, honey?” she asked, punctuating the question with a well-developed smoker’s cough. “If I rat it up real good, I can get you another 2 or 3 inches on top.”

Clara squinted at herself in the mirror. “I think I’m good, Sugar,” she said. “What with Wanda Jean finding Hilton dead in the living room, I don’t want to look insincere at Study Club.”

Sugar leaned in conspiratorially. “I know we don’t ever throw anybody out of the Study Club, but my Lord, what in the world are we gonna do if she really did kill him?”

Clara glanced around to confirm that all the other women in Sugar’s Style and Spray were safely tucked under the dryers. “Well, she called me herself to assure me that she didn’t do it,” Clara said. “She owned up to wanting to, but she didn’t do it.”

“Well, hell,” Sugar said, “we’ve all thought about killing our husbands. That’s just part of being married. But nobody’s ever walked in my house and found Slim laying there with an Old Hickory carving knife sticking out of his chest. What did Wanda Jean say about finding him?”

“She told me the first thing she thought about was how hard it was gonna be to get the blood out of that new shag carpet they put in last month,” Clara said. “You know they went with the deep pile.”

“I know,” Sugar said. “I looked at it too when T.J. put the ad in the paper, but my vacuum cleaner just won’t suck up dirt good enough for that. Is it a light carpet?”

“I didn’t think to ask her,” Clara said, unclipping the plastic cape around her neck and handing it to Sugar. “Anyway, she said she just stood there thinking about how you can’t get blood out of shag carpet. Then it dawned on her maybe she ought to check him for a pulse.”

“I hope it wasn’t a light carpet,” Sugar said, rearranging cans of Aqua Net on the counter. “Those boys from the ambulance service never think to wipe their feet before they go in to get a body. You should have seen the mess they made when Blake Trinkle died. They just ruined Maybelline’s carpet. She spent as much getting it cleaned as she did on the funeral.”

“That’s so inconsiderate,” Clara agreed. “People just don’t think. Now you’re not gonna be late this afternoon, are you?”

“Of course not,” Sugar said. “Flowers knows not to book me on the third Thursday at three. Study Club day is sacred.”

“Good, I have to go by the bakery and . . . ”

The look on Sugar’s face stopped Clara mid-sentence. “Good Lord, Sugar,” she said. “You look like you swallowed one of your Camels.”

“I think we’re gonna be one short for Club,” Sugar croaked. “Look.”

Clara glanced out the front window in time to see Sheriff Lester Harper helping a handcuffed Wanda Jean Milton out of the backseat of his car. “What is that man thinking!” she exclaimed. “Parading her in front of God and everybody on the courthouse square!”

                                                  --------------------------------------------

About the author:

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson.

Like the characters of their debut series, The Lockwood Legacy, Juliette is a merging of their creative energies.
Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan from a long line of hardheaded Scots, knows the world of the Lockwoods like the back of her hand.“We decided to write under a pen name because neither one of us by ourselves could have created Kate, Jenny, Mandy, and their world,” says Pauletti. “Juliette is a little bit of us both. We want to be her when we grow up.”

“Patti teases me that I just don’t want to own up to writing a book with romance in it,” Williamson adds, “but that’s not true. I like the Lockwood women and the way they tackle everything life throws at them. And before we’re done, they’ll be ducking a lot. I imagine coming into the office every day and saying, ‘Okay Juliette, what’s going to happen now?’ She tells us, and we get it down on paper.”

Website | Twitter (@jharperbooks)

Giveaway:

Ends May 12th, 2015

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.