The Forever Girl Book Tour - Guest Post & Giveaway

I first met Rebecca Hamilton on Authonomy, a writer's site run by Harper Collins. We chatted and bantered on the forums and then she gave me some very insightful advice on writing, specifically to do with a character's viewpoint, and how readers will often connect more fully with your protagonist if you write from inside their head and show events unfolding purely from their point of view.
Out of the hundreds of excerpts I read on the site, Becca's is one of the one's which stuck out most vividly and I'm beyond excited to see her novel has finally been published. It's on my kindle to read asap!

GIVEAWAY!!!

Rebecca has kindly agreed to give away an ebook copy of The Forever Girl  to one lucky winner. And if you live in the US, you'll also get this fantastic Forever Girl scented candle - gorgeous! 

All you have to do to win is leave your name in the comments box below.

The Forever Girl

Sophia Parsons’ family has skeletons, but they aren’t in their graves... Solving the mystery of an ancestor’s hanging might silence the clashing whispers in Sophia's mind, but the cult in her town and the supernaturals who secretly reside there are determined to silence her first. As Sophia unknowingly crosses the line into an elemental world full of vampire-like creatures, shapeshifters, and supernatural grim reapers, she meets Charles, a man who becomes both lover and ally. But can she trust him? It’s not until someone nearly kills Sophia that she realizes the only way to unveil the source of her family's curse: abandon her faith or abandon her humanity. If she wants to survive, she must accept her who she is, perform dark magic, and fight to the death for her freedom.

Rebecca Hamilton On Writing

I probably spend about 10% of my writing time actually writing. Writing is the easy part. All you have to do is follow your emotions, put your imagination to paper, and keep asking the ‘what if’ questions you’d never want to answer yourself in real life.

Beyond that, there’s listening to your beta readers, rewriting, trading critique, re-writing, revising, editing, copy-editing, proofreading, deciding that it still needs another re-write, having to revise, edit, copy-edit, and proofread again. And on it goes, with not one of those steps being as easy as they sound to those who don’t know what each of those skills entail.
Of course, we get all the help we can. Sometimes it’s free…other times, it only requires we sign over our life.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Writing isn’t a job. Some can say they will sit at their desk from 9:00 to 5:00 and write—or work on any of the above mentioned writing activities. But writing is a lifestyle. You are working on your writing while you read. You’re working on it while you shower. While you sleep, change a baby’s diaper, do the dishes…you’re writing. When you walk through a forest trail and you notice a large oak tree that looks completely out of place among a forest full of redwoods or when you notice the receptionist at your optometrist’s office is squinting to read her paperwork … you’re writing.

Writing is just one of those things that, in my experience, consumes you. It becomes part of who you are. You live your life, same as before, but everything means more now. Everything is valuable. Writing becomes an outlet for life.

This is where you can find Rebecca:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Don't forget to leave your name in the comments box below if you'd like to win a copy of The Forever Girl and that gorgeous scented candle!
The contest closes at midnight on March 9th

WOOD SPIRIT - A New England Horror Story

Johanna Frappier is one of those authors who makes me envious with her whip smart originality and fantastic storylines. Her latest novel Wood Spirit is, in my opinion, her best book yet. It's spooky, grizzly and hilarious with a cast of characters so real I'm sure she can't have made them up. This book had me pinned to its pages.

We're introduced to ghostbuster, Sebastian Park, and it's not love at first sight - he's a self-proclaimed womaniser and con-artist. But when he's called to a job in the too-good-to-be-true town of Peachtree, the place works some kind of magic on him, making him question who he is and what he's doing with his life.

If you like your comedy black and your horror left-of-centre, then this is most definitely the novel for you. I give Wood Spirit five black blood-dripping stars.

Wood Spirit is available from the following places:

Amazon

Smashwords

Barnes & Noble

Cameron's Law by Mia Darien

Author Mia Darien is up on the blog today, talking about her vampire novel Cameron's Law.

Vampires are people, too. Cameron's Law says so. Vampire and public face Sadie Stanton called Adelheid, CT home and it attracts a lot of attention. It attracts a lot more when vampires start attacking werewolves without provocation.

Can Sadie keep the community from descending into chaos and war before it brings all of to harm? And can she do it when she herself gets thrust into the spotlight?

What will readers like about your book?

Oh my, this is a tricky question, because I believe that every reader brings something different to and from a book. But... I've been told that I'm a fairly humorous writer, by anyone who enjoys a dry and often kind of sarcastic wit!

Otherwise, I try to take a spin on the vampires and werewolves genre that not everyone is doing, though I know I'm not the first to do it. I think people will enjoy seeing these mythical beings in "real life" as themselves. To read about their struggle to fit into a human world when they're not human. I like to think the struggle speaks to the... well... human condition. Or maybe Inhuman condition? Amidst other external trials and tribulations, in the form of mysteries and suspense and drama. All that fun stuff.

What inspired you to write it?

I actually started writing this series when I was a teenager, more than a decade ago. I set it aside for a while as life got so incredibly crazy but never forgot the stories and characters, so I turned back to them with a more mature eye and here we have the stories written, being written and will be written. What inspired it all, though, I'm not sure I could say. It was a long time ago! But the mythical has always fascinated me. I used to just thumb through the "Werewolf Encyclopedia" and be totally engrossed. I have no idea where it came from, but I run with it.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?

Yes, indeed! I always have new works in progress. The second book in the series, “When Forever Died,” is now available and I am writing the third book in the series, as well as several other projects in various states of completion.

Who are your favorite authors?

These days? Let's see. P. N. Elrod has been a long time favorite. I count her Vampire Files series as a big inspiration for the writing I do now. Joe Abercrombie is a top five favorite these days. I’m in a new apoplectic fit waiting for his next book. "The Firebringer Trilogy" by Meredith Ann Pierce is one of my favorite books of all time. I love a lot of classics too, like Austen the Bronte sisters and so on. I like a lot of authors, so it's hard to narrow it down really.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

I still watch "Sailor Moon" from time to time, but only the original, subtitled and uncut Japanese version! ('Cause that totally makes up for this little guilty pleasure.)

Mia Darien has lived in New England all of her life and knows that no matter where she goes from here, New England is always going to live in her. Presently, she still lives in the land of snow and fast talkers, with her husband, her son and her pets. She writes a bit of everything genre fiction (horror, romance, mystery, fantasy and science fiction) and thinks it sounds like an odd joke: a unicorn, a space monster, and a pair of zombie lovers walk into a murder investigation...

Mia's Website: http://www.miadarien.com

Cameron's Law on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/117615

Neverdark by C.S. Einfield

I just had to share with you this gorgeous children's book

by C.S. Einfeld and Aaron Einfeld.

The Faeries of Southnut are in big trouble. Lord Darkwater is up to no good.

The White Castle of Doru is under attack by the greatest army Princess Fiera's ever seen. Lord Darkwater is poised to crush her tiny kingdom unless the king gives Fiera up to become his wife.

Well, fffungus! She's having none of that!

The race is on for Fiera to outwit Lord Darkwater's Dragonfly Riders, Bat Brigades, and even a giant, faerie - eating Spider to save herself and, before it's too late, her whole world.


My Review
This is a classic fairy tale with a contemporary feel and I read it in just a couple of sittings. Aimed at tweens, this beautiful feisty little book kept me (aged 42) totally absorbed and entertained.

Fiera is a fairy whose life and home is under threat and who must embark on a quest to save all she holds dear. The format isn't new, but the telling is fresh and funny. Einfeld's voice jumps off the page with humour, originality and a sense that you are in the company of a born story teller.

I instantly bonded with the characters - all distinctive and wonderful. (Manuel the crow is my favourite). I could picture this as a Pixar movie - there's comedy, pathos and adventure in spades. Added to this, Aaron's illustrations made my heart skip a beat every time one appeared on the page.

If you have children, I urge you to get them a copy. If you don't, then read it yourself. What an absolute treat!

Neverdark on Amazon

Today I’m thrilled to welcome James Hutchings to the blog.

James lives in Melbourne, Australia. He fights crime as Poetic Justice, but his day job is acting. You might know him by his stage-name 'Brad Pitt.' He specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other markets.

His latest collection: The New Death and others, sounds intriguing:

Death gets a roommate...

An electronic Pope faces a difficult theological question...

A wicked vizier makes a terrible bargain...

44 stories and 19 poems. There's a thin line between genius and insanity, and James Hutchings has just crossed it - but from which direction?

Q: What will readers like about your book?
People have said that they like the humour. They've also said that the city of Telelee, which appears in a few stories, is interesting. I also think it stands apart from a lot of fantasy simply because it isn't based on the common template of huge novels about epic quests.
 
Q: What inspired you to write it?
Some ideas just pop into my head, without me knowing where the idea comes from. Other ideas come from experiences in my life. For example a while ago I found three injured birds in the space of a few weeks. I took all of them to the local vet. As I was carrying one of them, I thought that the woman at reception might wonder where I was finding all these injured birds, and that was the inspiration for my story Lost, Feral or Stray. I've written a lot about cats, based on having been a cat owner.
 
Of course other fiction is a big inspiration. In some cases it's obvious. I've done poems directly based on stories by HP Lovecraft and other writers for example. In other cases it's more subtle: for example the city of Teleleli or Telelee is partly based on Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, partly on Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, and partly on Port Blacksand in the Fighting Fantasy series.
 
Q. Do you have any new works in the pipeline?
I'm working on a verse version of A Princess of Mars. This is a science fiction adventure story, now in the public domain, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who's more famous for Tarzan. Disney is also doing a movie of it, called John Carter, but that's not why I chose it. I generally work on several things at the same time, so I'm also in the middle of a few short stories and poems.

I've been encouraged to write a novel set in the fantasy city of Telelee, which is the setting of a few of the stories in The New Death and others. I have a lot of background for this world, because I blog every day and most of it is setting detail. I also have a half-finished novel called All-American Detectives, which is a combination of a detective story and a story about superheroes, which I'll probably come back to in the future.
 
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
I don't know if these are my only favourites, but they're the one that probably influenced The New Death and others the most. JRR Tolkien and Jack Vance for the elaborate dialogue. Robert E Howard for the general atmosphere. Terry Pratchett for the humour. and Lord Dunsany for the use of Fame, Time and so on as characters.
 
Q: Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
I have three nipples (the third one is a lot smaller, and looks like a birthmark, but it isn't).

Lol! Thanks, James for telling us about yourself, your writing and your extra little friend there.

James' ebook collection The New Death and others is now available from Amazon and Smashwords.

James also blogs daily at http://www.apolitical.info/teleleli

Received in the Post

Before Christmas I got an email from a friendly chap called Paul Stapleton. He knows I like my post-apocalyptic fix and asked if I might like to review his graphic novel for my blog. The thing is, I don't really have time to write reviews at the mo, so I said I'd be happy to do a feature.

Paul sent me a copy anyway (nice!) and a couple of days later I received a thin brown packet through the post. It sat on the windowsill for a day or so as I've been too busy to look at it (Man-flu has arrived chez Casa Boland).

Finally, I got around to opening it - The Undisputed King of Nothing, Volume 1 'Goodbye to all That'. Interesting artwork. Flipped it over - intriguing blurb on the back. Yup, looking forward to reading this one asap. I think my husband's got his eye on it too.

Reviews

Paul's Links:
Bedsit Press
Amazon Page
Waterstones Page
Facebook