UNCHARTED cover reveal and excerpt

  • March 22, 2013

Happy Friday, everyone!!

I’m so excited to share Uncharted’s cover with you today.Once again, I have a fantastic group of bloggers who are helping me out with the reveal. Be sure to check out their blogs!

Good Choice Reading
Flirty and Dirty Book Blog
Natasha is a Book Junkie
Lori’s Book Blog
Madison Says
Unabridged Bookshelf
Mandy I read indie
The Sub Club Books 


And in case you missed it the other day, here’s the blurb:

Tracey Garvis Graves — and Anna and T.J. — return in this companion novella to the New York Times bestseller On the Island.

When twenty-three-year-old dot-com millionaire Owen Sparks walked away from his charmed life, he had one goal in mind: get as far away as possible from the people who resented his success, or had their hand out for a piece of it. A remote uncharted island halfway around the world seemed like a perfectly logical place to get away from it all.

Calia Reed wasn’t part of Owen’s plans. The beautiful British girl — on holiday in the Maldives with her brother, James — made Owen wonder if getting away from it all might be a lot more enjoyable with a carefree girl who didn’t know anything about the life he left behind.

But Owen had no idea how much his carefully detailed plans would go awry. Nor did he realize that a decision he made would have such a catastrophic effect on two passengers who boarded a plane in Chicago .

And when Owen shows up at Anna and T.J.’s door with an incredible story to tell, everyone involved will learn just how much their lives are intertwined.

Uncharted includes an early look at Covet, coming September 17, 2013.


Here’s the cover!


And last but not least, here’s an excerpt from the novella.




UNCHARTED

Chapter 1

OWEN

 
The house is isolated, surrounded by trees and a well-kept lawn. There’s a children’s play set in one corner of the yard, and an abandoned tricycle on the front sidewalk. Spring has only just arrived in the Midwest, but someone has already drawn a hopscotch pattern with pastel-colored chalk. A sign stuck in the landscaping by the front door announces that the home is protected by ADT, and when I ring the doorbell a dog starts barking, followed by the sound of thundering paws.

The woman that answers the door has a baby in her arms and two toddlers clinging to her skirt. The dog, a large golden retriever, snarls and waits for her to let it out. I hope she doesn’t. Her blue eyes narrow as she peers at me behind the safety of a storm door that I’m certain is locked. The glass muffles her voice, but I can still understand her when she says, “Can I help you?” Her guarded tone makes sense, the way it would if you lived out in the country and the world knew your story and had a ballpark idea of your net worth. “Is your husband around?” I ask.

“He’s upstairs. On the phone,” she says.

“I’d like to talk to you both. Mind if I wait?” She doesn’t like this. I can tell by the way she pushes the kids behind her and squares her shoulders, lifting her chin slightly.

Ah, she’s a fighter. This doesn’t surprise me at all.

“You’ll have to come back some other time,” she says, and starts to close the door. But before she can swing it shut all the way a dusty pickup truck pulls into the driveway and the relief washes over her face.

The man driving slams on the brakes and gets out of the truck almost before it stops moving.  He strides up to me with a suspicious expression on his face. Suspicious and pissed off. I’m older than he is, but he looks enough like me that people could mistake us for brothers; we have the same light brown hair and build.

He glances at the woman in the doorway. “Stay inside.” Turning back toward me he says, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Just wanted to talk to you and your wife.”

“Do we know you?”

“No.” I put my hands in my pockets and remind myself of the reason for my visit. “My name is Owen Sparks.” The man looks at me, brow furrowed as he filters through his memory for the significance of my name. But the woman, the woman knows immediately, and we both turn toward her when she gasps.

“T.J,” the woman says. She opens the door wide so we can really hear her and the dog shoots out like a bullet from a gun, sniffing me aggressively but thankfully deciding that I’m no threat. “The missing person. The man whose trail went cold in the Maldives. Do you remember? His name was Owen Sparks.”

Recognition dawns on his face and they look at me like I’m a ghost. “Are you the guy who built the shack?” he asks. 

“Yes.”

“But you’re not Bones.”

I shake my head. “No.” There’s no need for me to ask them what they mean. To ask them who Bones is.  

Because I know.

 

Uncharted: An On the Island novella will be available in the US and the UK on July 2, 2013, wherever e-books are sold.


xoxo,
Tracey

Fiction Friday – A Cover, Some Jacket Copy, and a Playlist

  • September 2, 2011

Happy fiction Friday (and Labor Day weekend) everyone!

I wanted to show you the awesome cover my blogging bestie Penne made for me (blogger wouldn’t let me upload the PDF, so I had to settle for the JPEG. It looks much clearer on my computer screen so I’m not sure why it doesn’t show up better here, but you get the general idea). You can also click on it a couple times to make it bigger.

Here’s the jacket copy/product description:

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family’s summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He’s almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn’t bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family – and a stack of overdue assignments – instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.’s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

Next up is the playlist I listened to while I was writing On the Island. I used to play “Roll With the Changes” on repeat, especially in my car, and I wanted to use the first verse as an epigraph at the beginning of a certain chapter but you can’t unless you pay for the right to do that and, even more daunting, get the members of REO Speedwagon (or whoever owns the rights) to say it’s okay (hello? *waves hand* Kevin Cronin? I have a question for you). That sounds like a lot of work and money. So no epigraph.

I wonder if those of you who have already read On the Island could guess where I would have put the epigraph. It might surprise you.

The rest of these songs all have meaning and it’s strange how much a playlist can influence the writing. For Covet, the book I’m writing now, I’ve been in an adult contemporary phase which is weird because you know I’m a 70’s girl.

“Long, Long Way From Home” – Foreigner
“Fins” – Jimmy Buffet
“Island Girl” – Elton John
“Sweet Child ‘O Mine” – Guns ‘N Roses
“Roll With The Changes” – REO Speedwagon
“Coconuts” – Widespread Panic
“Changes In Attitude, Changes In Latitude” – Jimmy Buffet
“Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd
“Don’t Drink The Water” – Dave Matthews Band
“Don’t Let Him Go” – REO Speedwagon
“Have You Ever Seen The Rain” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
“I’ll Be” – Edwin McCain
“Ridin’ The Storm Out” – REO Speedwagon

I received my ebooks from the book formatter last night and I’ll be able to upload to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords on Sunday when there will be a break in our weekend festivities. It will take anywhere from 6-48 hours to go live (although I heard it’s usually closer to 24). Next week’s focus will be sending everything to Amazon’s CreateSpace for the paperback version. I’ve heard that process can be…difficult. But ignorance is bliss so for now I’m assuming a couple mouse clicks and woo hoo, paperback!

I’m also planning a virtual launch party on Facebook (date: TBD). I am hoping for sometime next week, maybe Friday? A virtual launch party is just a fancy way of asking my Facebook friends to copy the link for my blog post announcing the book’s release into their status update so that their friends can check out the listing on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you would like to participate in this launch, please let me know. I’d be honored and I would appreciate it so much. I will be holding a random drawing for some fabulous prizes for those who help me launch. If you’d like to be included, please let me know, either by commenting on this blog, or replying on Facebook.

It’s a good feeling having this preparation behind me. After 18 months, I’m ready to move on and immerse myself in the new book.

Thanks to all of you who have helped me along the way. Your kind words of encouragement mean a lot. More than you’ll ever know, actually.

Have a good weekend!

Tracey

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