Friday, September 26, 2014

Deep in the Meadows

About DEEP IN THE MEADOWS: Bianca “Bee” Thompson’s brother, Jimmy has been dead for ten months, yet she still feels his presence lingering. And one question haunts her: Was Jimmy’s death an accident? Probing into the events on the night of Jimmy’s death, Bee hears strange voices. The voices lead her to a blood-splattered room, a terrifying threat, and a deadly trap. Is Bee on the trail of her brother’s murderer, or is she entangled in a totally different and much more diabolical plot? Buy Links: Amazon | Leap Books
Review:

A story about a deadly threat, strange goings on in her home and a brother she misses terribly. There are dark elements and an intriguing story line.


What I liked:


The plot and imagery. This story was wonderfully diabolical and held my interest.


What I didn't:


The editing and formatting made this book a difficult read for me and I had to keep putting it down.




About Lisa M. Cronkhite: Midwest Author Lisa M. Cronkhite’s love for writing started when she was a teen, journaling of her torrid romance with her first boyfriend then and now husband of over two decades. She picked up writing again after her first bipolar episode and psychotic break when her doctor recommended it as a coping skill. Once again, with pencil in hand, Lisa dove herself into crafting poetry. Through the years, Lisa has published her poems in print and online magazines such as Poetry Repairs, Grey Sparrow Press, Sacramento Poetry Center, Poetry Salzburg Review and many more. Lisa also has short stories in magazines like Suspense Magazine and YA Fiction magazine Suddenly Lost in Words. Her novels include Dreaming a Reality, Demon Girl and Deep in the Meadows. Disconnected is her fourth novel. Lisa is currently working on her next novel, Purple Haze. Social Media Links: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads



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Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Extension


This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $20 Amazon Gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

After having been cryogenically suspended for eighteen years, Oliver Conroy is brought back to life and given a second opportunity to live out his dreams. Velcron Technologies assures Oliver there’s nothing wrong with the procedure. Excited to find his family and finish his senior year at Sierra Vista High, Oliver ventures out into the new and very different world.

Across town, Colby Patterson, Sierra Vista’s star student, has just experienced his soul torn from his body and returned to its original owner, Oliver, leaving him empty, void of emotion, a psychopath, who is now determined to get his soul back using any means necessary.

When Oliver comes to realize he’s being pursued by Colby he must decide what to do. Can he defend himself against this soulless psychopath? Will he be able to bring himself to murder? And, if so, what will happen to his soul?

It’s a battle for the ultimate prize – ownership of the soul.

Enjoy an excerpt:

Colby woke on the cold floor. Only one of his eyes worked. The other was sealed shut. He pulled himself to sitting, feeling every inch of his body bruised and sore. An ache radiated inside of him like his ribs were broken. Blood dripped from a cut on his lip. He smeared it away with the back of his hand, then looked down at his arms and saw burn marks seared across his flesh. The same red marks covered his legs. Colby struggled to his feet and looked around to orientate himself.

He wasn’t in the room he had been brought to when he first arrived to Velcron. This room was a laboratory—a dimly lit one. The floor was smooth and polished, with a metal table was in the middle of the room. Silver chutes lined one wall, a metal door on the other. He hobbled to the door and tried the handle not really thinking it would work, but determined to escape. He had to get out.

He remembered the last thing Dr. Wang had said. Take him to the vaporization room. Colby turned around again and saw a shower on the far end of the room—the vaporization shower. He had heard about it before. It was used in prisons to execute criminals. A prisoner would be forced into the chamber and ultrasonic lasers would shoot out of the showerhead, vaporizing the victim into oblivion. Now, they were going to try to execute him without any just cause. He hadn’t even had a trial. There was no jury, no witnesses called forth to testify, no judge to hear his version of the truth. All of it was a set-up, to annihilate him and keep him quiet, but why?

About the Author:
Young Adult author L.V. Pires lives near Baltimore, Maryland.

She graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Master’s in Education and the University of Maryland, College Park with a Bachelor's in English. She is currently working towards her MFA in Creative Writing at Spalding University.

Her work includes "The Portrait" (Gypsy Shadow Publishing), "Summer of Winged Creatures" (Saturday's Child Press) and EXTENSION (6/15/14, Crescent Moon Press).

Follow her at lisavpires.com.
Twitter at @lisavpires
www.facebook.com/lisavpires

Buy the book at Amazon.

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Monday, September 1, 2014

Restless in Peaceville

Interview:
1. I write because… not writing is simply not an option. Really. I had about a decade of not writing, and it drove me crazy!
2. If I were your favorite cookie, what would I be? Double choc chip. With extra chocolate please.
3. Plotter or pantster? Pantser. And a non-linear pantser at that.
4. What is your favorite type of character to write about and why? I love tortured souls, mostly so I can torture them some more. It means there's as much, if not more, internal conflict as external, and without conflict you don't have much of a story. Also I feel they deserve their happily ever after that much more.
5. Hamburgers or sushi? Hamburgers. Especially homemade barbecued burgers as done by my husband.
6. Name three things on your desk. Laptop, notebooks and pens. Pretty boring but essential.
7. What books have influenced your writing style? I read a really diverse range of genres growing up, from nautical war novels by Alexander Kent, James Bond books, murder mysteries by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, to animal adventures by James Herriott and Gerald Durrall. But I mostly read heavy SciFi and fantasy, then moved onto Anne McCaffrey in my late teens. Her books probably had the biggest influence on my writing.
8. Tell us a little about your book. Restless In Peaceville is essentially Warm Bodies meets Supernatural in a Louisiana that never was. It's my first zombie story, and my first paranormal, but not with your usual Hollywood-style zombies.
9. What advice do you have for new and aspiring authors? Never give up - never surrender! Write lots. Research lots. Get feedback but bear in mind twenty different people may give you twenty totally different opinions. You need to figure out which to listen to. And write with your heart.
10. What is next on your writerly horizon? I have a paranormal short coming out in October, a superhero romance novella in November, and a fallen angel UF short in December. Plus I have a trilogy of YA zombie shorts in progress.

Top 5 favorite movies:
Warm Bodies, Star Wars IV: The Empire Strikes Back, A Knight's Tale, How To Train Your Dragon, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Blurb:

Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising...from the grave...
Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...
But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead?
And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.

Buy Link
 
Excerpt:
You gotta be kidding me...Waking up inside a small dark space is a pretty bad experience. Although I didn't wake as such because I wasn't asleep. I just became...aware maybe? The darkness kind of faded away until I can see I'm inside this metal box. Well, as far as I can tell. I tap the wall with one knuckle to check, and the hollow metallic knock proves at least part of my assumption right. So, what is this? I died and got kicked out of the afterlife. As far as I know, coffins ain't made of metal. So at a guess, I'm in the mortuary, and since I'm not laid out on a slab I must have been put away in storage. I've never been stuck in a drawer before, but somehow this fits with how I imagine it would be.
I suppose I should count myself lucky they hadn't started carving me up, and that I'd gone for an overdose rather than throwing myself in front of a truck or out of a window. I'm in damn good condition...for a corpse. Still in one piece as far as I can ascertain, and that ain't easy to determine, let me tell you. You know how an arm or a leg goes after you've sat on it for a while, cutting off the circulation? But before the blood flow starts again and you get pins and needles? That numb heaviness? My whole body is like that. Like every part of me is full of lead.
Also, the not breathing is weird. I take a couple of breaths out of habit, for the familiar feeling of air moving in and out of my chest. After that I don't bother. It takes too much concentration and there are other things I need to focus on. Like, what do I do next, for instance?
So, what, I'm just gonna lie here?


About the author:


After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.

Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade. Her works include a YA science fiction novel—Gethyon—published through BURST (Champagne Books), a scifi romance novella—Tethered—published by Breathless Press, three self-published short stories (Terms & Conditions Apply, The Bones of the Sea, and Reboot), and she’s one of eight authors included in a science fiction romance anthology—Tales from the SFR Brigade. She’s also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2nd place).
You can stalk her at her website http://pippajay.co.uk, or at her blog http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk, but without doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.

Blogs –
Adventures in Scifi - http://www.pippajay.blogspot.co.uk
Spacefreighters Lounge - http://www.spacefreighters.blogspot.com