I WISH free through Aug 9

I Wish, the first book in the I Wish trilogy, is free as an e-book from most retailers for the next 3 weeks.

Please tell your family, your friends, strangers on the street...

Amazon
B&N
Apple
Kobo


What she needs is a miracle. What she gets is a genie with rules.

Lacey Linden has gotten good at hiding the truth of her life—a depressed mom, a crumbling house, and bills too big to pay. In school, she’s a girl with a ready smile and good grades, but at night, Lacey spends her time dreaming up ways to save her family. On a get-cash-quick trip to the flea market, Lacey stumbles over a music box that seemingly begs her to take it home. She does, only to find that it’s inhabited by a gorgeous “genie.” He offers her a month of wishes, one per day, but there’s a catch. Each wish must be humanly possible.

Grant belongs to a league of supernatural beings, dedicated to serving humans in need. After two years of fulfilling conventional wishes, he’s one assignment away from promotion to a new job with more challenging cases. His month with Lacey is exactly what he expects and nothing like he imagines. Lacey and Grant soon discover that the hardest task of all might be saying goodbye.

Kobo promotional sale for I WISH

I Wish is on sale at Kobo from November 1 - 15, for 99 cents.

If you use Kobo for e-books, here's an opportunity to get the first book in the I Wish series at a sale price. (If you're not familiar with Kobo, they're a great place to find e-books--and they're a major e-book retailer presence in Canada and around the world!)

Just for a little fun, I leave you with a look at my newest SWAG! Bookmark design by the talented Laron at Ninth Moon.

Happy birthday to Sara's book!

It's the book birthday for Wish You Were Here!

This book concludes the I Wish series. Over 3 books, Grant has helped Lacey, Kimberley, and (finally) Sara to work through some of the hardest issues of their lives.

Grant has been such a fun, amazing, and varied character to write. I'm sorry to say good-bye to him. And the 3 friends as well. (Although this book is Sara's story, you'll see plenty of Kimberley and Lacey, too.) If you asked me which one was my favorite, I'm not sure that I could pick. I loved each of these young women while I wrote their stories--and I knew that I just had to make sure, by the end of Wish You Were Here, we all had hints of what the future held for them and Grant.

Here is a tiny excerpt from the book, where Sara is reflecting on her own birthday.

     Today was my birthday. Nineteen.
     It was one of those boring birthdays. At eighteen, we became adults. At twenty, we left our teens behind. At twenty-one, we could legally drink, which made us dangerous in a lot of ways.
     But nineteen? Meh. A prime number. A non-descript bridge between possibilities and probabilities.
     It was the first birthday I would celebrate without my twin, which elevated nineteen from non-descript to poignant.

For now, Wish You Were Here is available in e-book only. It will be available in paperback later in the summer. Buy links for e-books are:

• Amazon
• B&N
• iBooks
• Kobo

Giveaway, sale, and Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here, book 3 in the I Wish series, will release in four weeks, on June 13.  The trilogy will be complete!

I'm planning a giveaway of Wishing For You (I Wish #2) on goodreads during the last week of May, and a 99-cent sale on books 1 & 2 (e-book version) during the first week of June.

So if you haven't had a chance to read I Wish or Wishing For You--June will be a great time to get them. And you can pre-order the e-book version of Wish You Were Here now.


I'll post again here as a reminder, and if you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll get all of the details in my June newsletter, plus an exclusive giveaway available to newsletter subscribers only.

Wish You Were Here - the 3rd I WISH book

Wish You Were Here will release on Monday, June 13. In this 3rd and final book of the I Wish series, Grant returns to help Sara Tucker through the hardest summer of her life.

She can't forget what she's lost. He reminds her there's more to be found.

Months after the loss of her twin, Sara Tucker still struggles to recover. She ought to be getting ready for college; instead, she's frozen in place. But when her plans for the future begin to unravel, Sara knows she can no longer handle her problems alone.

Grant is a supernatural being, dedicated to serving humans in need. He's enjoying his promotion to guardian, but he’s restless, too. There’s someone he met on a previous assignment that he wants to help--except Sara needs wishes, and Grant's not a genie anymore.

When his league accepts her case, Grant volunteers to go. As he works beside Sara to fix the mess of her life, they may both discover that, sometimes, the best way forward is to find a new path.


Wish You Were Here can be pre-ordered as an e-book on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, and other online retailers.

The paperback will be out later in Summer 2016. Readers who prefer print books can watch goodreads or my newsletter for a future chance to win an advance paperback copy.

And check out my website for an excerpt from the first chapter of Wish You Were Here . 

If you were expecting swords and sorcery...

My book, I WISH, is YA magical realism. When I uploaded it to Amazon, they didn’t have a tag for magical realism, so I just left it at Fantasy&Magic.

I Wish is next to JKR!

Amazon has the book listed as Swords and Sorcery. There are no swords and no sorcery in I WISH. Anywhere.

The book was on sale last week, a lot of people downloaded it, but it may not have the kind of magic readers are expecting.

I think they’ll like the book when they read it. But if they were hoping to be introduced to a new author of Swords and Sorcery, that’s not what they’ll find. So I asked my friend Laura for her advice on s&s, and here’s what she recommended:

1) anything by Tamora Pierce (like her Song of the Lioness quartet or her Trickster's Choice duet )

2) Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown - “ long, sweeping training montages and stubborn independence and fighting dragons”

3) Sabriel by Garth Nix - “a perfectly-paced dark adventure involving several flavors of magic, enchanted swords, a menacing talking cat, and ‘two worlds side by side’ worldbuilding”

4) Sherwood Smith’s duet Crown Duel / Court Duel - “starts out as a straightforward rebellion but gets into the doubts and nuance of questioning the story that you tell yourself. Book two is a great piece of court drama with misunderstandings, romance through letters, and magic so subtle that most people in the kingdom don’t even know how it works.”

5) The Oathbound books by Mercedes Lackey - readers of any age will love them for their “most literal sword-and-sorcery pair: Tarma is a warrior priestess with a normal sword and Kethry is a mage with a really inconvenient magic sword.”

[Originally posted on juliaday.tumblr.com]

~~~~~~~

My first YA contemporary romance, The Possibility of Somewhere, will release in September.  I'll use a new pen name for my YA contemporaries--Julia Day. As I move closer to September, I'll begin to use my Julia Day social media accounts more and phase out this blog.  Please consider following me on Julia Day's:

tumblr

twitter

goodreads

Facebook page

Wishing for You is here - check out giveaways, excerpt, and more!

October 13th is release day for Wishing for You, the second book in the I Wish series!

Here is an excerpt--the first chapter (pdf) of Wishing for You. (NOTE: if you haven't read book 1, this excerpt has a major spoiler.)


For the next two weeks, there will be giveaways and more!

Giveaway #1 - $50 Amazon gift card or Paypal cash; click here for details!  Entries close on November 1.

Giveaway #2 - Sign up below for the chance to choose one of the following:

• Signed copy of Wishing for You (US only)
• A copy of Wishing for You, shipped from bookdepository.com (International only)
• Amazon gift card for $10

a Rafflecopter giveaway  

There will be 3 winners! Entries close October 19th.

She's a girl who can't remember. He's the guy she can't forget.

It's her final semester of high school, and Kimberley Rey is curious about what will come next. She needs to pick a college, but her memory disability complicates the choice. Will her struggles to remember make it impossible to leave home?

Help arrives through an unexpected and supernatural gift. Grant is a "genie" with rules. He can give her thirty wishes (one per day for a month) as long as the tasks are humanly possible. Kimberley knows just what to ask for—lessons in how to live on her own.

But her wishes change when a friend receives a devastating diagnosis. As she joins forces with Grant to help her friend, Kimberley learns that the ability to live in the moment—to forget—may be more valuable than she ever knew.

Purchase links for Wishing for You (I Wish #2)
 Amazon     B&N     iBooks     indieBound     Kobo

Purchase links for I Wish (I Wish #1) - the ebook is on sale for 99 cents!
  Amazon     B&N     iBooks     Kobo

I Wish question - Does I WISH have a cliffhanger?

I don't like cliffhangers and will never write one. So, no, I Wish does not end in a cliffhanger.

At least, that was not my intent.

[The rest of this answer hints at the ending to I Wish. It might be a spoiler if you haven't read book 1, so read on with caution.]

Some readers have assumed this story has a cliffhanger. I think that must be because they don't want the book to end the way it does. Lacey makes a big decision with an unexpected twist near the end of the first book, and she does not take it back.

In I Wish's final chapter, readers discover something that might happen next for Lacey and something that will happen next for Grant. Both of those plot points are confirmed in the first two chapters of book 2, Wishing for You. Grant continues to be a main character in Wishing for You. You'll see plenty of Lacey in books 2 and 3, but after book 1, she becomes a secondary character.

Giving away I WISH on goodreads in august

Wishing For You is the second book in the I Wish series--and it releases October 13th (only 10 weeks away!)

So be watching for giveaways, excerpts, and other ways to look forward to what happens next for Grant the genie and the people he serves.

From now through August 14, I'm giving away 2 signed copies of I Wish on Goodreads. (US only this time, but there will be other opportunities for my international readers!)

Goodreads Book Giveaway

I Wish

by Elizabeth Langston

Giveaway ends August 14, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

I WISH giveaway through July 26

If you live in the US, here's a quick way to earn a chance at one signed copy of I Wish.

Now through Sunday the 26th, you can retweet this message and be entered to win.

Best gifts you can give an author

Have you ever wondered what you as a reader can do to give back to your favorite authors? There are plenty of things you can do to say thank you--and most of them are completely free; they only cost a little time.

1. Buy our books (okay, so this one isn't free)
2. Leave a review
3. Tell your friends
4. Send fan mail
5. Request our books at the library
6. Resist "download for free" sites

We love when you buy our books, of course. But we also love it when libraries buy them--so please ask your library to carry your favorite books.

Please leave reviews, especially with online-retailers. For less-well-known authors, it is hard to get promo if we don't have 30+ reviews on Amazon. I'm facing this issue with my book I WISH. I'd like to buy an advertisement, but it's not likely to happen because I WISH doesn't have enough reviews on Amazon.

Recommend your favorite authors and books to friends, family, the twitterverse.

Send fan mail.  Trust me, we love for readers to contact us. Writing is a hard and sometimes lonely business.  Knowing that readers are enjoying a book and loving the characters as much as we do is amazing.

Please don't download from "free sites."  That is stealing from the author. Only 15% of authors earn enough from book sales to be able to write full time. I can't afford to quit my day job. (Plus, just a warning, a lot of those sites will drop malware on your computer.)

I'm at the beach with 5 other writers this weekend. We're working on our next books and brainstorming with each other.  Here's a photo of the view from the deck!

Great review of I WISH from School Library Journal

I'm so proud of this review from School Library Journal for I Wish. For an author, it's great when a reader--especially a librarian--enjoys and "gets" my book.

Gr 9 Up—You wouldn't wish Lacey Linden's life on anyone. She races between school, work, home, and the flea market where she hawks her valuables just to pay the bills. While at the market one day, Lacey buys a music box for herself in a rare moment of indulgence. She soon discovers that the music box holds an unexpected surprise: a "Benevolent Supernatural Being" named Grant. The genie offers her one wish per day for a month, but the wishes must be humanly possible. 

Langston wisely limits the power of wishes, so there can be no easy fixes to complex problems. Lacey cannot simply wish away her debt or her mother's trauma. This allows the story to remain grounded in the everyday struggles and relationships of Lacey, her friends, and her family. It is all the better for it, putting the focus on the compelling and sympathetic characters. Lacey's narration alternates with brief status reports from Grant, a clever device that gives readers insight into the enigmatic being's motivations. 

While Lacey and Grant's burgeoning romance is predictable at times, the denouement offers enough twists and unresolved questions to have readers wishing the next book was already available.—Tony Hirt, Hennepin County Library, MN 

Mega holiday giveaway

I'm published through Spencer Hill Press. Many of the SHP authors have banded together to create 3 huge prize "stockings" for the holiday season, with books (e-book and paperback), candy, swag, gift cards to varied retailers, and critiques of varied types/lengths.

In this post are 3 photos of the prize stockings, a brief look at their contents, and then the rafflecopter widget.  If you already follow me on twitter--that's a free entry for you!

Grand Prize: 18 books, $50 in gift cards, swag, candy, and (for the aspiring authors among you) a critique of query letter & synopsis. [This stocking has a signed copy of Whisper Falls !]

Second Prize: 11 books, $35 in gift cards, swag, candy, and (for the aspiring authors among you) 5 critiques

Third Prize: 8 books, 2 critiques, $15 worth of gift-cards, swag, candy, and (for the aspiring authors among you) 2 critiques. This stocking has a signed copy of I WISH!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I WISH giveaway, Prince Charming, and a chair

Here’s an I WISH interview, with a giveaway for an e-copy or paperback copy. So find out about where I came up with the idea and what I think about Prince Charming. (Okay, so I just included that one here.)

• Does Prince Charming exist?

Thousands of Prince Charmings exist. They sit next to you in class, smile at your ideas in meetings, hold the door for you at the store. They are good and kind and flawed and true—and when they love you and you love them back, there is nothing hotter in the world.

I'll be involved in a huge holiday giveaway with other authors from Spencer Hill Press. We'll be giving away books (paperback and e-book), gift cards, swag, candy, and more. It goes live this weekend--so check it out.

a SPENCER HILL PRESS / Rafflecopter giveaway

 
Finally, a wooden chair. From Williamsburg. Just because I think it’s pretty and I had no other place to post it.

Excerpt from I WISH

I Wish releases in a week.  If you'd like a sneak peek, here are Chapters 1-4 (available on scribd).

I WISH by Elizabeth Langston (Chapters 1-4)

I Wish giveaway

I Wish releases in 2 weeks!

To begin the countdown, I'm giving away the last 2 ARCs (advanced reading copy.)  Sign up on Goodreads.

Note: I will be moving my blog to tumblr soon. Please check there  in the future.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

I Wish

by Elizabeth Langston

Giveaway ends November 13, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I WISH ARCs giveaway

I have a goodreads giveaway for book #1 in my new magical realism series, I Wish. (This giveaway is US only.)

Keep checking back for more giveaways on my blog coming up this fall, as I'm releasing two books—I Wish and Whispers From the Past (Whisper Falls #3).
I'll try to include some giveaways from my international readers.

Or better yet, sign up for my newsletter and I'll send you email reminders.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

I Wish

by Elizabeth Langston

Giveaway ends July 11, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Proof of I Wish

A proof (advance copy) of I Wish showed up in the mail today.  I'll be signing copies at Book Expo America (BEA) during the last weekend in May.

I Wish (book 1) releases in 200 days! Read an excerpt if you can't wait until November.

Writing in the hospital

My daughter's surgery went well. She expects to be discharged after rounds today.

While we're waiting, I'm sitting in her room, checking out I WISH one more time before we send it to the printer for advanced copies (ARCs).

Yes, a writer's job is never done!

Cover reveal for my November release - I WISH

And here it is—the cover reveal for I WISH ...

Lacey Linden is hiding the truth of her life—a depressed mom, a crumbling house, and bills too big to pay. While her high school classmates see a girl with a ready smile and good grades, Lacey spends her evenings seeking ways to save her family. On a get-cash-quick trip to the flea market, Lacey stumbles over a music box that seemingly begs her to take it home. She does, only to find that it's inhabited by a gorgeous "genie." He offers her a month of wishes, one per day, but there's a catch. Each wish must be humanly possible.

Grant belongs to a league of supernatural beings, dedicated to serving humans in need. After two years of fulfilling the boring wishes of conventional teens, he is one assignment away from promotion to a challenging new role with more daring cases. His month with Lacey is everything that he expects—and nothing like he imagines. Lacey and Grant soon discover that the most difficult task of all might be saying goodbye.

Book Information:

Paperback: 320 pages

Expected publication: Nov 18th 2014 by Spencer Hill Press

ISBN:  1939392233 (ISBN13: 9781939392237)

I WISH is the first book in a new YA series.  

I have another YA series, Whisper Falls.  The second book, A Whisper In Time, releases in April and the third book, Whispers From the Past, releases in October.  

To sign up for a giveaway for Whisper Falls, check out this blog post. The giveaway ends on March 15!