Guest Post & Giveaway With Eleri Stone

I am wicked excited to welcome Eleri Stone to LovLivLife Reviews.  I profess, after reading Mercy I will read anything by Eleri (even her to do list).  I am blown away by the amazing creativity placed into Mercy.

Be sure to read Eleri's post because she is giving away an ecopy of Mercy.  And since I love this book I will throw in a Book Jacket that I made inspired by the cover.  I recently gave one away and received some great feedback.  Read below for instructions.  Open Worldwide.

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Hi Chasity! Thank you so much for having me here today. 

I’m Eleri Stone a new author whose debut novel Mercy was just recently published by Carina Press. So by way of introduction, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about myself as a reader and a writer.

What I’m always looking for as a reader is something magical that can help me get lost for a few hours, make me look at my own world a little bit differently and introduce me to characters and places I never would have otherwise encountered. 

Lost cities and hidden civilizations. All those delicious creatures of nightmare and legend – vampires, shape shifters, witches (oh, my!) living side by side with the normal everyday human world. I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories. I love the idea that there might be more out there left to discover. Something hidden. Something exotic. Something magical.

It’s why I fell in love with Indiana Jones when I was younger and why I love reading paranormal and urban fantasy books today. So when I decided to write a book, I picked the most mysterious setting I could think of – the Amazon jungle, a place modern science has only begun to seriously study, a place that can keep a secret. The people would be strong, fierce, deeply attuned to their animal nature.

And isolated as they were, they’d have their own culture, harsh by our standards but entirely their own. So that’s Mercy, a lost city in the Amazon populated by jaguar shape shifters. It’s about what happens when their world starts to collide with the human one.  

Leave a comment and let me know why you read or what your favorite kind of story is and I’ll pick a random commenter to receive a free copy of Mercy. It is an eBook but even if you don’t have an ereader you can read it on your computer, iPod, iPad or most smart phones. (If you have questions about that, you can email me at eleristone@yahoo.com.) 

LovLivLife note: Open Worldwide. Ends 1/5/11.

The following questions were submitted by those who commented and entered a previous Mercy Book Jacket giveaway.  Thank you for the submissions.

Questions:

1.  What were your inspirations for this story and why did you choose jaguars? 

I was an anthropology major in school (among other things) and my favorite courses were about ancient Central and South American civilizations. I would definitely say that the setting came first and jaguars were a natural extension of that.

2.  What was your inspiration / how did you decide to place the setting where you did instead of somewhere else (which seems to be more of the norm)?

I wanted someplace a little out of the norm, really. I think South America is an unexplored setting in paranormal romance and I don’t know why. It’s visually stunning, culturally rich and there’s tons of interesting mythology.

3.  Is this part of a series and if so how many books are you planning for?

I didn’t plan this as part of a series but I did end up writing another story in the same “world” as Mercy. It’s on submission right now so **fingers crossed**.

4.  What was the most challenging thing when writing this book?

Hmmm. The most challenging thing was probably finding time to write. I probably wouldn’t have finished it if my youngest hadn’t started preschool last year leaving me with two child free hours every day. I really admire writers with young children who wake up at four in the morning to write before the kids get up but I never managed that. Without those two hours, I never would have finished this story.

5.  What do you feel like snacking on when writing?

Oh, that one’s easy. Chocolate. I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Yummy.

A request: 

I love hearing about authors' personal lives and would love a glimpse of a day in her life. :)

Oh wow, I’m so sorry this is probably going to be really boring. I feel like I should make up something juicy but truth is I have three children, the oldest started high school this year and our youngest just started kindergarten (which was really hard). I told my husband it was time to have another baby but he said no or actually he said, “Noooooooooo!” 

So…I work at home, volunteer when I can and write while the kids are at school. So up at 6:30 – breakfast, clean-up, packing backpacks and finding missing socks, out the door by 8:30 – drop everybody off, writing in the morning, all the house stuff when I need a break, errands, catch up on business side of writing in afternoon – blogs, author loops, prepping queries and all that, pick everybody up and start dinner. I try to keep evenings free so I can spend time with my husband and family but it always seems like there’s some seepage. I’ve never been very good about keeping to a strict schedule but it works – chaos has never really phased me either.

Read my review of Mercy here. 

For more information on Mercy and Eleri Stone Visit:
Website / Blog / Twitter / Read an excerpt

Buy Mercy: Carina Press / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Borders

Audiobook: Audible.com

Book Jacket: