Hi Everyone! I'm Ava Conway, and I'm so excited to be here with everyone today.  Today, I'd like to talk about my heroine, MIA, from my upcoming new adult novel, SHATTERED (Book 2 of the Perfect Little Pieces Series). 

 

At the beginning of Shattered, Mia comes across as naive and rather self centered. Despite the fact that she's a second year  medical student, she believes that the best way to deal with the pain and difficulties in life is to bury them. By throwing herself into her work, she doesn't have to deal with her dysfunctional family, Lucy's horrible accident (and her part in it), and her PCOS. She compartimentalizes her life, categorizing events and people as either good or bad, worthy or not.

This categorizing and goal setting extends into her internship at Newton Heights Mental Institution. Here she sees the patients more or less as a school assignment, rather than human beings.

 

Her elitist behavior might initially put some people off, but there is a reason for it. She doesn't want to get close to anyone, because letting people into her world would make things messy. In her family, Mia is the good, stable child, the one who will make something out of her life. That's an enormous amount of pressure, don't you think? If she let someone get close to her, then she'd be forced to admit that she wasn't perfect. She'd also need to deal with problems she'd rather not confront, and make decisions she has put off for quite a long time.

 

You can probably guess what happens. If you keep reading past the first chapter or two, you will see that despite her best efforts, Mia becomes close to Flynn, a patient struggling with his own set of problems. Flynn shatters her black-and-white thinking and forces her to reevaluate her feelings about family, forgiveness, and love.

 

Think back to when you were just starting out in life. Was there a time when you thought everything was black and white? Did you ever try to bury a painful event and push through life because you had to remain strong for someone else? If you have answered yes to these questions, then perhaps you can understand a little bit of what Mia is going through. Her journey toward acceptance and forgiveness is at the heart of this story.

For the first time in her life, Mia Horton isn’t afraid of the future. Equipped with a new major, a new internship, and a new life, she is finally able to put the past behind her—that is, until she meets Flynn McKenna. Flynn’s boyish charm and rugged good looks make her feel things she doesn’t want to feel, and shakes the foundations of her carefully constructed world. With Flynn, Mia craves things she knows she can never have, and wonders if she’ll ever be rid of the silent curse that seems to plague all of the women in her family.

Well on his way to being the youngest mixed martial arts champion in the world, Flynn uses fighting to provide for his impoverished family. Then, one day, an accident forces him to the sidelines. His failure to achieve success devastates his parents and starts a downward spiral of guilt and self-loathing that lands him at Newton Heights Mental Hospital. He has all but given up on life, until a gorgeous young intern makes him see that there is more to him than winning titles, and that love is the most valuable prize of all.  

Available for preorder from

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

ibooks

COMING JANUARY 5th!!!

Lean on Me. . .

I 

know that money is tight, and with so many good books out there, it's hard to choose where to spend your hard-earned dollar. For this blog post, I'm going o tell you why Shattered is different from all of the other new adult books out there, and why I think you'll love it as much as I do.

Flynn McKenna first appeared in Hollow, the first book in the Perfect Little Pieces series. Flynn was Jayden's best friend and confidant. While Nesto was volatile, Flynn was sure and steady, providing Jayden with the emotional support he needed to come to grips with his past. Now it is Flynn's turn, and we learn that he isn't as stable as he appears in the first book.

Flynn is special because there is a little of him in all of us. When things get tough, a lot of people bury their emotions and try to carry on. In fact, this has become so popular that there are tons of signs and memes about how people can "carry on." Sometimes these methods are successful. Other times, like in the case with Flynn, they are not.

That's not to say that Flynn didn't bury his pain successfully in the begining. He found other outlets for his frustration and anger, like boxing and protecting his siblings from the neighborhood bullies.  He was so successful in fact, that for a long time, no one knew he had a problem, including him. By burrying his burden and refusing to deal with the root cause of his pain, Flynn allowed his troubles to fester and grow. When an unfortunate incident ended his boxing career, his safety net was pulled away from him, and his troubles escalated. His behavior became out of control because he wasn't used to facing his fears, only burying them.

In SHATTERED, Flynn meets a cute hospital intern who challenges him to face his fears and why he is so over-protective. He learns that sometimes we can't handle everything on our own--and that's okay. No one is strong 100% of the time. We need that safe place where we can face our fears and start to heal. Mia becomes Flynn's "safe place" and shows him that it's always easier to shoulder a burden when you share it with someone who cares.

Read more about SHATTERED and preorder the book in these venues:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

iBooks

Chat with other fans of the Perfect Little Pieces series in my readers' group!

Other News:

My alter-ego, Suzanne Rock, has some new erotic releases!

Pressure Point is now available in PRINT!

Ecstasy Spa: An Erotic Anthology, is now available in AUDIO!

WHISPERS, a historical MMF menage, is now FREE through December 1st. Grab it while you can!

Ava Conway Website

Suzanne Rock Website

Spicy and Sweet, Mixing Up the Heat - #Hollow Free Esampler

So much has been going on with me in the writing world. Most of it only impacts things behind the scenes, so I wouldn't bore you with it here. What I will tell you about is something very exciting that I learned only a few, short weeks ago.

My mainstream romance alter-ego, Ava Conway, is going to have the first three chapters of her debut, new adult novel, Hollow, in a FREE esampler. This esampler will also have some chapters from other popular new adult authors. At the end of each book sample, links are provided so readers can purchase the rest of the story if they want to learn what happens next. (Hollow won't officially go up for sale until August, but you can preorder it here.)

As you can imagine, I was very excited about this opportunity. There are so many great authors in this sampler! I was a little star struck by some of the names, lol. Unfortunately,  it meant that the editing timeline  for Holow had to be condensed so I could have my part of the esampler ready on time. As a result, I've been doing a lot of editing behind the scenes, hoping to get things ready for the big release day May 1st. (That's tomorrow!)

Are you curious about the esampler? You can check out TORTURED LOVE here. As you can see, I'm with some great new adult authors who write a wide variety of heat levels. This makes me wonder...will the esampler go over well with readers? My story has a sex scene, but it isn't very explicit (hence the different pen name). Other authors are much more graphic, and would probably be more in line with what Suzanne writes.

This topic hits a little close to home for me, because I've been talking to other authors this past week about possibly putting out a boxed set that has multiple heat levels. While none of the stories would have closed door sex scenes, some would be much more explicit than others.

Would something like that interest readers? The authors I spoke with aren't sure. Heck, I'm not sure, so I thought I'd bring the question here to see what readers think. So, let me know...are multiple heat levels okay for boxed set releases? How about esamplers? Tell me about it in the comments section. I'd love to hear from you!

And here's the blurb for Hollow, in case anyone is interested:

Girl, Interrupted meets Beautiful Disaster in this thrilling and sexy debut novel, in which a college student learns her perfect life is a lie and finds new love where she least expects it—a mental institution.

Freaks, misfits and psychopaths. Those are the kinds of people found at Newton Heights Psychiatric Hospital, and high-society girl Lucy White’s new home.

Freaks, misfits and Jayden McCray. Jayden has his own set of rules for life at Newton Heights, and in this contradictory guy Lucy finds a way to live with the events that left her cheating boyfriend and best friend dead and Lucy in the middle of the investigation into their demise.

The problem? Jayden makes her want things she’s not supposed to have, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality and making Lucy feel more at home in Newton Heights than she ever did at home. But this isn’t how her life is supposed to be.

Or is it?