'Owlet' Blog Tour Schedule & Giveaway Entries

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Sharing Happiness

Sharing happiness is something that is very important to me. I think one of the best feelings in the world is that moment when you know you have made a difference for another person and somehow made their life a happier one whether it is in a small way or a larger one. That can mean doing favors, being there for someone, sharing your own happy news or even just giving someone a pick me up when they are down.
I try my best to always do any of the above whenever the chance arises. That is why I do what I do, everything from my writing to my covers are for other people and hoping I can make a difference in the only ways I know how. 

I love to do pro-bono work and in my everyday work get to make a difference through writing, hosting authors on my other blog The Writers Voice and spreading the word, blogging here on my website and doing my covers!

I love getting e-mails back from authors who are in love with their covers. I would literally slave for those e-mails because that moment of happiness for them is the very best feeling in the world to me because I know I was able to make a difference for someone and that is all I want.

With Owlet, I wrote it for girls like my 10-17 year old self who don't have anyone they can look up to who shares their limitations. Being an asthmatic felt like a curse at times until I learned to realize the ways it changes my perspective and somehow managed to make me a better person. I think every rewrite and every day I spent reading and rereading Owlet to try and get it right since I was 17, what kept me going was that if Owlet can help even one girl out there, it will all have been worth it.

I know it all seems very career oriented but there are also so many other ways to spread happiness! I help friends or neighbors with DIY projects and for some reason was given a talent for... plumbing... yeah, I don't understand how that managed to happen. Plumbing, wood work, cleaning and organizing, etc. even though I have never taken a class having to do with any of it in my life other than my solar electronics classes that I took because it worked well with my classes to help me reach my goals of naturally powers A. I.s for children in hospitals. (if I hadn't gone into the literary field I probably would have been an A. I. specialist - or at least I would like to think so :-p My goal as a child was to create highly intelligent animal A. I.s who could be emotional support for children in the hospitals since after my own time in the hospital and my fears after my family left, I figured I couldn't have been the only one who was so afraid of being left alone). Helping others can be anything from being the person at the other end of the couch moving furniture in to the neighbor's house to being the person who critiques work for someone before they send it in. It all depending on what spreading happiness means to you.

So here is a question: What does spreading happiness mean to you?

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My (Blogger) Community Photo!

Pre-Book Blogger Con party!

I went to New York in 2011 for Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention and it was probably one of the top five experiences of my life. I am such a recluse most of the time that upon touching down in New York it took me about ten minute to lose my voice because I normally am a very quiet person with maybe five people I speak to on a regular basis and suddenly I was surrounded by people from friends to family who all wanted to catch up.

Most of the trip I probably sounded like a frog thanks to my asthma mixing with losing my voice but I LOVED it because I finally had a chance to meet so many people I had interacted with online and was thrilled that my best friend, turned out to be even cooler than I had ever imagined, and all of the book bloggers I met, really were the representatives of community that they had always felt like to me. It was like a family reunion filled with people who had never met in person before but all knew each other and unlike reunions with my own family they understood what I was saying when I started talking about YA books and the most recent releases!

It was absolutely fantastic and the most at home I have felt with a group of people. Everyone had similar interests even if they may have had different genres or sub genres and everyone was so amazingly welcoming. I finally got to meet the people who were on the other side of all of the amazing blogs I love! 

It was a fantastic week I will never forget filled with amazing people from the community I am so proud to be a part of. The literary bloggers community filled with amazing readers, writers and publishers who come together to make magic happen.

^ P.S. Chocolate fondue rocks!!! ^ 

If you ever go to New York go to Max Brenner!

^BEA floor room^

 ^My two favorite bloggers/besties from Quill Cafe!^

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What Community Means to Me

I learned what community togetherness meant when I made the transition from book blogger to author. I had never truly gotten to be a part of a community and having so much support from my peers was such an amazing blessing. I think many of my strongest relationships have come from getting to be a part of the literary community or have ties to it in some way including meeting my best friend during the The Thirteenth Chime release when an interview turned into a chat which never ended. :-p

The book blogging community had continued to show me more and more what it means to be there for each other and what community means to me. We all have our ups and down but no matter what happens, we are rooting for each other and do our best to help each other out. My life would be completely different if it hadn't been for book bloggers welcoming me and showing me that my love for books was completely normal and I should share it. Now, I blog, I write novels and I even work as a cover artist for numerous publishers thanks to them.

So here is a toast to you book bloggers, authors and all people literary *clinks water glasses* I don't know where I would be without you but each of you has contributed to making me the happier more fulfilled person I am today.


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Celebrate Community Blog Hop - My Recipe

I will have to share this posts with my family because until today, this recipe had been a very well kept secret. We have a unique mix of cultures in my family. It seems like everyone comes from somewhere else but there is one thing we all always enjoy no matter what side of the family you may be from. 

Chocolate cake. 

My grandmother taught me to make them when I was probably about 4. First she would have me mix them and stir them around and she would put them in the oven for me, then after a few years I was allowed to make them on my own and we normally did it anywhere from once a month to every weekend until I was about 16 depending on our moods and who might be having a birthday. 

You are going to need the following but no matter what you do, make your own little change to the recipe. I do it every time to switch it up a little (just don't add too much salt or take away the baking soda or you will end up with a mess). I will secretly slip a melted chocolate bar in or shave off some extremely dark chocolate into the frosting and stir it around so that it still looks as it always has but with a completely new flavor. Its a tradition! Go for it! I even sneak strawberry or raspberry preserves in between the layers on occasion, though if you do that make sure you use preserves and not jam, the flavor keeps much better in the oven than it does with jam.

2 cups cake flour

1 3/4 cups sugar

3/4 cup cocoa

1 1/4 cups milk (use dried milk and rehydrate it. It is part of the trick :-p)

3/4 cup shortening (or 1 cup olive oil or vegetable oil)

2 or 3 eggs (the more eggs the more moist it will be)

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit and use olive oil or vegetable oil to grease the pan or cake mold you will be using (you can also do cupcakes). Here is part of the trick. You know where most recipes tell you to mix all of the ingredients into a bowl together? Yeah. This part I try to never stray on. Add the eggs and start mixing, make sure the yoke break and that it looked mixed enough that if you were making scrambled eggs you wouldn't end up with white spots. Then add the milk and shortening. Mix is well and then add in all of the powders starting with the cocoa and going from there. If I ever change this up, it is normally just me doing the same thing but in reverse and for longer but it is much harder to do that way since I mix it by hand. If you have a mixer you can easily pull it off.

You can split it into two layers so that you can frost in between them and because two layers it much easier to cook evenly than the larger one layer pans. You bake for about 32 minutes in my oven but if you have one that tends to get a little too hot, then about 25-30 and if yours tends to be slow to heat up then give it anywhere from 35-40 minutes. 

After it is done cooking go ahead and remove it from the pans and onto cooling racks after cooling for a little less than 10 minutes. You want it to still be warm enough that it comes out smoothly. Then after letting it cool down the rest of the way you can frost them with your favorite frosting and you are good to go! I tend to go with chocolate or mocha frosting but the frosting if half the fun and there are so many different types to try! Think of your favorite fruit or berry if you don't want to go with a chocolate, coffee or vanilla and go from there (don't forget you can also add fresh fruit into the mix or as a garnish)! 

As for toppings/garnish. Don't forget, you can top a cake with just about anything. Most of my family like for me to do these cakes for their birthdays if we are spending them together and I try to incorporate their favorite things into the base recipe. Take my fiance's father. He LOVES snickers. My plan for his next birthday includes dices snickers in the center and as a topping if I can pull it off! Or my fiance loves peanut butter so I am going to try out getting some organic freshly made peanut butter from the market and adding that into the chocolate frosting! 

So go forth and create!

Go out and try it! Tell me what you think or what variations you would like to try!

What is your favorite flavor you might be able to incorporate?

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COVER ART SALE! (only $50)

COVER ART SALE! (only $50)

I am taking down the premades from my site on October 1st so in the hopes of selling as many of them as I can before they go down they are on sale for ONLY $50. Yes, that includes me adding your title and author name along with eye color changes, skin color alterations, etc.

It is on a first come first serve basis and once they are down in October they will not be available again. To order e-mail me at Emma@EmmaMichaels.com describing which of the pieces you are interested in and what you would need done to it (your pen name, title of the novel, type of font if you have a preference) If that piece is still available I should get back to you within 24 hours.

To see the covers stop by:
http://www.emmamichaels.blogspot.com/p/covers-for-sale.html or click the tab at the top of the blog.
(If the tab doesn't load, let me know or you can wait a few moments and try again, it has been a bit finicky as of late.)

Any help spreading the word is appreciated! I would love to see some of these sell before I take a break from premades and commissions that aren't for my normal publishers or previous customers! This October I want to be able to concentrate on my release for Owlet and writing the rest of the trilogy along with a few other amazing projects I have going on. Thank you so much to all of my amazing readers and all of the authors and publisher I have gotten to work with! Doing the covers has been a blast and while I am in no way quitting I will be limiting my clientele from October 1st on.

Of course, this will not effect the blog other than that the tab will be going down and I won't be doing premade posts. I was a book blogger even before I started writing and that will never change. <3

Sincerely,
Emma Michaels

Firstling Release!

Firstling is now live!

The third book in the 'A Sense of Truth' series is now live and free for Amazon Prime members!

He promised her that it was over. He promised that the events in the desert one year ago would be buried and forgotten. But with the arrival of Lilian Marsh, the Puritans, and a mysterious priest with orders to terminate David, everything they have been building the last year in Seattle is at risk. Megan and David are given a choice; pick a side or forfeit everything.

Before they can choose, David is accused of having kidnapped a child and is arrested. With only twenty-four hours to find the missing child before all she holds dear will be destroyed, Megan will be forced to side with one of the three groups and find the girl.

But the true enemy is about to be revealed, and no one could have foreseen the insidious plot that has slowly ensnared them. This new threat will stop at nothing until it destroys the man that Megan loves and Sense forever.

The Firstling has been waiting...