RAINERS

My Book Blog Tour begins today
I'm guesting with Denise Covey
Alaska: Why It Speaks To Me!

____

But here I have

Sandra Cox, author of Rainers

for the IWSG Anthology

Parallels: Felix Was Here

to answer a few questions!

1. As a writer of fantasy and paranormal romance the IWSG anthology was a perfect fit, did you find the challenge easy?

The easy piece was the word count.  I usually write fifty-five to sixty thousand words per story, so five to six thousand was great. The fact that I have wanted to do an alternate universe story for a long time was the icing on the cake. 

 2. Where did the idea for Rainers come from?

Besides an alternate universe, I also wanted to do something on the order of zombies without the gross factor. They are just a bit too gruesome for me. One of the effects of the Rainer disease on pubescents is an indigo liquid that streams from the infected child’s mouth and nose. When I originally wrote the story, the liquid was a lavender color…until the hubby commented that the color made it sound more like a disease the Easter bunny would have. At that point I switched to Indigo. Grin.

  3. What is it about an altered universe that you appreciate?

Altered is the key. Your universe is what you make it. In my personal altered or parallel universe, I’m a NY Times bestsellerJ  

 4. Please tell us about your other writing projects.

Love, Lattes and Angel, the third in the Mutant Series, comes out in April.  FYI, until April 3^rd, Love, Lattes and Mutants is free and Love, Lattes and Danger is ninety-nine cents. 

Thanks, Yolanda. Great questions.

You're so welcome, Sandra. Rainers is a great story and one I hope you'll continue!

***

Multi-published author Sandra Cox writes YA Fantasy, Romance, and Metaphysical Nonfiction. She lives in sunny North Carolina with her husband, a brood of critters and an occasional foster cat. Although shopping is high on the list, her greatest pleasure is sitting on her screened in porch, listening to the birds, sipping coffee and enjoying a good book. She's a vegetarian and a Muay Thai enthusiast. 

 Facebook     Twitter    Blog    Website

COMING MAY 3, 2016

PRE-ORDER HERE!

Tagline: 

     Save his world or save her own.

Blurb:

Out hiking, Harper Reese tumbles into a parallel universe where a nightmarish virus has infected the sphere’s pubescent children. While there she encounters bad boy Noah Tanner who’s got problems of his own. 

Now, they must work together to track down and destroy the source of the disease before it travels to her world and infects her twelve-year-old sister.

***

Have you ordered your copy?

Do you think it's possible to write zombies minus the gross factor?

FOLDS IN LIFE AND DEATH

Why Cherie Reich Wrote “Folds in Life and Death”
for
Parallels: Felix Was Here
the IWSG Anthology!

Four elements inspired me to write “Folds in Life and Death”: 1. the IWSG anthology contest, 2. the Curse of Tippecanoe, 3. my fascination with origami and paper magic, and 4. the grief I felt by the on-the-air deaths of Allison Parker and Adam Ward.

Despite insecurities, I couldn’t pass up the chance to submit a story. The genre of alternate history spurred me to think up ideas. The perfect one hit me while showering.

In fifth grade, I learned of the Curse of Tippecanoe. According to legend, Tecumseh had his brother place a curse against Harrison and future presidents elected in years with the same number as Harrison (1840). The curse ended when Reagan survived an assassination attempt, but my mind whispered an intriguing question: What if Reagan had died and what would happen to the new president elected in 2000?

From an early age, I’ve been fascinated by the art of paper folding. Paper planes fly. Paper frogs hop, and paper cranes’ wings flap. A simple piece of paper could transform into anything. The idea of paper magic isn’t new, but I enjoyed putting my spin on it in another short story (“Paper Lanterns” from the anthology Mayhem in the Air), and I revisited its world for “Folds in Life and Death.”

On August 26, 2015, WDBJ7 news reporter Allison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were gunned down on live TV. I never had the honor of meeting them, but I have met people who’ve worked for WDBJ7 because it’s one of my hometown TV stations. Some events hit you harder, and this story gave me a chance to work through my emotions.

Without one of the four, the story wouldn’t have been the same. It’s interesting how these things work out.

COMING MAY 3, 2016

PRE-ORDER HERE!

Tagline: In 2001, the Curse of Tippecanoe strikes again.

Story Description: Allyson Moore loves using her gift of paper magics. With precise folds and an incantation, she brings paper creatures to life.

But being a Paperist has its downsides too. She sees spirits, but she can’t revive them. She folds paper lanterns to release souls, but she can’t stomach sending another family member from this earthly realm.

The Curse of Tippecanoe, conceived nearly two centuries before, claims her brother, the President of the United States. She must journey to Washington, DC to be with her orphaned niece and nephew, but nothing—not even magic—can prepare her to see the brother she hasn’t spoken to in two years and release his soul to the sky.

About the Author: Cherie Reich owns more books than she can ever read and thinks up more ideas than she can ever write, but that doesn’t stop this bookworm from trying to complete her goals, even if it means curbing her TV addiction. A library assistant living in Virginia, she writes speculative fiction. Her books include the paranormal horror collection Once upon a Nightmare and the fantasy series The Foxwick Chronicles and The Fate Challenges. She is a member of the Virginia Writers Club, Valley Writers, and Untethered Realms.

Website | Blog | Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter

Congratulations, Cherie!

Love the premise.

Have you ever used an alternate history to write your stories?

Will you now?

IT'S HERE! MURDER & OBSESSION

BOOK THREE IN THE 

DETECTIVE QUAID SERIES!

MURDER & OBSESSION

BUY HERE!

All the locations for this story!

MURDER & OBSESSION

          Light and love seem a fleeting moment in the frozen north of Alaska. Despite his personal experiences with evil, Detective Steven Quaid is determined to hold on to that light amidst the darkness. Accused of murdering his fiancée, Detective Quaid flees incarceration to track down the culprit. 

He might survive the wilderness, and a savage bear attack, but another man's insidious obsession could finally prove more powerful than this dedicated detective.

**

READ CHAPTER I 

HERE!

BUY THE ENTIRE SERIES HERE!

If you'd like a ARC of Murder & Obsession

please let me know!

Murder, Madness & Love
Now
Only
.99 cents





Memories of Murder
Now
Only 
$1.99

Murder & Obsession Blog Tour

March 16, 2016         Denise Covey            Why Alaska

March 21, 2016         MichaelDi Gesu       Need Some Intrigue?  

                               

March 25, 2016         StuartWest              Couples Counseling

March 28, 2016         AlexJ. Cavanaugh   It's All About Snark

      

March 30, 2016         Robyn Campbell      Character Interview

April 1 - 30                A to Z Challenge       Murder& Obsession

I think that's plenty. Don't you!

***

A tweet to share, thank you! 
I would so appreciate it!

Murder & Obsession is now available. Please share my celebration - wine or chocolate - your choice! Salut! http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Obsession-Detective-Quaid-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B01CRYKNH6/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

XANADU

A Guest Post by the indomitable Roland Yeomans

I KNOW WHAT THE NEXT BIG THING IN BOOKS WILL BE.

My book.

Well, it could be.

And who am I?

Roland Yeomans by name:

A reader, a writer, a dreamer.

No, this is not a Book Tour Post – it is an explanation of why Book Tours are not working and what could be the next genre of the moment.

Why aren’t Book Tours working anymore?  Simple.

Over-saturation and boring repetition.

When a Book Tour comes out, the blog lists all begin to look the same – with the same post title and cover image even.

I mean how many cover reveals of THE TEMPTATION OF THE VIRGIN by C. Mai Kahunas can you see over and over again?

Though from the title and name of the author, I bet you wonder what that cover would look like right now!

We writers are like that puppy that keeps going back to his empty dish, drawn by the memory of when it was filled with food.

Book Tours worked once but no more.  Amanda Hocking parlayed her Twitter presence into high sales.  

Now, Twitter is filled with BUY ME!  

        

But no one is listening anymore.

So, like me, you’re asking: “If Book Tours aren’t working, what can I do to draw attention to my new book?”

The answer is simple: give the blog visitor something they want to know.

 

What do all of us want to know?

We know the basics of writing, of editing, of crafting a three act story with action and suspense.

Well, for one thing: We want to know what the next hot genre will be in time to begin writing in it.

I can help there: STEAMPUNK.

You’re rolling your eyes out there.  I see you.  Steampunk has been declared dead almost from the moment of its inception.

Tales of Sorcerer’s Apprentices were thought old hat … until the Sorting Hat and Harry Potter.

Vampire stories were thought long in the tooth … until the sparkles came out.

When we do something old in a new way, we catch the imagination of the readers.

STEAMPUNK

1.    It's the perfect mash-up genre for a culture obsessed with mixing and remixing, fanfic, and memes.

 
Gotham. Sleepy Hollow. Bates Motel. Guardians of the Galaxy. The Jungle Book. The Legend of Tarzan. The Flash. Lately, we really seem to be into creative takes on the old classics.

And Steampunk is like the ultimate mash-up genre –

both futuristic and retro.

Plus, it's got room for anything and everything fandom's little heart can dream up:

Aliens and AIs, zeppelins and zombies, pirates and corsets, goggles and gaslights, mad scientists and scullery maids. It's romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure (and even occasionally a whodunit or a spaghetti western).

2.    It's class conscious.

We live in an era of massive inequality and an exponentially increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Science fiction and fantasy have always provided a means for writers and artists to critique their society indirectly.

(Just look at The Hunger Games.)

Steampunk takes place in another period of massive inequality –

 the Victorian Era and the Gilded Age, a time when lords and ladies dressed in absurd regalia lounged in luxury while a permanent underclass shoveled the coal that fueled their society and starving urchins begged for bread in the streets.

Many Steampunk writers are drawing on this obvious metaphor to our current age and exploring pressing social issues.

3. It's eco-conscious.

At Steampunk's core is an obsession with the environmentalist's battle cry: Reduce/Reuse/Recycle.

Steampunk is based on an appreciation for reclaiming something old and making it new again, for cherishing the long-lasting and well-made over the slick, disposable, and new.

4.    Your individuality is Steampunk's strength.

Steampunk is customizable and flexible, with a "start where you are" mentality that makes it incredibly easy to join in, whatever point you're starting from.

Steampunk is a big friendly movement, and you can jump in anywhere and anytime you like.

5.    Alternate History or Everything Old Is New Again.

Steampunk frequently dabbles in alternate history, placing importance on real life inventors such as Nikola Tesla or Charles Babbage as an explanation for ‘advanced’ technology like air ships and computers that run on clockwork and steam power.
Needless to say, this unique – and seemingly random – combination of ingredients means “the sky is not the limit – it is just the beginning.” 

Which happens to be the cover blurb for my first Steampunk novel, THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD.

Where Abraham Lincoln is the villain, my hero puts President Ulysses S Grant in a sanitarium, and he marries the bad girl (H. Rider Haggard SHE bad) -- interesting things like that.

     It will detail his honeymoon cruise in 1867 aboard the first Air/Steamship, Xanadu, where intrigue, death, betrayal, and murder reign supreme: and that's just in the bedroom.  Outside of there it really gets deadly.

Buy Here!

“Like all beginning relationships, there is much hope, mutual affection and genuine goodwill — the blood-letting will come later.”

(Mark Twain on the new marriage of Samuel McCord and the alien Empress Meilori Shinseen).

Listen to the music which played in my head as I wrote of the Xanadu, fighting its way through a sorcerous storm hurled at it by a mysterious enemy.

Thank you, Roland!

What do you think folks, is the book blog tour dead?

THE SEVENTEEN

Hart Johnson author of The Seventeen

from the  IWSG Anthology

Parallels: Felix Was Here

Is here to discuss the background of her story!

Hi Hart, tell us how you arrived at The Seventeen?

The Seventeen is a count. Pharmagna is a pharmaceutical giant who had a pool of hundreds of (mostly homeless) people on whom they tested various medications. There are seventeen of them left, all riddled with side effects of the drugs they've tested. Cecily Daiker, a researcher for Pharmagna, is responsible for their day-to-day welfare, and for managing them during trials. The title is also a nod to Justin Cronin. In The Passage there is a group of twelve death row inmates who are subject to a drug trial meant to make them immortal (and it works too well—the series is a sort of sci fi version of a vampire story) but he calls them The Twelve (that is the extent of the story similarities, but there you have it).

A sound plan! Here's Hart's blurb:

PARALLELS: FELIX WAS HERE!

THE SEVENTEEN

Cecily Daiker is keeper of the Seventeen--the survivors Pharmagna houses after a decade of drug trials which were unregulated, subjects unprotected and un-cared-for.

Until Cecily.

But now a drug is being proposed to undo the wrongs of past drugs, Within limits, of course. And Cecily is assigned to oversee the trial. What nobody says is that the newly tested drug may have unanticipated consequences. Not just for the Seventeen, but for everybody. And it is Cecily's job to contain the danger.

***

Sounds frightening, especially as I'm testing a new drug. Hmm...

So, tell us Hart, what other genres do you normally write?

Mostly mystery and suspense. Some adult, some YA. Some of the YA has a light dose of paranormal (ghosts or visions—stuff I believe some people really do experience). And the genre I seem to be most in love with of late is near-term dystopia... the world falling apart. I love the extremes that extreme circumstances can bring out in people. What I've published to date is a cozy mystery series under the pen name Alyse Carlson and a flu apocalypse trilogy as me.

Hart Johnson is a social scientist by day, and plots murder and the apocalypse when the sun goes down. She has published a flu conspiracy trilogy (A Shot in the Light) and a cozy mystery series under the name Alyse Carlson. She has hopes to eventually support herself writing or take over the world, whichever works out first.

If you'd like to learn anything more, I can be found at the following places:

Blog: Confessions of a Watery Tart 

Facebook 

Goodreads 

Twitter 

Amazon 

Thanks, Hart!

I think you've hit the nail on the head - 

the world is falling apart!

Just using the upcoming election as an example

of  possible

stories for near-term dystopia stories are countless.

What do you think folks?

Parallels is Coming May 3, 2016

Preorder HERE

THE MIRROR PEOPLE

Meet another winner of the 
IWSG Anthology
Parallels: Felix Was Here

Crystal Collier

***

5 Reasons NOT to Be a Psychopath

I don't normally write about psychopaths. (And why not?--you might ask. They're so fun!) Quite frankly, it's because I don't want to be mistaken as one, but sometimes they write themselves like in THE MIRROR PEOPLE. My research for this story led me to believe:

5. Psychopaths suck. Let's face it. Turns out the business world is full of them--cut-throats who think there's nothing wrong with breaking a man's spine to climb the company ladder. (Proverbially or literally.) It's been tested and proven that they are cut out for managerial work.

Source

4. They have a poor sense of smell. I admit, I don't have the best nose, but a study done in Sydney, Australia shows that psychopaths couldn't identify smells very well due to low activity in the orbital cortices of the brain (the part that controls impulses, long term plans and smell).

3. Empathy--what's that? Not only can't they experience/understand fear, they also find it easy to flip that inner switch and cut off all emotion. You know, everything that makes you human? (I suppose that's why they make such great antagonists.)

2. They populate prisons in abundance. You read that right. I have no desire to be in prison. Do you?

1. The FBI will find you. I admit, if the FBI came looking at my browsing history, I might be in a tight spot. But like Jak in THE MIRROR PEOPLE, once they find you, they won't bury you. No sir. They'll offer you a fat paycheck, stick a gun in your hands, and send you to work. Let's face it, who wants to rely on government benefits? No thank you.

Despite all that, psychopaths are a blast to write, even if you don't want to be one--just like it's fun to read about prehistoric times but living with Dinosaurs would be downright awful. (That's a discussion for another day.)

Coming May 3, 2016

Preorder HERE

PARALLELS: FELIX WAS HERE!

The Mirror People

Every day I look into the eyes of a stone-cold killer. Sometimes he’s straightening his tux bowtie before a fancy shin-dig. Sometimes he’s grinning madly while brandishing a knife. Sometimes he’s spattered in blood.

The point is, it’s my job to look into his eyes, day after day, unable to raise the alarm or warn his victims—like the middle aged woman he’s just finished off—because I inhabit the world on the other side of the mirror.

I’m Jak Ralston’s reverse identity, also known as Jak Ralston. His prisoner.

He wipes his blade clean having already sheared off his trophy, a finger, and turns away from the mirror to the mess of a hotel room. I relax. My shoulders ache from the tension. He is always intense. Always serious. Always angry. But not the explosive kind of angry, the cool, I’m-going-to-rip-your-eyeballs-out-in-your-sleep kind of angry (while he tells you how lovely you look in gray). He’s calculating. Terrifying.

I stand on the other side of the mirror, mimicking his movements like my life depends on it, because it does. Mr. Murder is my twid (twin identity), me in another realm, and if I break from being his reflection while anyone is watching (including him), we’ll both keel over and die. No matter how much I despise him, I’m not ready to die—like Susan, the mirror woman he’s just murdered in my realm. Facing her now, it’s all I can do not to slam my fists into the mirror and scream, but destroying myself won’t bring her back...

Coming May 3, 2016

Preorder HERE

Crystal Collier is an eclectic author who pens clean fantasy/sci-fi, historical, and romance stories with the occasional touch of humor, horror or inspiration. She practices her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, four littles, and “friend” (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese. You can find her on her blog, Facebook, Goodreads, or follow her on Twitter.

Thanks, Crystal!

 Congratulations!

Who is your favorite psychopath in literature or TV?

IWSG - FLU TRUMPS ALL

INSECURE WRITER'S SUPPORT GROUP

Created and hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh

His minions for this hop are

Lauren Hennessy, Lisa Buie-Collard, Lidy, 

Christine Rains, & Mary Aalgaard! 

My insecurity?

Oh gosh, so many, too many to count.
But I'm down with the flu.
Nothing else is really registering.
Thank goodness this isn't catch-able via the blogosphere.
Stay healthy!

*****

To help inspire you:

“Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop.” – Unknown

“We learn something from everyone who passes through our lives.. Some lessons are painful, some are painless.. but, all are priceless.” – Unknown

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. it means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” – Unknown