Promo, Guest Post and Giveaway - Kiss Me In Paris

If reviewers can be believed—and OF COURSE they can be—then Kiss Me in Paris is an epic tale of love, romance, family, friendship and forgiveness. For those of you who might think this book is just another insipid romance, not so my friend.

Not so.

You will pee your pants laughing and cry your eyes out weeping. You will become so angry you might need to punch something, and you will sigh in pure happiness. One reviewer even left part of her soul IN THE WORDS OF OUR BOOK.

Yes, this is the power of Kiss Me in Paris. It's SOUL STEALING, and we are not going to apologize for that.

You see, we are the authors, and we are married, living our own epic romance. So epic we even had a fan-following during the early days of our courtship. So we know love.

And we know you will love Kiss Me in Paris!

Here's the part where we tell you about the book, but it's really not enough to do it justice. So let us first say that there is just so much in Kiss Me in Paris. Layered themes and a sexy cowboy studying to be an architect, and a girl who's a dreamer with a dark past, and gargoyles and Notre Dame and mazes designed by futuristic architects (because that's an actual thing, and the sexy cowboy will tell you what that means), and heartbreak and love and happy endings and evil and just SO MUCH.

But here's the 'official' blurb about Kiss Me in Paris:

No one knows my secret. Ever since high school, ever since I started living in fear, no one has known the true me. But then I met him, and I couldn't hide anymore.

He became my hero, saving me from the villain of my past. He became my friend, his smile a blanket of warmth. And he scared me. Because he, this beautiful man, he might become more. Then he'd see the real me, and I couldn't let that happen.

My name is Winter, and what I desire most I can't have.

Flashes of the night I was drugged rush back to me. His strong arms carrying me through the streets of Paris. The feel of his heart beating as my head rested against his chest. The soft press of his lips against my forehead when he thought I was asleep.

Oh shit. I'm falling for the cowboy. Cade.

But we can't be anything more. He has his own secrets. His own darkness he keeps hidden, like the letter he keeps with him everywhere he goes.

The letter he refuses to open.

Here's what reviewers are saying about Kiss Me in Paris

5 stars "I experienced every emotion as each character felt it. Every tear, every laugh, all of the fear, anxiety, and stress, I experienced every last bit of it. And even though this is a romance, there are tears. I cried more times reading Kiss Me in Paris than I did watching Nicholas Sparks' The Last Song. Kiss Me in Paris left me hollow when I finally finished it. I feel as if a piece of me was left in the words as I read. And for once, I have a book to call my favorite." ~Merumei on Amazon

5 stars "A timeless and beautiful love story that will sweep you off your feet, but it's also much more than that." ~Amy Conley, Amazon

5 stars "Beautifully drawn characters and stunning pallets that bring you in to Paris itself." ~Stormy, Amazon

Here are some of our favorite quotes from Kiss Me in Paris

• "One star breaks off from the others, shooting across the sky, a bright light trailing behind it, and I finally understand why people wish on dying stars. Because something always has to die for life to give birth to a new dream. "

• "Paris is pregnant with layers of history, colored with the ink of artists who dared to dream of a world only they could see."

• "It's like I'm giving birth from my mouth." [You'll understand this when you get to chapter 5. Then you'll pee your pants laughing.]

• "It's the nature of being human that, in our own blindness, we lash out and blind others."

• "I think of Winter, of her smile, her eyes, her arms wrapped around me, and I know where home is. It's wherever she is, and right now she is too far away. My heart has escaped my body and is walking Paris without me."

• "She opened herself to him, and, in that moment, she opened herself to the world. Let it hurt her. Let it burn her veins, boil her blood and scorch her heart. For where there could be pain, there could be pleasure and love. She would be cold no longer. She would melt the hearts of others, and in turn, they would melt hers. She would feel the full spectrum of emotions and cry. She would be human. And she would be happy."

And this is just a SAMPLE. It's like hearing an inside joke if you weren't at the party. So go to the party, and by this stretched metaphor we mean READ THE BOOK. Then you can laugh and *le sigh* and cry and be a part of the cool crowd.

Kiss Me in Paris is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Kobo. Add it your Goodreads to-read shelf here!

About Karpov Kinrade

Karpov Kinrade is the pen name for the husband and wife writing duo of bestselling, award-winning authors Kimberly Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov.

Together, they write fantasy, paranormal, mystery, contemporary and romance and hook readers into new and exciting worlds that will leave you laughing your ass off, crying your heart out and falling in love.

Look for more from Karpov Kinrade in the Kiss Me series, Seduced Saga, the Forbidden Trilogy and more coming soon.

They live with three little girls who think they’re ninja princesses with super powers and who are also showing a propensity for telling tall tales and using the written word to weave stories of wonder and magic.

Become a member of the Street Team for Karpov Kinrade.

Connect with Karpov Kinrade on Facebook.

Connect with Kimberly online: Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Amazon, Goodreads.

Connect with Dmytry online: Twitter, Google+, Amazon, Goodreads.

Married to Your Co-Author: 5 tips to staying happily married while writing a book together

Many couples would find it hard to work together day in and day out, with desks just a few feet apart, particularly if their job involved subjective creativity and intense deadlines.

We (Kimberly Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov) have worked together like this since we moved in together, after several months of long distance dating. This dating involved constant phone calls and 24/7 internet access, so even then, we were nearly always together.

While we have our own projects, as full time writers we are always involving each other in everything, from design, to music, to story ideas. We've written a few short stories together in the past, but Kiss Me in Paris was the first full-length novel we co-wrote together.

The journey was an intense one. It was the first contemporary romance either of us had written (since both of us come from fantasy/paranormal writing), and we wanted it to be more than just a love story. We wanted Kiss Me in Paris to be a novel that would evoke deep and varied emotions from its readers, that would make you laugh and cry and fall in love, all the while living vicariously through Cade and Winter as they learn to follow their dreams, heal from the past and open up to each other and to life.

So how did we do it and still live our own happily ever after? Here are 5 tips we learned to surviving the creative process while married.

Get on the same page, figuratively speaking.

If you're going to co-author with someone, you have to share the same vision for the book, the characters and the plot, or it's dead in the water before you even start.

This was actually the easy part for us. We're a lot alike, and our writing style and approach to novels is very similar. We couldn't have done it if not for that.

We rarely disagreed about the novel's content. When we did, we asked for outside opinion (usually from our editor, Tracy Riva, or our awesome beta readers) and discussed the pros and cons of our different approaches. The approach with the most pros always won out, but we often found creative ways of fulfilling the intent of the other person, even if not in the exact way they'd wanted.

Learn to compromise.

When you're writing a book with someone else, you can't always have it your way. You have to work together, not just on the content of the book, but on the speed with which you write, edit and release the book.

We learned to comprise. Kimberly really pushed to get the novel finished, while Dmytry really pushed to keep editing. We balanced each other out, and finished a high quality product. It's never good to launch before the book is polished, but also, you have to know when to let it go and move on, otherwise you'll spend your whole life on one book. Together, we created a book that we can both be proud of, even if we did have to delay the launch a few times.

During this, we both acknowledged what the other person brought to the table, and how together we were doing something we couldn't have done on our own, at least not in the same way.

Play to your strengths.

Every writer will have their own strengths, and in a co-writing situation, you need to play to those. In our case, Dmytry is the faster outliner and Kimberly is faster at prose. We also each enjoy those parts of writing more, so that's how we divided our tasks. We'd talk through the book, the characters and the story and make sure we both contributed to the big picture of what happened, then Dmytry would write detailed outlines for each chapter.

He also added a lot of dialogue, as he is very good at writing dialogue.

Kimberly would then flesh out the chapters, add prose, add more dialogue and even scenes and tweak as necessary.

We would then re-read the chapter together, changing and editing and adding and deleting, until we were both satisfied that the chapter was a 10. Once we'd done that level of editing on it, we sent it to the first round of editing, then beta readers, then editing some more. At the last, when we knew the content was exactly what we wanted, we sat together for two days straight and read through every single word of the book OUT LOUD. We then polished and perfected the prose, and sent it once again to our two editors for a final review.

It was an intense process, and there were nights we lost our patience, but it was worth it in the end. By playing to our strengths and using our team well, we created a book we're very proud of.

Balance real life together.

There's a unique factor in co-writing with your spouse that you don't run across in co-writing with someone else. That is real life. You know, three kids, dishes, dinners, cleaning the house, unclogging the toilet, doing laundry, mediating disputes and investigating mysteries (who really did take that 28 cents minion #1 says was stolen?)… these things don't disappear when you're writing a novel.

But we were both so busy and had so much work. Neither of us wanted to stop our work to, you know, feed the minions. But we had to. Because it's our other job, and also, starving minors in your care is still illegal. This isn't the Hunger Games. So we had to delegate tasks, support each other and also, let some things go. Our house is never perfectly spotless, but when we're on deadline, let's just say we turn a blind eye to, oh, everything. As long as the living room where we write isn't a mess, we ignore the rest.

Don't mix business and pleasure.

This is the hardest one for us, but probably the most important. Our marriage and our business are two different things, as overlapped as they might often be. When we disagree about something in our book, we can't let it become personal and affect our marriage.

But when it's 4 a.m. and you've been working for three days straight and you're tired and grumpy and stress-eating and the other person disagrees with you. Well, it's hard NOT to take it personally and blow up.

We usually handled this with humor. Because what else can you do? We have the best job in the world, and we're both hard workers and very ambitious, but we're also ridiculously in love. So, we snap, and then we laugh and hug and kiss and maybe take a break to, you know, research a few of the steamier scenes we're writing for the book. Because we can. We're married.

Through it all, the greatest part of working together was seeing our dream for this book realized as early readers responded with such enthusiasm to our 'book baby.' We learned a lot about ourselves and our marriage, and about writing and life, while creating Kiss Me in Paris, and we're super excited to tackle our next big project, Kiss Me in Cairo.

And this next book will likely hold its own set of challenges. Neither of us have been to Cairo (whereas Kimberly studied in Paris), it will be more mystery/romance, and we want each Kiss Me book to be romance, but also be unique unto itself.

But we've never backed down from a challenge, and we work so well together, that in the words of Barney from "How I Met Your Mother"…

Challenge Accepted.

My Rating: 5 Cogs

My Review:

I had the privilege to be a beta reader for this book, and I waited for weeks with baited breath to read this novel. By the time I finally got the book, I was so worried that I had built it up so much in my head that I would be disappointed once I finally read the finished product. I WAS WRONG. Even with the highest expectations, I was completely blown away by this book.

Winter and Cade are an amazing couple! Both characters are extremely well developed and well rounded. By the end of the book, I felt like I truly knew them, they just seemed so real to me. Both of them have a colorful past, but together they're able to work through the heartbreak of the past and move forward to a brighter and happier future.

These pasts are so heartbreaking. Get tissues! This book is actually the first book of the year that's made me cry. The story is so touching, but has such heartbreaking moments. Winter and Cade deserve one another, just based on how the horrors of their pasts building them into such strong and capable individuals.

This book is definitely on par with everything I've read from this amazing author, and I can't wait to read more about the other sisters and they're travels around the world finding love.

Definitely highly recommended. One of the best contemporary romances I've ever read!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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