Wonderwall by M. H. Soars

Hello!
I get the chance to host a blog post for M. H Soars and her new book Wonderwall! She has written other pieces, but this one is a little different. This one is a contemporary piece. She is hosting two giveaways also for its release! So please check out the giveaway, excerpts and much more.

a Rafflecopter giveaway a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wonderwall Excerpt 1

Ten minutes later, I go back into the living room with a big bowl of buttery goods in my hands. I'm two steps away from the couch when I hear the E! Channel presenter speak the name I've been avoiding for the last five years. A cannonball of unwanted memories barrels through me. My heart lurches of its own volition before it lodges itself in my throat. Traitorous muscle.

"Can we change the channel, please?" I plead, hating how choked up my voice sounds.

"No way. They're about to replay the interview with Boys Future I missed tonight. I totally forgot to record it." Emma says, almost bouncing with excitement.

Mandy's eyes land on the bowl in my hand. "Popcorn!"

She makes a grab at it, not noticing my stiff posture and the deer-caught-in-the-headlights vibe my eyes are probably giving. None of my friends know the reason I'm freaking out right now. Only Saylor knows the history because she lived it with me.

My heartbeat is frantic, and I attempt to steady my breathing. It has been five years for crying out loud. I can't hide from my demons forever. With reluctant steps, I mince back to the loveseat, but I can't actually sit down. I turn and face the TV instead. When the interview starts and the boy who crushed my soul so long ago appears on the screen, I steel my heart.

I try to pay attention to the questions and what the other band members are saying, but my eyes are glued to Sebastian's face. He has grown into his looks, and who was once a very cute boy is now a roguishly handsome man. His face is more angular, and his shoulders are broader. His hair is short on the sides and longer on top. I can tell it has been styled by a professional. There's a hint of scruff framing his chiseled jaw. But one detail, the most important one, remains the same. His eyes. Since we were kids, those volcanic mahogany orbs had the ability to evoke confidence and yearning at the same time. A killer combination. Even through the TV screen, I can feel their combustible power reaching for me.

Book & Author Details:

Wonderwall by M.H. Soars
Publication date: October 28th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance

Synopsis:

There is something magical when best friends fall in love. Liv and Sebastian used to be inseparable until circumstances beyond their control destroyed their fairytale romance to dust.
Liv hasn’t seen Sebastian since he walked out of her life five years ago. When she accepted her internship in London, she never dreamed their paths would cross again. Not when Sebastian is a celebrity, a singer in one of the most popular boy bands of all times. Living in the same city, their worlds couldn’t be farther apart. But when two people are destined to be together, they can’t outrun fate.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25897278-wonderwall

Purchase:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Wonderwall-M-H-Soars-ebook/dp/B0168Z8VKG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1445598885&sr=8-1&keywords=Wonderwall+by+M.H.+Soars

AUTHOR BIO:

M. H. Soars always knew creative arts were her calling but not in a million years did she think she would become an author. With a background in fashion design she thought she would follow that path. But one day, out of the blue, she had an idea for a book. One page turned into ten pages, ten pages turned into a hundred, and before she knew, her first novel, The Prophecy of Arcadia, was born.

M. H. Soars resides in Florida with her husband and baby daughter. She is currently working on the Arcadian Wars series, and the Love Me, I'm Famous series.

Author links

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mhsoars
Twitter: www.twitter.com/mhsoars
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/mhsoars
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mhsoars
Website: www.mhsoars.com
Blog: www.fyingsaucers22.com

Cover Reveal ~ Footsteps in the Alley

Good Morning!
On this Saturday I am revealing the third cover in the Mistakes series! It will be released on November 6, 2015. I am hoping that you all will enjoy it as much as the other two. It is a little different than the previous two.

Children are taught to fear what may lurk in the dark. All Nathan wanted was a night away from boredom. However, when he got out of the theater he got a night he wasn't expecting. A night that leaves him running for his life.

Preorder: Smashwords

Cover revealings

Hello,
Did you notice the 's' in revealings? Well, look at it now! I'm being oddly productive, and we can probably blame the fact that silly me is going to finish grad school while I'm working a full time job. Silly me...so budget will be a little tighter. However, my goal is to get stuff done before that all starts.  Plus between my boyfriend and I we have four more weddings to go to, three of which one of the two of us are in the wedding party. I'll go back to cycles of writing, which isn't ideal, but that's life. So the covers that will be revealed is Christmas Lites 5!! Can you believe we're up to 5?! I can't. I also will be this weekend revealing the cover to the 3rd novella in the mistakes series, Footsteps in the Alley. Going Rogue my mini series will go become something that you can read on your e-reader. Then End of the Line 2, Off the Beaten Path. So, keep your eyes out!

Speaking of Christmas Lites 5, we will be needing all the help that we can to help advertise the book that all of the money will go towards NCADV!

Book Review - Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

The book tells you a lot about Big Data, the ubiquitous term nowadays.

There is so much of data being generated in the form of text, photos, and videos. Add to that the tons of personal data relating to whenever we do on our phone, like our location, what and how we are reading, listening, surfing the net, using different apps, etc.

Every minute detail of the way we use different apps are relayed back to the developers to get an understanding of the efficiency of the product. Everyone, not just Google, Amazon and the government are gathering data and analysing them, but everyone, including Goodreads.

Big Data is replacing the old cause-and-effect theory of 'if something is done in a particular way, it will have a particular effect", with correlation theory of "if most people are doing a particular thing in a particular way, then most others, if not everyone, are also likely to do that in the same way."

In the earlier era of small data, there was lot of importance to accuracy, but today, in the era of big data, there are more chances of inaccuracies, but that is compensated or nullified by the huge wealth of information that Big Data analyses provide.

The authors also rightly talk about the tyranny of data. Everything doesn't work according to numbers. There are many non-quantifiable and intangible, qualitative and contextual variables that affect analyses.

A good book, written in an easily understandable manner, especially for anyone who wants to know what Big Data is all about and how it's changing our lives.

On the flip side, the authors, in their attempt to explain different aspects of Big Data, tend to get too repetitive.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

Tips for 17th century living: how to revenge yourself on an "impudent anus"

It was clearly one of the hazards of urban living in early modern London that, if the door of your house offered even the shallowest of entryways, offering partial concealment from the street, someone might avail themselves of this, and in the absence of public toilets, unload on your doorstep.

The astrologer John Lilly lived in a house with an advertisement on the wall outside, which proclaimed it to be the house of Merlinus Verax, the Truth-telling Merline. But one of the stories told in mockery of Lilly (being out-prognosticated by a dun cow, incapable of foreseeing that a whore will pick his pocket, etc.) was a much-repeated tale of a countryman, robbed in London, who was advised to consult Lilly (for astrologers would describe thieves to allow their clients to reclaim stolen goods). In this yarn, the doorstep of Lilly’s well-advertised house proves to have been defiled with excrement. When Lilly answered the door, he forgets his proper role and exclaimed: ‘If he did but know who did him that nasty trick, he would make them Examples to all such Roagues so long as they liv’d; Nay, quoth the Countreyman, if he cannot tell who beshit his door, he can as well be hang’d as tell me who had my Purse’ (Lil-lies Lamentations, or Englands feigned Prophet Discovered, p. 6-7).

Lilly forgot himself. He had also forgotten that there was a useful recourse for any householder so offended, a piece of sympathetic magic given in Jean Baptiste van Helmont’s A ternary of paradoxes the magnetick cure of wounds, nativity of tartar in wine, image of God in man / written originally by Joh. Bapt. Van Helmont and translated, illustrated and amplified by Walter Charleton.

“Hath any one with his excrements defiled the threshold of thy door, and thou intendest to prohibit that nastiness for the future, do but lay a red-hot iron upon the excrement, and the immodest sloven shall, in a very short space, grow scabby on his buttocks; the fire torrifying the excrement, and by dorsal Magnetism driving the acrimony of the burning, into his impudent anus. Perchance, you will object, that this action is Satanical, in regard the end of it is revenge, and the laesion of the party, which offended us; but assuredly, the abuse of such powers depends on the liberty of mans will, and yet the use is no whit the less natural.”

I love the expression ‘impudent anus’, and the dignified riposte to the view that this constitutes taking a Satanical revenge: this is just natural magic, which could be abused, but not in this case.

Sample Sunday, err I mean Friday?

Hello!
So I will be going to wedding number two this year, and my boyfriend and I have four more to go to in the next year. It is one of the reasons why I went from saying I was going to go to Utopia to not. One of the weddings is the same time and that's a lot of traveling because not a single wedding is in Virginia. It stinks being popular...

So, my aunt is going through End of the Line 2, then I'll go through it, then I'll send it to an editor. I am still not sure if I want to call it Off the Beaten Path or Walking a Thin Line. However, while you are waiting for it, I decided to post a little sample on my Wattpad (click that link to read the story, remember it will contain spoilers for End of the Line!) account which I do admit I tend to forget about. Oops!

Look at me go, mentioning two upcoming releases in the same week!
~Ottilie

Mistakes 3 coming soon

Hello!
Leave it to me to prepare a werewolf story release AFTER Halloween. The school year has started and I'm working on math, grammar, and reading with my students. Nothing like having a student accuse you of liking to write when you are going over capitalization. Also leave it to the student to make that sound like a bad thing. Oh well, I guess I missed that memo! However, that heading is true. I have emailed the third installment of the Mistakes series to an editor. It is another novella just like the first two in the series. It is more action and build up. My goal is to have these stories lead up to the novel that I started while I was in high school (it has changed since then!). I also had fun and got to work in some reworks of a fairy tale in this paranormal story. It is a little different than the previous two, and I hope that everyone enjoys it! Also I hope that it helps your curiosity for the upcoming tales ;) Oh! I should probably say that my goal release is the beginning of November of this year so keep your eyes out for the cover release.
~Ottilie