• Blog

    Cover reveal for The China Doll by Deb Nam-Krane (and give-away)!

    December 27, 2019

    2/24/2014


    BOOK THREE
    The China Doll
    By Deborah Nam-Krane
    Genre: Mystery/suspense

    The China Doll

    Hypocrisy, half truths and lies…
    Sick of being treated like she’s going to break, Jessie Bartolome is back to her old ways and calling everyone on their hypocrisy. Sheesh! One little breakdown and even easygoing Martin Shepard thinks she’s too fragile to handle their age difference. Good thing her older and equally yummy teaching assistant Robert Lester thinks otherwise…right?

    After spending so long cleaning up after everyone else, Jessie’s cousin Richard has never had the time to start a life of his own. However had he managed to find his girlfriend Zainab? So what is Richard going to do now that everyone else has grown up? Marry Zainab and start a family? Things have never been that easy for a Hendrickson…just ask his cousin Michael.

    Richard’s mother, Lucy, is one of the most powerful women in Boston… so when is she going to put a stop to the blackmail ruthless Alex Sheldon has been holding over her for years? And if Richard knows more than he’s letting on, why hasn’t he gone after Alex himself? The question is, how much does he- or anyone else- really know?

    Welcome to the Bartolome/Hendrickson family.

    The China Doll is Book Three in The New Pioneers Series

    GOODREADS

    EXCERPT

    ‘My dad drowned. My mom died in her sleep.’
    ‘How old was she?’
    ‘About twenty-six.’ Jessie shuddered just a little bit. ‘Just a little older than Miranda is now.’
    ‘That’s awfully young to die in your sleep.’
    ‘Heart condition, they said.’
    ‘Who’s they?’
    ‘Richard and Lucy.’Jessie shook her head. ‘No. Just Richard.’
    ‘What did your aunt say?’
    ‘Nothing,’Jessie said quietly. ‘She just let Richard do all the talking.’
    ‘How old was he?’
    Jessie sighed. ‘Thirteen, I think.’
    ‘And how old were you?’
    ‘Four.’
    ‘So how do you know you remember it correctly?’
    Jessie looked at him square in the eye. ‘Because you know when you’re that age. When you’re a little kid, you don’t have to go through the apologetic BS you do when you’re older. When you’re eight, even. You just get it. And people think you’re crazy or in the way or rude because you get it and then you say it. So then no one wants to talk to you or they send you to your room. Then you start making up excuses for why they must be right and you must be wrong. Then you grow up, and you realize that you had it right back then, and if your world seems messed up, it’s because you bought into someone else’s lies. So don’t lie anymore, and everything will be just fine.”
    ‘And when did you come to that nugget of wisdom?’
    ‘When I was fifteen,’ Jessie said quietly. ‘And I’ve been very happy ever since.’

    BOOK ONE
    The Smartest Girl in the Room
    Genre: Coming of Age

    Nineteen year old Emily wants her college diploma fast, and she’s going to get it. But when the perfect night with perfect Mitch leads her to a broken heart, Emily is blind to her vulnerability. When the person she cares about the most is hurt as a result, Emily’s ambition gives way to more than a little ruthlessness. She’s going to use her smarts to take care of herself and protect the people she loves, and everyone else had better stay out of her way. But shouldn’t the smartest girl everyone knows realize that the ones she’d cross the line for would do the same for her?

    GOODREADS
    AMAZON
    BARNES AND NOBLE
    SMASHWORDS
    KOBO
    SONY

    BOOK TWO
    The Family You Choose
    Genre: Family Saga

    Miranda Harel has been in love with her guardian Alex Sheldon since she was five years old, and Michael Abbot has despised them both for just as long. When Miranda finds out why she wants both men out of her life for good and questions everything she believed about where and who she came from. Finding out the truth will break her heart. Without family or true love, will her friends be enough to bring her back?
    GOODREADS
    AMAZON
    BARNES AND NOBLE
    SMASHWORDS
    KOBO
    ITUNES
    SONY

    AUTHOR INFO
    Deborah Nam-Krane is a writer living in Boston proper who has been storytelling since she was a little girl and writing those stories down since she was eight. Any given day will find her reading, writing, reviewing, editing and, just for fun, homeschooling her three school-aged children (she’s very grateful the fourth is now college-aged).
    The China Doll is the third installment of the New Pioneers series, the sequel to The Smartest Girl in the Room (March 2013) and The Family You Choose (September 2013). While her long-suffering editor works her magic on the fourth installment Let’s Move On, Deborah is working on the fifth. That book will be set in the world of Boston and Massachusetts politics, and her job will be to tone down the true stories she’s heard so they seem believable.
    Deborah is all over the place on the internet- no, really- but the best way to keep in touch is to follow her blog Written By Deb and subscribe to her newsletter (only publishing news, never spam).

    FACEBOOK PAGE

    GOODREADS PROFILE

    @dnkboston

    GIVEAWAY
    $10 Amazon gift card
    5 copies of both The Smartest Girl in the Room and The Family You Choose

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

    Comments

    Deborah Nam-Krane
    2/24/2014 08:54:49 am

    Thank you so much for posting my cover!
    Reply
    Monique
    2/24/2014 08:59:12 am

    It looks terrific! My pleasure 🙂

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  • Blog

    Sometimes, it’s got to be Christmas – a Holiday guest post from Deb Nam-Krane

    December 27, 2019

    12/3/2013

    Deborah Nam-KraneSometimes it has to be Christmas
    I confess: I can be a bit of a Scrooge. When I was younger, I loved the idea of the magic of Christmas and the rest of the solstice holidays, but as I’ve gotten older it’s become more of an indulgence in crass commercialism. “Buy this, and everyone will love you because they’ll know how much you love them!” or “If you’re a good citizen, you’re going to buy a lot- the economy depends on you!”

    But while I prefer to mark December 25th with the ancient traditions of my people (a movie and Chinese food), I’d have to be living in a hermetically sealed bubble without access to any other people not to notice that “the holidays” are an important part of everyone’s lives, whether they like it or not. If nothing else, they focus the attention on people gathering together and making an effort to show their appreciation of those who are important to them. If that frequently takes the form of sweaters (worn with or without irony) and way too many baked goods, maybe that’s not such a terrible thing.

    Given that the first book in my series The New Pioneers is filled with college students in a famous college town, it would have been foolish not to have taken advantage of the drama that comes with Christmas. The break in classes, the scramble to travel, the young/new adults who are trying to establish new traditions, the return of important characters and, of course, the potential to meet friends of friends: it’s pretty clear why many YA and NA writers would include at least one Christmas scene.

    In The Smartest Girl in the Room, Christmas is a time that my heroine Emily feels unrooted after saying goodbye to both her best friend and her new boyfriend and not having a home of her own to return to. She enters into an unfamiliar situation even though she’s positive she’ll be outclassed. Instead, she’s introduced to a very important character with a surprising connection to some of her new- and old- friends. But clarity is postponed by the return of a prodigal son (or in this case, cousin)- and the “gift” Emily receives is to be rushed out before she can meet him.

    This is a pivotal moment in my story, and if Christmas hadn’t been available I could have worked it into, maybe, Spring Break. But while I would have had a very good reason for getting people out of town, getting important people back into town would have been harder to explain (unless people usually have a good reason to return to Boston in March or Spring that I don’t know about). It also would have meant moving the entire timeline of my story around; instead of beginning in autumn, I would have had to have started in winter, and then I would have had to have changed some of the catalysts for my story. Doable? Yes. But ask any writer what happens to a story you have to massage one too many times.

    So this year, instead of channeling my usual “Bah Humbug!”, I’m going to wink just a little bit when December 25th rolls around- right after I leave a movie theater and head to my favorite Chinese restaurant.

    —

    About Deb and her writing.

    Deborah Nam-Krane came up with the kernel of The New Pioneers series when she was barely a teenager. It only took 27 years, but she’s finally ready to let the world read it. The Smartest Girl in the Room was released in late March of 2013 and The Family You Choose was released exactly six months later in September of 2013. The China Doll will be released (fingers crossed) by the end of December.

    The Smartest Girl in the Room

    Nineteen year old Emily wants her college diploma fast, and she’s going to get it. But when the perfect night with perfect Mitch leads her to a broken heart, Emily is blind to her vulnerability. When the person she cares about the most is hurt as a result, Emily’s ambition gives way to more than a little ruthlessness. She’s going to use her smarts to take care of herself and protect the people she loves, and everyone else had better stay out of her way. But shouldn’t the smartest girl everyone knows realize that the ones she’d cross the line for would do the same for her?

    The Family You Choose

    Miranda Harel has been in love with her guardian Alex Sheldon since she was five years old, and Michael Abbot has despised them both for just as long. When Miranda finds out why she wants both men out of her life for good and questions everything she believed about where and who she came from. Finding out the truth will break her heart. Without family or true love, will her friends be enough to bring her back?

    —

    Please connect with Deborah Nam-Krane on any of the following sites:

    Join her mail list to find out first about new releases

    Written By Deb

    Amazon Author Page

    Smashwords Author Page

    Twitter

    Facebook

    Google+

    Goodreads

    The Family You Choose - CoverThe Smartest Girl in the Room - Cover

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Comment

    Deborah Nam-Krane
    12/3/2013 10:45:10 am

    Thanks for having me Monique!

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  • Blog

    Guest post & character interview by author of The Family You Choose, Deborah Nam-Krane

    December 27, 2019

    10/6/2013

    Deborah Nam-KraneToday’s Guest post is by Deb Nam-Krane. Her new book The Family You Choose was released this week.

    This is a character interview….take a look.
    ***
    Character Interview between Zainab and Emily

    Emily, the star of The Smartest Girl in the Room, spent a lot of time trying to do damage control in the aftermath of what happened to her best friend Zainab Oginabe-Kensit. Z, as she’s otherwise known to her friends, is doing just fine. In fact, she’s better than fine; she’s in a stable and loving relationship with Richard Hendrickson. But although the drama isn’t circling around her this time, her jaw is going to drop more than a couple of times in The Family You Choose.

    Zainab sits down with Emily to walk us through a little bit of what we can expect in The Family You Choose.

    EMILY: So the good news is that things are settled with you, right?

    ZAINAB: [beams] Richard and I are going strong. There were a couple of rough days after Michael accidentally told me about the drugs, but I understand why Richard- and you- kept me in the dark. You just have to not do it again.

    EMILY: [holds up hands] You got it. And at least that freak Michael’s out of the picture now.

    ZAINAB: Yeah, I don’t know if I’d say that…

    EMILY: Didn’t Miranda get him to leave?

    ZAINAB: [sighs] Miranda’s not the one who got him to leave. She told Alex to make him go away, but Michael does what Michael wants to do.

    EMILY: But isn’t Alex this scary, powerful guy?

    ZAINAB: [scoff] Apparently the only guy he doesn’t scare is Michael. Richard once told me that Michael knows exactly which of Alex’s buttons to push whenever he needs something.

    EMILY: You sound pretty frustrated…

    ZAINAB: Look, I’ve never had a problem with Michael, but I suspect it’s because Richard told Michael he would break his fingers if he ever bothered me. He’s made Richard’s life difficult, but Richard will be the first one to tell you that he made Miranda’s life a living hell. He’s back, and it’s going to be bad.

    EMILY: Can’t she get away from him?

    ZAINAB: The problem is that she doesn’t want to get away from Alex, and she told me a couple of times, Michael came with Alex.

    EMILY: Alex Sheldon? Her guardian Alex?

    ZAINAB: [nods and looks away] Yep. And you want to know what’s worse? As much of a jerk as he can be, I think he feels the same way, or at least close to it.

    EMILY: So… Alex and Miranda, sitting in a tree?

    ZAINAB: [blinks] I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.

    EMILY: [leans in] If not Alex, then who?

    ZAINAB: [stands abruptly] I’ve got to go. Richard needs me to help with Jessie.

    EMILY: Why does he need help with Jessie?

    ZAINAB: I just…sorry, I’ve got to go!

    EMILY: Z, wait a minute!

    Zainab knows Emily all too well. When she finds out the truth about Miranda, it’s not pretty.

    Want to find out the rest? Please pick up a copy of The Family You Choose on Amazon or Smashwords.

    ~~~
    Deborah Nam-Krane has been writing in one way or another since she was eight years old (and telling stories well before that). It only took 27 years, but she’s finally ready to let the world read her series, The New Pioneers.

    Please connect with Deborah Nam-Krane on any of the following  sites:

    Written By Deb
    Twitter
    Facebook
    Goodreads

    Join her mail list to find out first about new  releases
    —
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    The Family You Choose - Cover

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