Shadows to Light excerpt – Regan Black @ReganBlack

Guest Post 12 Shadows to Light excerpt

Thanks for hosting this stop on the Justice Incarnate blog tour organized by the fabulous Orangeberry Book Tours. I’m excited to share an excerpt from Shadows to Light, book five in my Shadows of Justice series of paranormal romantic suspense novels.

In the following excerpt, Mira is about to get intimately reacquainted with a man she’s met just once before…

Jameson watched the woman disappear into the building. “I’ve got a possible situation,” he whispered.

“Explain,” came the reply from HQ.

“Female nosing around. Appears to be alone.” A status he knew would only raise more questions.

“Verify and report.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do not engage,” Callahan added.

But Jameson was already too close to the potential threat to risk a verbal acknowledgment. He clicked his mic in the affirmative. A stealth suit was one hell of an advantage in the daylight the way it refracted light and sheltered the wearer. At night, in a deserted area, he might as well be truly invisible.

It was a heady freedom as he reached the door where Mira – the woman – had entered the building.

He knew what Callahan must be thinking. Anyone in this deserted area of campus had to be connected to the situation they were monitoring. As long as he didn’t find Mira inside that building he’d agree. Telling himself it couldn’t be her, that his mind was playing tricks on him, he turned the knob.

It couldn’t be so easy. This kind of easy made him wary. He took his time, listening for signs of the woman, adjusting his night vision until the room glowed an eerie green. Nothing. Not a whisper, not a shout, not a single movement.

He edged toward a counter, certain she was hiding behind it. Unless she’d seen him coming – highly unlikely – there hadn’t been enough time for her to do anything else. The soft whoosh of movement wasn’t enough warning and though he turned, tried to deflect, the impact of a body running for the door took them both straight to the floor.

Even bathed in the eerie green light and with absolute panic etched on her face, he recognized Mira. Disappointment and answers had to wait until he had her contained and calm. In her rush to get off him and escape, she was damned close to trampling on some sensitive places.

“Stop.” He flipped them over, blanketing her with the weight of his body.

She squeaked. Not a scream, a squeak, followed by squirming that only compounded his natural reaction to having her soft body under his. “Mira, stop. I won’t hurt you.”

“What? How? What the hell is going on?”

He understood her desperation and confusion, was feeling more than a bit of the same himself. “Hold still?”

“Jameson?”

He froze. He hadn’t removed the stealth disc. Did she have some sort of detection or sensor he didn’t know about? Her hands found his shoulders, her fingers were skimming over the stealth suit. “Stop,” he hissed. He wanted to kiss her, to forget where they were and why, and just sink into the miracle of holding her again.

Remembering the other biofeedback technologies attached to him, he eased off her, just enough to see if she’d try to run. She stayed put, well everything but her hands did. He figured all these little fires where she touched him was like being in the center of a sparkler. The comm tech was probably having a field day with his vital sign readings.

He caught her hands and trapped them at her midriff. “Do. Not. Move.”

The order was as much for him as her. If either of them shifted the slightest inch, his body would reject all his training in favor of the promises her body was making.

There have been many days when I wished for a healer like Mira (for myself or friends) and I hope her compassion comes through as much as her inherent strength during her adventure with Jameson as they strive to save her father and the future of her order.

Mira has made a cameo appearance in each of the previous Shadows of Justice books:  Justice Incarnate, Invasion of Justice, Veil of Justice, and Tracking Shadows and bringing her story to life was one of the best experiences of my career.

Live the adventure,

Regan

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Romantic Suspense

Rating – R

More details about the author and the book

Connect with  Regan Black on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.reganblack.com

Nadine Ducca – Twitter Hashtags for Writers @NadineDucca

Twitter Hashtags for Writers

By: Nadine Ducca

In August 2012, I opened a Twitter account…and since I had no idea what I was doing, I did very little. I used it to post my thoughts, and to post links to whatever I had recently published on my blog. For about two months, I hovered between 16 and 18 followers. Nobody cared what I had to say. Even I didn’t care, and I was very close to abandoning Twitter and forgetting about the whole thing.

Fortunately, instead of giving up I decided to seek advice on how to revamp my account. This guest post by Richard Stephenson had all the info I needed to kick start Twitter: Indie Author’s Guide to Twitter. I can’t recommend it enough!

The main advice is to have interest in others. Building relationships is the funnest, most rewarding, and probably most difficult part of Twitter. To build relationships with other writers and readers, first you have to find them. And how do we do that?

With hashtags.

A hashtag is a word or string of words without any spaces or punctuation, preceded by the pound sign (#), sometimes also called a “hash.” They are links you can click on to see all the recent tweets posted under that tag.

Hashtags classify tweets by topic. Jumping from one hashtag to another is like wandering from one chat room to another.

Identifying Hashtags

Most hashtags are self-explanatory, such as #amwriting or #selfpub, but what happens when you don’t understand a hashtag? What the heck do #asmsg and #ian1 mean? I used to see these all the time and wonder what they were about. When in doubt, you can always refer to Tagdef. On this site, simply write in the unknown hashtag, and check the definition:

#asmsg is Authors’ Social Media Support Group : A Talented Group of Independent Authors from Around the Globe Offering a Diverse Collection of Books.

You might not find every single hashtag, but Tagdef is a good place to start. What’s more, if you know the meaning of a hashtag, you can always add it to the database and help out others.

Below you’ll see a list of 30 popular hashtags for writers. You’ll find hashtags to connect with other authors and readers, to share and ask for advice, to find inspiration and to promote your work. Each hashtag in the list is a hyperlink to the Twitter search page. Just click on your hashtag of interest to see what people are saying now.

Tip: once you have the hashtag in your Twitter search box, and if you like what you see, save the search. That way, you’ll get a drop-down menu of all your saved searches each time you click on the search box. This is very useful for forgetful people like me!

#amediting

#amreading

#amwriting

#askagent

#askauthor

#askeditor

#authors

#book also #books

#CampNaNoWriMo Active during the Camp NaNoWriMo months (varies).

#NaNoWriMo Active during November.

#followFriday also #FF Promote interesting Twitter users.

#followreader

#Fridayreads

#getpublished

#greatread

#mustread

#nonfiction

#novel

#paperbacks

#promotip

#pubwrite

#shortstories

#storytelling

#whattoread

#WIP

#wordcount

#writers

#writerWednesday

#writetip

#writingprompts also #writingprompt

If you liked this list of hashtags, check out 40 More Twitter Hashtags for Writers on my blog!

Are there any other hashtags you use to connect with other writers? Share your comments below! Oh, and feel free to connect with me on Twitter @NadineDucca!

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre –  Science Fiction/Fantasy

Rating – Adult

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Nadine Ducca on Facebook  & Twitter

Website http://nadineonwriting.blogspot.com/

Dora Machado Goes Face to Face with Her Villain @DoraMachado #Paranormal #Romance

Face to Face with My Villain

By Dora Machado

Hi, my name is Dora Machado and I’m doing something a little unusual but very fun today. I’m interviewing one of the characters of my new fantasy novel, The Curse Giver. 

But first, let me tell you a little about the story. The Curse Giver is about Lusielle, an innocent healer who is betrayed and condemned to die for a crime she didn’t commit. She’s on the pyre and about to die, when Bren, the embittered Lord of Laonia, rescues her. He’s not her savior. On the contrary, he is doomed by a mysterious curse and Lusielle’s murder is his only salvation. Stalked by intrigue and confounded by forbidden passion, predator and prey must band together to defeat not only the vile curse obliterating their lives, but also the curse giver who has already conjured their ends.

For my interview today I’ve invited the villain of the story, the curse giver herself, to answer my questions. Please forgive me if I seem a little on edge. The curse giver is very devious and mysterious and I’m not necessarily comfortable having her around. So don’t expect any kindnesses from her and beware: You don’t want to attract the curse giver’s attention.

Let’s begin:

DM: Welcome curse giver. Perhaps we can start with the basics. What should I call you?
CG: Curse giver is fine.

DM: Don’t you have a name?
CG: Why would you want to know my name?

DM: Well, for easy reference, I suppose.
CG: Have you been cursed lately?

DM: Me? No. Don’t look at me like that. Why do you ask?
CG: People who want to know my name usually have an agenda.

DM: What do you mean?
CG: Do you think I’m a fool? There are people who say that one way of defusing a curse is to learn the name of the curse giver.

DM: Is that true?
CG: Like I would tell you.

DM: Well, if it isn’t true, then you shouldn’t have any trouble telling us your name, should you?
CG: You think you know everything, don’t you? Well, you don’t. My given name is Jalenia.

DM: Jalenia, how old are you and where do you live?
CG: I’m ageless, but you know that. As to my lair, I’m not sharing any of that with you. Suffice to say that I travel the land of the Thousand Gods, east and west of the great river Nerpes.

DM: Okay, well, do you want to tell us a little about your occupation?
CG: I make my living casting curses in the human realm. That’s all you need to know.

DM: Curse giver—I mean, Jalenia—I’m curious. Why did you agree to do this interview?
CG: As you know, I don’t do interviews often. More like never. But I was curious about you. After all, you wrote me. You must have some redeeming qualities. I’m also looking for work. Who knows? Maybe you or one of your readers needs my services?

DM: Let’s not cast any curses today. Remember? You promised.
CG: I’m just saying, if somebody needs a casting . . . .

DM: How about we talk about the book? Do you feel like I did a fair job portraying your character?
CG: Me? Fairly portrayed? I don’t think so. Creatures like me are never fairly portrayed. We are secretive, devious and mysterious by nature. We don’t like the spotlight. We believe in wickedness over goodness. We enjoy doing evil. We have to cast curses to exist, and yet people fear us because we do our job so well. Face it, villains never get fair press.

DM: So you felt I was unfair in the way I portrayed you?
CG: I fault you for leaving a couple of situations up to the reader’s interpretation, but overall, I think you did okay. I mean, I like being evil, and you got that part down. Oh, yes, you wrote me devious and powerful, just the way I am. You didn’t make excuses for me. You didn’t make me good, friendly or caring. So what if the readers loathe me?

DM: In the story, why did you curse the Lord of Laonia with such a virulent curse?
CG: You want me to spoil the story? No way! ‘ll tell you this: The Lord of Laonia’s father did me wrong. He deserved to be cursed. He and his entire line deserved to suffer, all the way to the last of his sons, Bren, whose tragic story you tell in The Curse Giver. He was a fighter, that one. He wasn’t willing to lay down his sword and wait for my curse to kill him like other reasonable men might have done. His sense of duty was as impressive as his endurance.

DM: It almost sounds like you admire the Lord of Laonia.
CG: Admire him? I don’t know about that. I really enjoyed stringing him along. He waged a good fight. You must understand. I relish what I do and I enjoy a worthy opponent every so often. Heroes like Bren are hard to come by in my business. Fear usually neutralizes the cursed. Not Bren. He refused to be neutralized. He made it interesting for me.

DM: Did you ever feel any compassion for him?
CG: Compassion? That’s a joke, right? I don’t feel compassion and I relish suffering. Death is nourishment, craft is breath, work is life, grief is gold. You wrote those words into my dialogue. You ought to know better.

DM: Did you have any positive emotions towards the Lord of Laonia? Did you at any time regret his suffering?
CG: I treasured the man’s hatred for me. Loathing, hatred and revulsion are thrilling, satisfying emotions worth living with and for. I cherished the Lord of Laonia as my enemy because he refused to forget and forgive. He knew that I was dangerous and would always remain so. He was a creature after my own heart and I will forever relish the scent of his scarred soul.

DM: Did you at least feel bad for all the suffering you caused Lusielle?
CG: The remedy mixer had it coming. She thought maybe she was going to be able to defeat me with her potions, to heal the curse from the very man that was trying to kill her in order to save his people from destruction. Little did Lusielle know about how foul and terrible her death would be at the hands of the man she tried to heal. Little did she know about the terrible secret that the Lord of Laonia kept from her until the very end.

DM: What are your virtues?
CG: Virtues? I want nothing to do with virtues. I’ve got none.

DM: Okay, let me rephrase the question. What are your strengths?
CG: I’m powerful, more powerful than any other curse giver that has ever existed. I’ve got potent blood lines, excellent training, and I’ve lived a long time, which means I have the skills and expertise to cast a virulent curse. I can command the elements, travel swiftly through astonishing means, and kill the strongest man with but a twist of my wrist. I’m persistent, oh yes, tenacious like the Goddess herself. And I’m a planner. My curses are impregnable, carefully crafted to address contingencies, anticipate disruptions, and ensure my victims’ demise. Finally, I’m merciless, selfish and wicked beyond redemption. These are the traits that make me the most powerful curse giver in the realms.

DM: What are your weaknesses?
CG: I don’t have weaknesses. I’m the perfect curse giver. Shudder when you hear my name.

DM: Did you fall in love in the book?
CG: Love? Ugh. There’s enough of that from Bren and Lusielle in the story. Those two fought off the forbidden attraction growing between them almost as hard as they fought their enemies and me. I never understood. What did Lusielle see in the bitter, wretched lord fated to die by my hand? Why would she want to heal the very man who was destined to kill her? I mean, what kind of madness fuels that type of compassion? I never did figure all of that out.

DM: So I guess you don’t believe in love?
CG: If you ask me, love is a pretty disgusting ailment. It makes the heart weak and the mind feeble. Lust, on the other hand, is a bit more interesting, something that perhaps I might consider to ease my boredom from time to time.

DM: Are you interested in anyone in particular?
CG: Interested? No. There’s this creature that I had to work closely with there at the end the story, a traveler of the dark realms like myself, a soul chaser who claims the souls of the cursed when I’m done with them. To satisfy a fit of lust, he wouldn’t be bad. But love? Please.

DM: Was there a point in the book when you were afraid that your curse was going to be defeated?
CG: Afraid? Me? Ha. I’ll admit that Lusielle gave me a few surprises along the way. She ended up being stronger, more skilled and resilient than I had anticipated. Perhaps I should have taken care of her early on. Lusielle’s wits turned out to be more impressive than most.

Until he found Lusielle, the Lord of Laonia was all brawn, wrath and desperation, easy to tease, mock and mislead. But together, they tried to defeat my curse. Fools. She gave him hope. Hope is another disgusting emotion, a dangerous delusion. Have I told you how much I relish tearing people’s hopes to shreds? It’s extraordinarily fun. You ought to try it sometime.

DM: Um, no thanks. I think I’ll pass. Moving on. Spoilers aside, did you like the way the story ended?
CG: Some might think the ending curious, but I think that it reflected the true measure of my power and strength. Doomed and damned are the souls of the cursed. Useless are their struggles. I’m the curse giver and you, you will always be my prey.

DM: Do you have any words of wisdom for me, if I decided to write another book with you in it?
CG: Embrace the wickedness within and you will find me; relish it and you will understand me.

DM: Thank you for this interview, curse giver Jalenia.  Will we ever see you again?
CG: Perhaps if The Soul Chaser has a story to tell, you will include me in it, for cursed souls rarely live for long and the soul chaser must come.

****

Dora Machado is the award-winning author of the epic fantasy Stonewiser series and her newest novel, The Curse Giver, available from Twilight Times Books. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she developed a fascination for writing and a taste for Merengue. After a lifetime of straddling such compelling but different worlds, fantasy is a natural fit to her stories. She lives in 

Florida with her husband and three very opinionated cats.

To learn more about Dora Machado and her novels, visit her website at www.doramachado.com or contact her at Dora@doramachado.com.

For a free excerpt of The Curse Giver, visit:  http://twilighttimesbooks.comthingsTheCurseGiver_ch1.html.

E-mail:Dora@doramachado.com

Website: www.doramachado.com

Blog: http://www.doramachado.com/blog/

Newsletter: http://doramachado.com/newsletter.php

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoraMachado101

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoraMachado

The Curse Giver’s Buy Links:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/13oVu2P

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/16EbUzM

Romance eBooks: http://bit.ly/14TXNbC

Lusielle's bleak but orderly life as a remedy mixer is shattered when she is sentenced to die for a crime she didn't commit. She's on the pyre, about to be burned, when a stranger breaks through the crowd and rescues her from the flames. Brennus, Lord of Laonia is the last of his line. He is caught in the grip of a mysterious curse that has murdered his kin, doomed his people and embittered his life. To defeat the curse, he must hunt a birthmark and kill the woman who bears it in the foulest of ways. Lusielle bears such a mark. Stalked by intrigue and confounded by the forbidden passion flaring between them, predator and prey must come together to defeat not only the vile curse, but also the curse giver who has already conjured their demise.

Award-Winning Finalist in the fantasy category of The 2013 USA Best Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Fantasy/Dark Fantasy

Rating – PG-18

More details about the author

Connect with Dora Machado on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.doramachado.com/

a Rafflecopter giveaway

J B McCauley – Booksigning Tips to Sell That Book @MccauleyJay

Booksigning Tips to Sell That Book

Authors by their very nature are generally shy, retiring and hide behind the covers of their books and words. They may communicate well on the written page but to put yourself out there in front of group of strangers and sell yourself. Now that is a different matter entirely. So I can give some sales pitches that help in a book signing.

Never just turn up expecting to just sign books. Make sure the venue has a microphone and that you are well practised in engaging an audience. When people turn up to a book signing they want to hear you what you think. For some this needs a prompt. For me, I can talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles. It is not an issue. For others this is not the case. So here are some scenarios that may work for you.

• DO NOT PANIC AND BE PREPARED
• If you are not comfortable stalking a podium or a stage get a stool or stand behind a lectern
• If you cannot talk off the cuff don’t read from notes as it becomes stilted. Engage someone to interview you and practise with them. That way it can feel like an intimate audience with someone with other people looking on rather than a speech.
• If you are the type that can talk unaided don’t be afraid to plant some people in the crowd to ask some well-crafted questions. It works for politicians in the town hall meetings so why not for you? It is not cheating. It is just filling space whilst audience members work up their own questions.
• Employ a spruiker.
• If you are going to have a Q & A sessions make sure you are well prepared. Most questions will be standard. Very rarely will you get something that will stump you but make sure your responses are fluid and understandable.
• Put on a show and provide some free beverages/food. People can’t resist a freebie and once you’ve got them on the hook all you have to do is land them.
• Once people buy it very often starts a feeding frenzy so stay on track on and make sure you don’t run out of books.

The King of Sunday Morning is a geezer. Not in the traditional sense of the word as in old man. This geezer is a face, a wannabe, a top notch bloke. He is the greatest DJ that never was. He should have been. Could have been. Would have been. Now becoming a has-been.

Tray McCarthy was born into privilege but with the genetic coding of London’s violent East End. Having broken the underworld’s sacred honour code, it is only his family’s gangland connections that save him. But in return for his life, he must deny that which he has ever known or ever will be and runs to Australia where he is forced to live an inconsequential life.

But trouble never strays far from Tray McCarthy and eventually his past and present collide to put everyone he has ever loved in danger. He must now make a stand and fight against those that are set to destroy him and play their game according to his rules.

Set against the subterfuge and violence of the international drugs trade, The King of Sunday Morning is the tale of what can go wrong when you make bad decisions. Tray McCarthy has made some of the worst. He must now save those he holds dear but in the process gets trapped deeper and deeper into a world where he doesn’t belong.

“I want three pump-action shotguns, about twelve sticks of dynamite and a blowtorch”

THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE, FREQUENT DRUG USE AND SEX SCENES – NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PEOPLE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller, Action, Suspense, Gangster, Crime, Music

Rating – PG-18

More details about the author

Connect with J.B. McCauley on Facebook & Twitter

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sarah Krisch

1. I am a mother of three boys.  They keep me very busy with their myriad of activities!
2. My full-time job is a manager in a large corporation, where I am constantly challenged to be a better leader.  I am very fortunate to work with such a great team of people.
3. My husband is a full-time writer, Glen Krisch.  He writes horror and supernatural thrillers, which is quite a departure from my light-hearted romance.
4. We have a major case of role-reversal in my home.  My husband works from home full-time, while I work outside of the home.  I am very lucky to have his support in pursuit of my business career, as well as my fledgling writing career.
5. I am a vegetarian, and have been for more than 20 years.  It’s definitely not for everyone.  One of our kids claims to be a vegetarian, aside from the occasional corn dog.  Another would chase a cow across a field with a knife and fork.
6. My dream vacation always includes a quiet beach.
7. I love to craft.  I enjoy sewing, knitting, and painting.  Our middle son tells me he is going to be an artist when he grows up, so now that I have a partner in crime, I can shamelessly spend money on fabric, paint and whatever else strikes our fancy.
8. My favorite way to relax is with a cup of tea and my Kindle.
9. My favorite memories always include my siblings.  We have such fun together.  In a few weeks, some of us are going on a research trip to a ghost town for Glen’s next horror novel.
10. I enjoy the outdoors.  I love to hike in the local canyons, view the waterfalls, and spot the wildlife.

    

A failed actress, twenty-something Julia McCarthy begins writing a fictionalized blog as a form of self-therapy. Based on her carefree summers at her grandparents’ farm, she never expects her little experiment to garner a viral following, but it does. Boy, does it ever.

Now, with thousands of loyal blog followers, and a syndication deal with the Chicago Herald, Julia is approached by GreenTV to adapt her blog into a TV show. The producers see her as a “Rachel Ray on the Prairie-type”. She sees herself as a fraud.

In Julia’s fictional world, she’s successful. She can pay her bills on time. Heck, she even has a fictional gorgeous husband and charming little boy. Ready to realize her dreams, Julia returns to her grandparents’ farm to shoot the TV pilot.

Brad Taylor is definitely not her type: he’s rugged, sensible, and oh-so smug about learning that Julia’s blog is a farce. As the manager of her grandparent’s farm, Brad doesn’t have time to deal with whimsical women who don’t even know how to cook.

Julia can’t allow her attraction to Brad to distract her, not when her dreams are about to come true. But are these truly her dreams, her good life?

A fun, fast (150 pages) contemporary romance

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Contemporary Romance

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author

Connect with Sarah Krisch on Facebook

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

Michael Dismuke – 10 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer @MTDismuke

Inside the Mind of the Author

“The only freedom you truly have is in your mind, so use it.” This is a quote I have been using for quite some time now. I have it on my biography and most of my websites. Others have used it for inspiration, as have I. By keeping my thoughts free, it allows me to envision stories long before I ever write them, but never do I force them upon myself. I keep an open channel to the world around me, allowing it to motivate my work. I’m constantly bombarded with ideas whether they come from a passing storm outside, a dinner conversation, or an article I’ve read online. The ideas can come from anywhere, anything, and at any time. Sometimes these ideas connect with a story I’ve been working on for years, and if the right connections are made, I add them to a long list of notes and build on the story. Sometimes these ideas open doorways I hadn’t discovered before and the entire story changes, taking me in an entirely new direction. I keep writing these notes down, one at a time, until the story takes on a life of its own. This is when the story begins to build upon itself.

Most of my work is technology based with darker themes and motives. I try to imagine what others would do if somehow, someway, they were able to tip the scales in their favor by abusing a certain power. This concept is the center of most of my work. I look around and see the things we have and use in our daily lives and then take it to the next level and beyond. My debut novel, The Necro Device, is based on a machine that raises the dead, but the story is not about the machine itself, it’s about the power it yields and how that power is abused. In Darkness & Daemons, Invasion I show how an advanced bioengineered, alien organism has the power to infect and destroy all forms of life, and in Cult of Tattoo, I use the gadgets and tools we use in today’s society to fast forward time, evolving them over several decades to create this bizarre, unimaginable world. It is these basic concepts that inspire me to write darker tales of destruction and abuse of power.

The principles and ideas behind my work alone are not enough. I realize it is people, the characters, who make the story important, so I inject a wide range of emotions, back stories, and personalities into the mix. Everybody inside my stories have their own stake in it. In my mind, it is everything combined that makes it a rich, dynamic and exciting experience.

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – SciFi Horror

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author

Connect with  Michael Dismuke on Facebook & Twitter

Inside The Mind of Regan Black – Regan Black

Inside The Mind of Regan Black

It’s a pleasure to be here courtesy of Orangeberry Book Tours. If you’re still here after reading that rather daunting headline, clearly you’re a person of rare courage and I thank you for sticking around. J

As a paranormal romantic suspense author, my mind can often be a dark and bizarre place. Some days there are rainbows and unicorns – well, elves anyway – but usually I have a great deal more fun writing dark and edgy tales.

It so happens I was born with an imagination far more vivid than necessary, which is great for my career, but it means a few challenges in real life. I’ve avoided horror films because my dreams after viewing anything in that genre are always ten times worse than the real presentation. When weird things happen in the real world, my imagination fills in blanks that probably aren’t really there.

Like the day my son and I spotted a shirtless man with a military haircut in our neighborhood walking in circles around a tree while carrying a big kitchen knife. Was he planning a little target practice? Could it be he was talking himself in to or out of a murderous rage? I didn’t think it was smart to stop and ask. Civic responsibility had me calling the police to check on him and even now, I’m  not sure if I would have felt better or worse if he’d been carrying a military-issue knife.

Another example would be the day I spotted a solitary teenage girl in a fairy costume all by herself on the side of the road, crouching under a tree. I still can’t get the picture out of my head. How and why had she stopped right there? It seemed as if she’d simply materialized and yet logically, there had to be more to it.

What can I say, it’s rarely dull inside my head.

More than once I’ve woken myself up laughing out loud at a silly dream. The most recent event was a strange dreamscape thing, of course, but what made the whole thing even funnier was when I ‘heard’ myself (in my dream) composing a Facebook post about it – it was one of the few things I knew I couldn’t condense to 140 twitter characters.

Day in and day out, I just try to embrace my weird imagination and dark humor. That unique combination led to Justice Incarnate after all, and the various regulations, gadgets, and tech advances that populate the entire Shadows of Justice series.

After reading my books a friend once called me a ‘nice girl with a dark psyche’. I guess that’s as good a phrase as any to describe the strange landscape inside my head.

What does it take to set your imagination rushing to fill in the blanks?

Live the adventure,

Regan

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author and the book

Connect with  Regan Black on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.reganblack.com

The Making of a Sensational Best Seller – London Tracy

The Making of a Sensational Best Seller

It should warm every writer’s heart knowing that even if he or she does not obtain an agent, or find a publisher to publish their work, that they can self-publish for FREE and set the world on fire with their sensational work of fiction.

Since “50 Shades of Grey,” there have been other authors trying to copy the style and flavor, by attempting to write even more intriguing porn, but the boom has yet to happen, and the reason is simple. No one really knows what the secret is to sensational success. Even if there was such a formula, every book published would be a sensation, and we know that is not going to happen.

Even if there was a formula, it would probably only work the first time because if it were duplicated, it would no longer translate into a sensation. Case in point: Several years ago, a founder of a nonprofit organization wanted to get the attention of Oprah Winfrey so he paid for a billboard sign a block from where Oprah worked, thinking that she might see it. He was right. She did see it, and he was invited on the show. A month later, another person tried it, paid for a billboard sign and absolutely nothing came of it. You have one time to make your mark.

Back to the subject at hand, based on a book such as “50 Shades of Grey,” I theorize that there are three characteristics of a sensation.

(1) Dynamic lead character. When I say, dynamic, I mean original and eccentric. This is a character like no one we have met before. Think Christian Grey. How many men do you know who requires that his female partner sign a contract before they engage in the sexual act. Like I said, original.

(2) Intriguing story that resonates with millions. Think “Eat, Pray, Love.” How many women identified with the premise of a woman taking a year off to find herself.

(3) Memorable scenes that demand to be shared with the world. Think “The Help.” How could you not tell people what Minnie did to her ex-employer’s pie.

A sensational story is like interviewing for a job by millions of people and having at least one-half of them love and adore you. How hard is that? How do you get that many people to love and adore you? Two words: New and different.

I think about books that come out every day. Most books are seldom read by millions of readers and have a very limited audience, even some best sellers. It takes a very special kind of book to attract millions of readers. And the reason is simple.

Most books are similar to all the others on the market. The stories and characters are basically the same. However, “50 Shades of Grey” gave us something new and different, a character we never met before and water-cooler scenes galore.

If a book cannot deliver new and different, then there is no sensation.

London Tracy is an author, screenwriter and freelance writer. She is the author of “Your Life Story Could Be a Best Seller” and “The Curse.”

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Comedy

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author

Connect with  London Tracy on Twitter

Website http://londontracy.wordpress.com

Lori Ryan – Self-Publishing: Lessons Learned @loriryanauthor

Self-Publishing: Lessons Learned
I’ve been doing an awful lot of guest blog posts lately so I decided to pull a few of my author friends into this one and make it a ‘round-table’ post. I asked my friends what lessons they’ve learned along the way as a self-published author. Here’s my answer along with a few from my friends:
Lori Ryan: I’ve learned the importance of being sure your cover matches your heat level. My books are pretty steamy, but the cover I designed gives the impression of the book being a sweetheart romance. I am currently having the covers redesigned to reflect the heat level of the story. I can’t wait to see what my designer comes up with! www.Loriryanromance.com
Kaylea Cross: To maintain momentum, an author needs to keep releasing new books using a consistent timeframe between each release. Go too long between books, and you risk losing traction with the readership you’re building. http://kayleacross.com
Debra Burroughs: I’ve learned that it is hard to write a great book, but once you’ve finished and produced your fabulous novel, now the really hard work begins – marketing and selling your work.  You might have written the best book the world has ever read, but if no one knows about it, how will they ever buy it? http://www.debraburroughsbooks.com
Sharon Hamilton gave me a list of three great tips:
1. Keep writing every day. Start something new as soon as you finish one thing. Try to have something up every 3-4 months.
2. Write in series. Now I would say to put them up every 30 days when you have 3 written and edited/formatted properly. Give yourself a big boost right at the get-go.
3. Make sure your covers are killer. Don’t try to do it yourself. You can get unique later, but at first make sure you are delivering a picture that will make them want to buy you. Later they’ll follow you no matter what the picture looks like. Make sure your content is professionally edited, too. http://sharonhamiltonauthor.com/
So, take all the tips you can from authors who have paved the way for you and get on out there and write. Thanks for coming by the blog today. Oh, and if you’re an author who has a lesson or tip to teach, leave a comment!
Lori Ryan is an award winning, bestselling author. She lives and writes in Austin, Texas with her husband, two children, three dogs, and a cat who is very outnumbered.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre –  Romantic Suspense

Rating – R

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Lori Ryan on Facebook & Twitter

Bio:

Lori Ryan is a NY Times and USA Today bestselling author who writes contemporary romance with a twist of suspense. She lives with an extremely understanding husband, two wonderful children, two mostly-behaved dogs, and a lone little cat in Austin, Texas. It’s a bit of a zoo, but she wouldn’t change a thing.

Lori published her first novel in April of 2013 and has written three more books since then. Each of Lori’s books have made their way to the Amazon bestseller list and she quickly climbed the Amazon bestselling author list, as well. In November, 2013, Lori and a group of romantic suspense authors landed on the USA Today and NY Times bestseller lists with an anthology only eight months after the release of Lori’s first book. Lori loves to connect with her readers. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter or subscribe to her blog. Oh, and if you’ve read Lori’s books and loved them, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com. Writers live and die by their reviews and Lori promises to do a happy dance around her office every time you write one!

Arthur J. Gonzalez – Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author I Didn’t Know Before @arthurjgonzalez

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Arthur J. Gonzalez

Here are some quirky/funny/nerdy facts about little ol’ me.

1. I spoke at both my high school and college graduation

2. I’m extremely clumsy and goofy (Friends call me to Phil Dunphy – from Modern Family) -__-

3. I was on MTV’s Say What Karaoke my senior year of high school – I would post it if I could

find the video, I promise.)

4. Volunteered in Haiti a month after the 2010 earthquake (Life-Changing Experience!)

5. Owned a Health Care company

6. I don’t like roller coasters

7. I’m obsessed with Aladdin

8. I get all the words to every song wrong (literally, EVERY song)

9. I’m uncoordinated and horrendous at sports (I’m warning you, if I’m ever on the sidelines to

be chosen to play for a team, choose me last!)

10. I went to school to be a doctor (I know, right?!)

To find out even more, and/or sign up to my mailing list for up-to-date information, exclusive reads and cover reveals, and special giveaways, go here: www.arthurjgonzalez.com/contact

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Young Adult Science Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Arthur J. Gonzalez on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.arthurjgonzalez.com/

5 Essentials of Memoir Writing – Bobbie Cole @cole_bobbie

5 Essentials of Memoir Writing
One of the hardest things when you’re writing about yourself is to know what to include and what to leave out, so my first secret has to be:
1.     Don’t tell your whole life story.
There has to be a point. Your memoir has to add up to something. If you want to write about your interesting life, I would suggest that you plan a series of interesting stories, each with its own point.
Whether a single theme or a series, you will need to formulate a premise for each story. A premise is one or two sentences that sum up your whole plot.
Here are the elements: main character / their problem / resolution
Every story needs conflict, or it’s nothing but an anecdote. .
The premise for the movie ‘The Godfather’ was: Son is reluctant to go into family business but eventually agrees to do so.
2.     Create an ideal reader profile
Do this before you begin writing. Optimally, make that person understand nothing about your subject.
Note down details about your ideal reader’s age, sex, tastes, marital status, means and hobbies. You can even give them a name.
Then write your story for that one person.
3.     Assume Nothing
You have a whole vocabulary and history, things that are obvious to you but potentially foggy to your readers.
For example, my own memoir begins with me travelling in Israel with a friend from half way across the world. People naturally want to know how the two of us became friends.
A sentence or two covered it.
Questions like that left unanswered would leave your readers wondering, i.e. distracted.
4.     Write scenes
It is very tempting, when memoir writing, to set down what happened first and what happened next.
When you show, rather than tell, you’re writing in scenes. A scene is action set in a place and time.
Here’s a short example of part of a scene from She Does Not Fear the Snow:
A couple of weeks before I was due to leave, the phone rang early one morning.
‘Terry’s disappeared!’ Butch announced.
‘Disappeared?’
His voice sounded strained. It was still night where he was. ‘She hadn’t been to the house in more than a week, so Don used his key and went inside.’
She had been living in their home, Don just across the yard in his parents’ former home.
I saw scenarios of big rows ending in violence, Don furious with the court’s decision to let Terry live in the log cabin he built, while he was demoted to the little, old house. 
I saw my friend’s poor, broken body languishing in some forgotten gully, for the wolves and coyotes to feast on.
‘Everything was packed up, like she was moving out,’ he went on.
Ah, that put a different complexion on things. I couldn’t see him waiting to vent his passion while she packed everything away first.
This is how it might have looked, written as an account:
One morning, a couple of weeks before I was due to leave, Butch phoned early to tell me that Terry had disappeared. I worried that Don, who had been forced to move out of the log cabin he had built them, might have become violent with her.
However, Butch told me she’d packed everything, which reassured me.
Which do you prefer?
5.     Bring your story to life with telling details
Telling details allow your reader to ‘see’ what you’re saying and feeling. There are a few examples from the passage above:

• His voice sounded strained. Adds an atmosphere of anxiety.
• So Don used his key and went inside. We picture Don opening the door.
• I saw my friend’s poor, broken body languishing in some forgotten gully, for the wolves and coyotes to feast on. We picture my wild imaginings of violence on my friend.
• ‘Everything was packed up, like she was moving out,’ he went on. We picture what Don saw when he went inside.

Question: Do you have tips of your own you’d like to add?
(Note to blogger – I will participate in comments, if advised of their existence: bobbie@testimonytrain.com.)
Biog:
Bobbie Ann Cole is author of her faith memoir, She Does Not Fear the Snow. A trail of miracles led her from a Jerusalem church, where she wasn’t supposed to be, to meet and marry her Boaz in Atlantic Canada. Free sample chapter and promo video: www.shedoesnotfearthesnow.com. Bobbie, AKA The Testimony Lady, will help you write your testimony, too.  Download her free workbook, Start Writing Your Christian Testimony: http://testimonytrain.com.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre –  Faith Memoir

Rating – PG

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Bobbie Ann Cole on Facebook

Website www.shedoesnotfearthesnow.com

5 Writing Tips by Ben Galley @BenGalley

Tip 1: Write a great book

The future of any author rests on none other than a great book, as it always has.

Of course – ‘great’ means many different things to many different people. Not every bestseller is a work of genius, but they sell because they are popular with masses of readers. They could be popular great because they engage, or challenge, or cross boundaries, or inspire. That is the mark of a great book – not just its literary quality, but what it does to the reader. Great books make people talk, and those are the books that sell and will keep selling.

So how exactly do we write a great book? Well, that’s the hard part. Firstly, through practice. Even the best writers on the planet are still writing and practicing, every day. And when you write, you should always strive for the best quality of writing that you can, and strive to engage the reader. Aim high. Do something different. Have a solid and airtight plot. Create deep and varied characters and worlds. Spend time thinking about what you want your book to do and say.

Tip 2: Get a great cover:

So once you’ve finished your book, it’s time to start polishing it – making it into a professional and sellable product.

The cover is the packaging of your book, and therefore the first point of contact for a reader. Contrary to the old adage, readers will judge books by their cover. They make up their minds about a book’s genre, price, quality, and therefore whether they want to buy it, in the first few seconds. This is why it is important to get not just a good cover, but a great one. You want it to match all the effort you’ve put into its contents.

Cover design is an area where many indie, or self-publishing, authors fall down, mainly due to the fact that good graphic design costs money, and also due to the fact that people assume they can DIY it. Unfortunately, unless you are a professional designer, this simply isn’t true.

I always recommend outsourcing a professional. Anything less simply won’t cut the mustard. In today’s market, indie books need to be indistinguishable from traditional books, both to shrug off any preconceptions and also to rise above the huge volume of poor-quality books now on the market.

Tip 3: Editing it to perfection:

Editing is as important as cover design, and another area that a huge amount of indies get wrong. What’s vital about editing is that it affects your marketing.

Unfortunately, there’s a certain stigma about indie books. A large amount of readers expect them to be full of errors and mistakes, due to the fact they haven’t been through a publishing house. We need to shrug off that stigma. Bad editing can mean bad reviews, scuppering your sales. As with cover design, we should be aiming for a professional standard. You need to do that great book of yours justice.

There are two ways to edit your books – either hire a freelance editor, or DIY. The first is expensive, while the second is difficult, as few authors are professional editors. I would always recommend the first – shelling out for a good editor. Or, like me, if you don’t want to shell out for an editor, you can use beta readers.

Beta reading, or crowd-editing as it is sometimes known, is a way of using multiple semi-pro editors. You ask a number of people (I recommend avid readers, honest fans, English teachers, professionals etc) to proofread and give detailed feedback on your manuscript. You get your book edited to a professional standard, and in return your betas get a sneak peek of your book, a free copy, perhaps even a mention in the dedication – whatever you want to offer!

Tip 4: Market it, and then market it again:

So, you’ve published yourself a great product, now you need to sell it. How? Well, gone are the days (if they even existed!) when simple availability resulted in sales. Due to the sheer volume of books now in the market, a book (even a great book!) that isn’t being marketed will be drowned out and make few, if any, sales. Marketing is a must for today’s indie author.

As we discussed, people spread the word about a good book, and this is the biggest key to marketing – Word of mouth.

A good website is paramount, followed closely by good blurbs, bios, and a professional appearance. Next up is getting readers. Social media is a good place to start. Twitter and Facebook, don’t convert very well into sales but are good for being, you guessed it - social. By following and engaging with people on a social level they will be more likely to read and recommend your books.

Customer reviews are also very important. Readers put a lot of stock in reviews, so having a lot of positive reviews will really help sales. Source as many as you can from the readers you meet on Twitter on Facebook, and also contact book blogs and ask for reviews. Comments from respected and well-known sites will also add a little validity to your book.

Basically, get talking!

Tip 5: Give it time and effort:

Lastly, you need to give it time and effort.

Simply having a book on a shelf will not make you millions overnight. Skill can gain you some success and income, but effort and time is also needed, as we’ve seen above.

Perseverance is needed too, and I urge everyone to keep working and keep trying. It will seem like you’re getting nowhere fast at first. It may seem overwhelming, but marketing is a day by day, reader by reader process. Keep at it, attack from every angle, and trust me, you will have a shot at success.

Good luck out there.

Ben Galley is a young indie author from sunny England. The author of the epic and dark fantasy series – The Emaneska Series, he has published five books so far, and has many more on the way. Ben is very zealous about helping other indie authors, and provides self-publishing advice and services via his website Shelf Help, which can be found at www.bengalley.com.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre –  Epic Fantasy

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Ben Galley on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.bengalley.com

JD Combs – The Inspiration Behind The Point of No Return

The Inspiration Behind The Point of No Return
by JD Combs
There were so many factors that caused me to write this book.  The most important factor is that I’m a hopeless romantic.  I’ll go on to tell you, I’m in my mid-forties.  It’s the time of life where, I think, many of us start to get smacked in the face by the infamous mid-life crisis.  I’ve been married for almost 20 years, that’s time enough to live through the ups and the downs of married life multiple times over.  While the up times are more than fantastic, the down times can truly suck the life out of each spouse.  In all the years I’ve been married, I’ve seen couples who I thought were infallible go down in flames, and I’ve seen marriages that I thought were doomed from the start learn to grow and thrive with each other.  So I started wondering why the happily ever after was doable for some but not for others, and in wondering about happily ever after I had to let my mind travel down the path of infidelity.  Some of this was beyond hard to write about, but my mind wouldn’t shut down and stop thinking about everything that goes into a marriage from both spouses.
Do you or don’t you?  That was the question I had to ask myself over and over as I wrote The Point of No Return.  Do you cross the line and head into infidelity or do you stay true to your spouse?  Can there truly be a happily ever after or is that just a made up fallacy?  These were two other questions I had to ask myself repeatedly as I wrote my book.  Neither question was good or fun to answer, but in looking around at real life I had to accept the fact that both deserved to be answered.
Facebook and social media make the ability to cheat so much easier.  Who would know if you carried on a little something on the side?  How easy would it be to fall into a flirtation when life in your marriage is not so good?  I’d venture to guess, it would be fairly easy.  I’ve heard the stories of some of my friends who have something extra on the side.  I’ve interviewed people who have carried on affairs for years.  I’ve seen the devastation of a family due to multiple lovers on the side.  Holly The Home-wrecker came to life in many instances.  So, for me, this book was my way of showing the seedy side of life on the other side of fidelity.
My desire for a happily ever after of my own made it hard for me to write some of the scenes in the middle, but my wish for a fairy tale ending made writing the whole book a true necessity.  I hope that makes sense to you.  I so desperately want everyone to have the fairy tale ending I think most of us want.  I thought maybe if I wrote about the down side of marriage and infidelity, it would be easier to appreciate the up side when we have it.  I wish you all the happily ever after of your dreams.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre –  Romantic Suspense

Rating – R (adult language / sexual scenes)

More details about the author

Connect with JD Combs on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.jdcombs.com/

A Day in the Life of (Pepper Winters) – Pepper Winters @PepperWinters

A Day in the Life of (Pepper Winters)

I’m pretty boring really. It’s all about the written word and socializing with my awesome readers. And I’m a nerd too so I spend about 14-15 hours a day on my laptop.

Morning: I spend the morning answering emails, fan messages, and wasting time on Facebook. I check twitter and pinterest and I have a minor addiction about checking my amazon rankings to see how people are going with purchasing my work. I try and avoid Goodreads as much as possible, but sometimes I can’t help myself and have a sneak peek at reviews.

Afternoon: I finish up my other online work. Answering emails and clearing my desk. Then I open my manuscript and try and get 5000-10000 words done in one sitting.

Dinner: After dinner I re-read what I read and try and tweak the little bits. I then move back to Facebook, twitter, and arranging some more promotion for my work.

As you can see, I eat, sleep, and breathe writing and getting the word out there! J I’m a slave to my craft!

Tess Snow has everything she ever wanted: one more semester before a career in property development, a loving boyfriend, and a future dazzling bright with possibility.

For their two year anniversary, Brax surprises Tess with a romantic trip to Mexico. Sandy beaches, delicious cocktails, and soul-connecting sex set the mood for a wonderful holiday. With a full heart, and looking forward to a passion filled week, Tess is on top of the world.

But lusty paradise is shattered.

Kidnapped. Drugged. Stolen. Tess is forced into a world full of darkness and terror.

Captive and alone with no savior, no lover, no faith, no future, Tess evolves from terrified girl to fierce fighter. But no matter her strength, it can’t save her from the horror of being sold.

Can Brax find Tess before she’s broken and ruined, or will Tess’s new owner change her life forever?

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – Dark New Adult Contemporary Romance

Rating – PG-18

More details about the author

Connect with Pepper Winters  on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.pepperwinters.wordpress.com/

 

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Rachel Hanna @RachelHannaBook

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Rachel Hanna

by: Rachel Hanna

1. I love dogs. I have two dogs now, but I can’t imagine ever living without dogs in the house. If I had land, I’d probably be taking in stray animals all the time. My family calls me Dr. Doolittle because I seem to attract all kinds of strange animals to our house!

2. I’ve never lived anywhere else but the state of Georgia. While I love Georgia and many of my stories are situated here, I would love to live closer to a beach somewhere!

3. I hate spiders! I think anything that has that many legs shouldn’t exist, except maybe octopuses. Any kind of spider, big or small, will send me screeching out of the room.

4. As a child, I loved to write stories but also poetry. I won many poetry contests all throughout elementary school and middle school, but then I gave it up for some reason. I haven’t written poetry since I was probably in early high school.

5. One of my hobbies is selling items on eBay. In fact, I am in eBay Powerseller which means that I used to make a very substantial income when I did it part time. I don’t have as much time for it these days, I still enjoy going to garage sales and thrift stores looking for that treasure.

6. My favorite movie in the world is Gone With The Wind. I have loved it since I was forced to watch it in history class in the eighth grade. My room was always decorated with memorabilia, bedroom door. Even now, I watch the movie when it’s on. Strangely enough, I’ve never read the book!

7. I hate seafood and fish. I won’t eat any kind of seafood at all. For some reason, the smell and the texture just grosses me out. I’ve tried so many times over the years to like fish, but I just can’t do it. The only exception might be canned tuna fish, but even that bothers me sometimes.

8. One time, I had to beat up a girl in the woods at the park. These girls tried to attack me, my friend and her little sister when we were only in elementary school. We were simply walking a nature trail when these teenage girls came out of the woods. That’s the first and only time I’ve had to fight in my life. As soon as I got a chance, I grabbed my friend’s little sister and ran out of the woods.

9. We homeschool all three of our children and have since our oldest was in kindergarten.

10.I was a sports reporter in college. That meant that part of my job was to go into the locker room and interview players. I’m not talking about college players, but professional ones. I was in and out of locker rooms for famous football, baseball and hockey teams. I was the only woman at the time in the locker room, so it always made for an interesting time! Let’s just say that when a woman is in the locker room, the boys tend to show off and walk around wearing very little clothing.

 

Buy Now @ Amazon @ Barnes & Noble @ Kobo

Genre - New  Adult Romance

Rating – R

More details about the author and the book

Connect with  Rachel Hanna on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://rachelhannaromance.com/

6 KEYS TO BECOMING A GREAT WRITER – Colin Falconer @colin_falconer

FROM AUNTY IVY TO KHUBILAI KHAN

Colin Falconer

(Isabella- Braveheart of France)

My primary school teacher’s name was Mrs Boyne.

She once told my mother at a parent interview: “Your son is a complete dreamer. He’ll never amount to anything in this life.”

I still think that was a harsh judgment on a seven year old. But she was right, of course, I was a dreamer.

It was my greatest asset.

It was about the time I first read Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff. To get my hands on it, I had to endure a slobbery wet kiss from my Aunty Ivy, but I considered it well worth it.

By the end of that first afternoon, I was hooked on classic literature.

Every week my Aunty Ivy took the train down from London to visit with us in (what was then) rural Essex, to have ‘a nice cup of tea’ with my mother. She brought with her a collection of Classics Illustrated comics. She must have picked them up in the markets in London.

There were some Beanos and Victors mixed in, but I threw them out. My treasure was the cartoon versions of some of the world’s greatest literature.

I read all of Jules Verne in an afternoon.

And so began my love affair with literature. By the time I was eight I had read Moby Dick, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, The Moonstone, The Black Tulip and Ivanhoe, was familiar with most of the major works of Alexandre Dumas (Père), Mark Twain and William Wilkie Collins and had even read most of Homer’s Odyssey (although I never found out how it ended because the last page had been ripped out.)

I don’t think that back then Aunty Ivy knew she was giving me primers for my future career, for no one in my family had ever used their hands for doing anything other than making pies or fixing corner cupboards.

But those comic books were vital to me. I was an only child and though not particularly bookish – I was then, and still am, a soccer tragic – it nurtured in me a thirst for great stories painted on broad canvas.

So Aunty Ivy did not just give me the gift of something to read when it was raining too hard to play football.

Classics Illustrated stirred my nascent imagination and at the same time gave me an undying thirst for travel and for adventure.

These little gems of comics also made me want to time travel, because many of the places I was reading about no longer existed.

The only way I could revisit them was to recreate them in my head. Imagining them onto a page was the next logical step.

When I left school the first thing I did, to the consternation of both my parents, was to go hitch-hiking around Europe.

After all, why go to university? I’d read The Iliad and everything Shakespeare ever wrote by the time I was eight.

What could there possibly be left to learn?

After Europe I headed down to Morocco, where me and my mate were the only white faces (then) wandering the Djema El-fna’a, the Place of the Dead, in Marrakech.

Not too long after that I found myself in the middle of a typhoon in the South Java Sea, and wandering the Golden Triangle of Burma, shaking hands with CIA agents and drug smugglers. Every one of those experiences led to a book a few years later.

If I’m lucky, one day they’ll make one of my books into a comic.

But for now, I just want to say thank you, Aunty Ivy and Classics Illustrated. And wherever she is in heaven, I hope the angels are making her a nice cup of tea.

She was taught to obey. Now she has learned to rebel.

12 year old Isabella, a French princess marries the King of England – only to discover he has a terrible secret. Ten long years later she is in utter despair – does she submit to a lifetime of solitude and a spiritual death – or seize her destiny and take the throne of England for herself?

Isabella is just twelve years old when she marries Edward II of England. For the young princess it is love at first sight – but Edward has a terrible secret that threatens to tear their marriage – and England apart.

Who is Piers Gaveston – and why is his presence in the king’s court about to plunge England into civil war?

The young queen believes in the love songs of the troubadours and her own exalted destiny – but she finds reality very different. As she grows to a woman in the deadly maelstrom of Edward’s court, she must decide between her husband, her children, even her life – and one breath-taking gamble that will change the course of history.

This is the story of Isabella, the only woman ever to invade England – and win.

In the tradition of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick, ISABELLA is thoroughly researched and fast paced, the little known story of the one invasion the English never talk about.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author and the book

Connect with Colin Falconer on Facebook & Twitter

Website https://colinfalconer.wordpress.com/

Inspiration from Places – Rayne Hall @RayneHall

Inspiration from Places

Rayne Hall

“Where do you find your ideas?” people often ask me.

The truth is, I don’t find ideas. Ideas find me.

Like ghosts, they seek me out, haunt me, and don’t let go until the story is written.

My mind is like a revolving drum filled with hundreds of jigsaw pieces, each representing a story idea. Sometimes two or more pieces click together, and that’s when a story takes shape.

The location is often among the first jigsaw pieces to click. The setting lends atmosphere and determines the flavour of the story. Some of the places in my stories are real, others exist only in my imagination, while yet others are a blend of the real and the imagined.

Many of the stories in Thirty Scary Tales are inspired by the places where I have lived and travelled in Britain. I live in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur on the south coast of England, and if you know the region, you may recognise the landscapes that inspired some of the tales.

The southeast of England has many village churches from the Norman period and the Middle Ages, many of them in isolated locations, often surrounded by tilting, lichen-encrusted gravestones. To research Take Me To St. Roch’s I spent a night in one of those old cemeteries, taking notes about every flickering shadow and every creepy noise. I jotted down how the wooden gate creaked on unoiled hinges, how the gravel crunched under my steps, and how the twigs of the trees beckoned like skeleton fingers, withered and pale.

Locals know what a menace herring gulls can be, but well-meaning tourists always feed them leftovers from their fish&chips takeaway, and this encourages the birds to even more aggression. Like daring highwaymen, they swoop and rob anyone holding food. I live in a top floor flat near the seafront. Every morning, seagulls hammer their beaks on my windows as if trying to break the glass. Watching them gave me the idea for the Seagulls story.

Never Leave Me was the first horror story I ever wrote, a long time ago. Inspiration came from reading about the archaeological discovery of the mummified “Druid Prince” and from a visit to the wind-swept Yorkshire Moors.

When the tide is out, it’s possible to walk on the seabed below the chalk cliffs, across black boulders and rust-coloured shingle. The air smells of salt and seaweed. Waves swish and slurp across the shingle, and in the distance, seagulls squawk. On one side, the sea glints like a diamond-studded sheet, on the other, the steep cliffs tower like unassailable fortress walls, a sublime sight. But woe when the tide comes rolling in while you’re still on the seabed! With no accessible path for miles, you’ll be trapped between the rock face and the smashing waves. In Double Rainbows, I imagined this scenario. What happens if you realise you got the time wrong?

The ferocious force of wind and waves sometimes erodes the cliffs and breaks off whole sections. The first time I walked below Fairlight Cliffs, the sight made my throat constrict. A large chunk of the cliff had recently fallen, leaving houses half destroyed, half standing. From below, I could see the inside of living rooms and kitchens, still furnished, as if any moment the inhabitants would enter. For years, the sight haunted me, but I could not come up with a story. Then St Leonards Writers decided to write stories about a local area, the so-called America Ground. Around the same time, I revisited Hastings Castle, which was partially destroyed during a violent storm 1287 when part of the cliff on which it stood fell. The three places – Fairlight, Hastings Castle, America Ground – clicked together, and I placed my story Scruples during the 1287 storm.

I had long mulled over a ghost story idea, but could not bring it to life until the plot clicked with several places from my memory. I recalled the railway tunnel next to the station where I used to wait after school for the train home, its entrance gaping like a black, hungry mouth. This combined with memories of travels in Wales, of steep slopes, grey slate houses, and drizzling rain. The story Through the Tunnel is the result.

The Devil You Know started with the memory of a night I spent as a young woman on a platform at Richmond station, waiting for the morning train to take me home, trying to sleep while the cold from the metal bench seeped through my thin dress. I kept the bench but moved it to an imaginary railway station on the Kent-Sussex border. Many of the small railway stations these days are unstaffed most of the time, with the waiting rooms and toilets locked, and the help points are often out of order.

Many years ago, I joined a group of divers for a holiday in Dorset. I couldn’t dive – I still can’t – but I listened to them as they talked about their plans for the day, and discussed the adventures at the evening campfire. I wondered if a wreck could be haunted, and what would be the worst thing that could go wrong on a dive. The divers were eager to help me with their know-how. The resulting story was I Dived the Pandora, which has been published in several versions. The current version is set in Sussex.

The main idea for Four Bony Hands haunted me for many years. What if the events in a certain fairytale didn’t happen quite the way everyone believes? After several abandoned attempts, another jigsaw piece clicked: the place was a cosy interior, heated by a big oven, providing shelter from the cold weather, refuge from persecution, and sanctuary from evil. Although the story takes place indoors, you can imagine the pine and oak woods surrounding the cottage, snow-laden like the Scottish forests in winter.

Beltane was my entry for a contest where each writer has twenty-four hours to create a complete story about a given topic. The theme was something about a blind fruit vendor and a young female customer. It was the first of May – the date of the traditional Celtic Beltane festival – and fresh green leaves and white blooms covered the trees, so I decided to set the story in ancient England in Celtic times. What did the blind vendor know that the girl did not? The story didn’t win, but I liked it, and a year later I wrote a more polished version.

Stone circles hold a deep fascination for me, and there are many of them in Britain. I’ve visited many stone circles, from the big ones like Avebury and Stonehenge to the ones which are so small they’re hard to spot among the bracken, from the major tourist attractions to the unknown ones, accessible only after a long hike, climbing across stiles and squeezing through thorny brambles. My favourites are the stone circles of Cornwall: Tregeseal, Merry Maidens, Boscawen-Un and all the others. Sometimes I would reach an out-of-the way place and discover that a previous visitor had left an offering, such as a posy of wildflowers, which always delighted me. On one occasion, though, I was disconcerted to find the offering was the flattened, fire-parched body of a frog. Readers familiar with Cornwall will recognise the landscape in the story Druid Stones and may even guess which circle was the fictional inspiration for the Dredhek Stones.

Burning was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever written, and I believe it’s one of my best. Several places combined in my mind to form the inspiration. The first was a house on fire in the neighbourhood. My father forced me to watch it burn, even though at the age of seven I was upset and terrified. The second was also a house that burned out. This time, I did not witness the inferno, but I heard afterwards that the Turkish family who lived there had not been able to get out. Their charred skeletons told how they had cowered in the corner as the flames devoured them, and the father had shielded his daughters with his own body for as long as he could. This moved me deeply, and then I heard someone say “They were only Turks. Good riddance to the vermin.”

Later, I learnt about the atrocities committed against Jews during the Nazi period. In the town of my birth, locals burnt the synagogue and then built a church on that spot. In a nearby town, the eager citizens went even further: they locked the Jewish population into the synagogue before they set it on fire. The fire brigade, instead of putting out the flames, fanned and fed them, and made sure none of the Jews could escape. Much later, after the al-Qaeda bombings in London, a wave of burning hatred against Arabs swept through England, and it frightened me. Burning houses, churches, racial hatred, hypocrisy, a scared child witnessing events she cannot understand… these elements clicked together into a disturbing tale of human evil.

The story Only a Fool started with a real incident. As a young woman, I lived in London. One night I walked home from the Tube station when a drunken man attacked me, and I was saved by my wits and vivid imagination. For the story, I added memories of the many places where I had been nervous to walk alone, the kind of alley where shattered windows wink in the sparse light and footsteps echo as loud as your thudding heart.

I enjoy evoking the atmosphere of a place with the senses of sound, touch and smell.

My stories involve little violence. They are horror, but not of the slash-and-gore type with chainsaw massacres and lakes of blood. My brand of horror is of the suspenseful, creepy kind. Where other horror writers shock their readers with graphically mangled corpses, I tantalise mine with with places that ooze creepy atmosphere.

Thirty creepy, atmospheric stories by Rayne Hall.

The horror in these stories is spooky, creepy, unsettling and sometimes disturbing. It is not very violent or gory; however, the stories may not be suitable for young readers without parental guidance. PG 13.

This book is a compilation of volumes 1-5 of the Six Scary Tales books. It includes the acclaimed stories Burning and The Bridge Chamber.

All stories have been previously published in magazines, ezines, collections and anthologies. British English.

Stories in collection include:
The Devil You Know, Greywalker, Prophetess, Each Stone A Life, By Your Own Free Will, The Bridge Chamber, Only A Fool, Four Bony Hands, The Black Boar, Double Rainbows, Druid Stones, Burning, Scruples, Seagulls, Night Train, Through the Tunnel, Black Karma, Take Me To St. Roch’s, Turkish Night, Never Leave Me, The Colour of Dishonour, Beltane, The Painted Staircase, I Dived The Pandora, Terre Vert and Payne’s Grey, They Say, Tuppence Special, Disturbed Sleep, Normal Considering the Weather, Arete.

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – Horror

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author and the book

Connect with Rayne Hall on Twitter

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.