GMTA PUBLISHING

Guest Post with Author of "Child of Mine" Judy M. Walters

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:31:36 -0400

Thank you, Kitty, for offering to host me on your GMTA blog today.

My novel, Child of Mine, is about an infertile midwife, a strong, independent, knows-what-she-wants kind of woman. She has always directed her life, from deciding at a young age that she wanted to become a midwife, to attending the Ivy League college of her choice, to marrying an up and coming lawyer who treats her as an equal life partner and appreciates her strengths. The one area in her life that has always been dicey: dealing with her depressed sister, who makes huge demands on her time and psyche, but whom Katie loves and deeply cares for. Now she faces the biggest challenge of her life - she can’t become pregnant, despite the most aggressive fertility treatments available.

People ask me a lot if I’m like Katie. I wish! I wish I were that strong and independent and had her confidence and intelligence. I would have loved to be a midwife, but I sucked at science in high school and never got passed Biology. I didn’t even attemptChemistry. I also left high school having no idea what I wanted to do, and I did not go to an Ivy League college. I did, however, struggle to get pregnant via infertility treatments, twice, for each of my daughters. This was twenty and seventeen years ago, but the experience has stuck with me, and it is still one of the greatest challenges I’ve ever been through, on par with losing my beloved Mother-in-Law to cancer and dealing with family mental illness.

When you can’t have a baby but really want to, your entire life goes into free fall. You no longer feel secure in your world. You have trouble concentrating. Depression and anxiety are common. Infertility affects every major area of your life: financial, emotional, physical, work, home, friends, family…

When I started writing this book, my main character, Katie, was a television producer for a show much like the Oprah Winfrey Show. With Katie in that job, I was able to show how career is impacted by infertility, but something felt wrong. I didn’t know that much about television production, and Katie’s life crisis wasn’t being fully explored. What if I made her a midwife, I thought? I am fascinated by pregnancy and birth anyway, and know those topics well, and as a midwife, Katie’s whole world would be completely upside down and devastated. What would it feel like to be infertile and delivering other people’s babies all day (and night) long? And what if my main character was an adoptee, as well? She has no biological connection to the world, and she desperately wants one. So that’s how the Katie you will meet in my novel came to be.

I love to hear from readers. My email is judymwalters@gmail.com. Please drop me a note and let me know what you thought of Child of Mine.

Guest Post with Author of "Larp: The Battle for Verona" Justin Calderone

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:39:44 -0400

LARP: The Battle for Verona is the story of four friends thrown into an unbelievable situation. A medieval terrorist army, from Mongolia, invades their tiny island community, and decides to colonize it. The local medieval LARP group (Live Action Role Play. People who do battle reenactments) decide to handle the situation themselves, and proceed to fight off the invaders. The main characters have everything against them; they’re seen as geeky outcasts by their community, they’ve never swung a real weapon in malice, and, oh, yeah, they’ve never had to kill anyone.

Until today.

Their motivation to fight comes from the issues they have within themselves.

All of main characters in LARP: The Battle for Verona have part of me in them. Dennis is a “what if” type of person…what if he had done the “cool” things in high school? How would that affect him as an adult? As a high school student, I never went to a single party, or had a single date. I spent most of those four years, in my room, writing and listening to music. When I was younger, I really questioned if I missed out on a life changing experience by not participating in a reckless high school night. Mark lives in the past. The present, and sometimes the future, scares him. I think part of a writer’s psyche is that we live in the past, and we memorialize events that others find trivial. Freddy is sort of the other side of Dennis, in that Freddy is ok with who he is, and doesn’t put much stock in what others say about him. Freddy is my attitude as I’ve gotten older. I’ve (mostly) accepted who I am, and have (mostly) silenced the Dennis part of my brain. And Jen is working to gain acceptance of her father. In my pre-college years, I was an average to below average student. In college, I became super motivated to prove all of my teachers wrong. The great irony is that I am a high school English teacher.

Sometimes, it takes adversity to introduce you to yourself.

Justin Calderone

Author Biography

A writer with a passion for inspiring teens and young adults, Justin Calderone debuted his first novel LARP: The Battle for Verona in December 2012.

Calderone grew up in Verona, Penn., a suburb just northeast of Pittsburgh. He earned a bachelor’s degree in professional writing from La Roche College and graduated from Gannon University with a master’s degree in education. Calderone is expected to graduate in 2014 with a second master’s degree in educational leadership from Edinboro University.

Calderone, 36, began his journey as a writer nearly 20 years ago after reading Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels. He is the author of the 2004 collection of contemporary poetry Revolutions.

An English teacher at his alma mater, Penn Hills High School, Calderone lives in his hometown of Verona with his wife Emily and 1-year-old son Sam. He enjoys watching baseball, listening to music and has a special place in his heart for Spiderman.

Website: JustinCalderone.com

@JustinCalderone

Website: ShannonGreenland.com

Sometimes even a geek can become a hero.

 Dennis and his friends have been LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) since high school. Now, in his 20s, Dennis is seriously considering giving up LARPing for good. He’s tired of dealing with his overzealous friend Mark; he’s tired of his older brother Brad’s constant put-downs; and he’s tired of the fact that he doesn’t have a girlfriend.  Check that.  Not a girlfriend, but the girlfriend. Alyssa—the one woman he’s been pining over for years.  Dennis and his fellow LARPers have never been considered cool, in their small island community of Verona, located off the coast of Washington State.  But all of that is about to change …  While Dennis and his friends are attending a big LARP tournament on the mainland, a rogue terrorist group of Mongolians in medieval garb, led by an American madman, invade Verona and take its citizens hostage—including their families and friends.  When the LARPers find out what’s happening in their home-town, they do what any dedicated LARPer would do: they put on their armor, strap on their swords, and fight their way home—LARP-style!

Guest Post with Author of "Hiding Gladys" Lee Mims

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:33:47 -0400

Are great writers born, or are they created?

Long, long ago when I was a little girl, my mother would read to me as some of you may know from reading my bio. I’ve always believed it was she who taught me to love books and the escape they can bring. But, maybe my brain cells were just configured in a way that made me receptive to her stories. Maybe another child would have been wiggling and squirming, bored to death at having to listen. Think about it, did Isak Dinesen, the character Meryl Streep played in Out of Africa, always have the ability to weave a tale of love and intrigue that would go on for hours, her only cue being a few lines from a dinner guest?

My desire to be a writer didn’t develop fully until after my children were born. At the time, I was working with my husband on our farm, raising and training Quarter Horses. After all day wrestling with them, I still had to help with homework, cook dinner, and do all the chores associated with having children. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of raising children…and the cats, dogs, gerbils, and various other varmints associated with kids, but there are limits.

Every morning I’d start out with the notion that today would be the day that I’d make some serious progress on my first book, a mystery set in a world I knew very well, the Quarter Horse Industry. All during the day, I’d get ideas about where I wanted the story to go, but, you guessed it, by ten o’clock, after all my work was done, I’d be all done in and ready to crawl between the sheets myself. That’s when I learned to jot down my thoughts during the day. I also kept pencil and paper in my nightstand in case something brilliant came to me in the night. Still do, in fact.

Then one day, a strange thing happened. My babies grew up and went away to school. Suddenly I actually had a few hours during the day when I wasn’t exhausted so I dug out all my scraps of paper and set about turning them into my long deferred novel. It took a couple of years and during that time I also discovered the need for an editor. Over the years I’ve had several. They taught me to write through their endless revisions and suggested readings until finally, after ten years and three or four books, I got a publishing contract.

But back to my question about whether writers are born or created. I guess the answer is both. I think it takes a certain mind set—back to the brain cell theory—to want to tell a story in the first place. And, I hesitate to say, but others have said it before me—Lawrence Block comes to mind, who, by the way, was a teenager when he wrote his first novel in two weeks and sold it immediately—liars make the best writers. So, in my case, combine that mind set with lots of years of stolen time learning the actual mechanics of the craft and you get a writer. Not Isak Dinsin or even Lawrence Block, but I’m willing to keep trying because, you know what? The more you do it, the more fun it is and the better you get at it.

What’s a live rattlesnake doing sunning itself in the back seat of field geologist Cleo Cooper’s Jeep? Nothing good, you can be sure — but the dilemma of how it might have gotten there isn’t as crucial to her as making certain it doesn’t stay. Yet, alarming as such an uninvited passenger might be, more disturbing to the plucky, single-minded Cleo is the need to nail down her deal for mining rights to a rare, vastly valuable North Carolina granite deposit.

The problem is that the property owner, Gladys Walton, has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, while neglecting to sign the final documents.

First, a murder interferes with locating her: is the woman’s body found dumped in a well that of the missing Gladys? Amid the wooded, rocky countryside, suspicious misdeeds multiply and Gladys’s conniving relations all behave extremely badly.

Website: www.LeeMims.com

About the Author

Lee Mims is and always has been a North Carolina farm girl. She played outdoors from dawn to dusk, built forts, drank water from garden hoses and ran with sticks.And for 25 years, she raised and trained Quarter Horses.

She was often sick as a child, and it was while staying home with her mother that Mims learned the beauty of words. Together they read endlessly: short stories, fairy tales and adventure novels.

Because of her love of the great outdoors, she later earned a master’s and bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and worked as a field geologist. And as a popular wildlife artist, Mims owns her self-named studio where she does both portrait and fine art oil paintings. She has two pieces on tour with Paint America and recently sold a painting to Ms. Andy Griffith for his museum.

Books never escaped her, and her geology background inspired Hiding Gladys, the first of the debut author’s Midnight Ink-published Cleo Cooper Mystery Series. Busy writing the next installment, Trusting Viktor, Mims is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.

Alfred, A Timber Wolf's Tale By Randall L. Emery

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:36:40 -0500

Alfred, A Timber Wolf's Tale By Randall L. Emery

Guest Post with Author, Selisse Berry

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:52:14 -0500

I first realized that I am a lesbian when I was studying in seminary to become a Presbyterian minister. I quickly learned that, if I came out and chose to live my life honestly and openly, I would not be allowed to be ordained as a minister. I had to leave a career that I loved simply because of my sexual orientation.

From that point forward, I dedicated my life to creating workplace equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the workplace, with the hope that one day people will no longer have to choose between a career they love and living their lives with authenticity and integrity. My own experience inspired me to found Out & Equal Workplace Advocates sixteen years ago to advance workplace equality for LGBT people. Over the years, Out & Equal has grown into an international nonprofit organization working with multinational corporations, executives, employee resource group leaders, and diversity professionals to create more inclusive workplaces. Through this work, I met many senior executives and leaders who have driven real change in the corporations where they work. They each had touching personal stories of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allies.

I realized that their stories were history in the making, and this inspired me to write Out & Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office. I knew that the stories had to be told, and so I reached out to senior executives from some of the world’s top corporations, inviting them to join me in sharing our stories. I was so honored with the results – that so many powerful people were happy to share their stories - including the CEO of Intuit, who is an important ally to the LGBT community, and openly LGBT senior executives from the Walt Disney Company, the Clorox Company, Campbell Soup, Merck, IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Deloitte, Wells Fargo, and many other top corporations.

Out & Equal at Work is the first time that business leaders, including C-Suite executives from Fortune 500 Companies have come together to share their personal stories of facing discrimination and forwarding LGBT equality in the workplace. In many ways it is a book that reminds us that it really does get better. And, although things have improved, there is still so much to do. In 29 states, anyone can be fired simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, and there are still some countries that punish LGBT people with the death penalty.

I hope that Out & Equal at Work will inspire people, including you, to become involved in Out & Equal’s efforts to expand workplace equality. There are many ways to become involved with Out & Equal: our headline events like the Workplace Summit, the annual LGBT Executive Forum and Momentum Leadership Celebration, local Regional Affiliate events, and training for your organization. We also host free monthly Town Call webinars, maintaining the world’s largest registry of LGBT employee resource groups which connects LGBT employee resource group leaders from around the world. Contact info@outandequal.org with any questions.

Copies of Out & Equal at Work can be purchased online, or via Amazon for electronic versions.

A major transformation is happening in today’s workplace. This groundbreaking anthology chronicles personal narratives from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied executive trailblazers who have conquered adversity and ushered in policies that affirm and support the LGBT community in the workplace. Out & Equal at Work profiles an advocacy organization located at the intersection of the private sector and the broader social movement: Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, and its visionary Founding Executive Director, Selisse Berry.

Praise for Out & Equal at Work

“Out & Equal at Work speaks to the power of cultivating an environment that celebrates diversity, and ensures employees can bring their whole selves to work every day. Not only is this the right thing to do, but I believe it has profound benefits on employee engagement, retention, productivity and, ultimately, business results. Sexual orientation and gender identity are differences that should not matter. The only things that truly matter are the content of one’s character and the unique talent a person brings to the organization.”

– Don Knauss, Clorox CEO

“There are business books that reinforce the business imperative of diversity. This book is not just one of those. It’s a collection of authentic stories from real people — authentic, successful role models — whose stories are both moving and educational. More than that, they’re inspirational, because they demonstrate how LGBT employees can contribute and prosper at the highest levels in the inclusive workplace.”

– Harry van Dorenmalen, Chairman, IBM Europe

“Every American deserves to be treated fairly and equally in and out of the workplace. Out & Equal at Work is both educational and inspirational for employers and employees regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. With moving personal stories, Out & Equal at Work puts a human face on the benefits of diversity in the workplace and the rewards of being open and honest about who we are.”

– Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

“Part of the way we each find the strength to bring our whole lives into the workplace is to learn about the experience of others who have taken that step. We not only can succeed, but we can contribute to the work environment in a more substantive way and lead a more fulfilling life. These stories of leadership and courage serve as a real inspiration.”

– Rick Welts, Chief Operating Officer, Golden State Warriors

“These are the stories that executives around the world should hear, coming from the brave voices of smart, successful executives who are making important contributions in business, in government and in the ways they conduct their lives with dignity and integrity. Even more so, these are the stories that all companies should want to be part of, showcasing how creating inclusive workplaces equates with creating a business culture where all of us can bring our mind and heart to work.”

– Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox Corporate Vice President

“When I started my career at Ford Motor Company, and ultimately served as Ford’s Vice Chairman, what strength and insight Out & Equal at Work would have offered. Each personal narrative here is a reminder how important it is to celebrate diversity and openness in every workplace — and to lead by example.”

– Allan Gilmour, former Vice Chairman, Ford Motor Company and President, Wayne State University

“The aim of the Nation’s best employers is to implement policies that make every workplace as equal, welcoming and purposeful as it can be. Selisse Berry’s new book, Out & Equal at Work, will help managers and employers everywhere understand why these fair-minded values make a real and lasting difference.”

– The Honorable John Berry

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Selisse Berry is Founding Executive Director of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates. Under her leadership, the organization has grown significantly with dramatic increases in attendance at the annual Workplace Summit and the expansion of programs and global initiatives. Selisse is a frequent speaker on workplace equality and has spoken across the United States and abroad including recent presentations in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Hungary, the West Indies, and Mexico. Her most recent awards include the Outstanding Hero Congressional Recognition from Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi; the Parks Award* in Rome, Italy; and the KQED Local Heroes Award** in San Francisco, California. Selisse is the editor of Out & Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office, Out & Equal’s new anthology of personal stories of executive trailblazers who have transformed the workplace for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Selisse’s clear and unwavering vision has been instrumental in creating an international organization whose philosophy reflects the importance of treating all colleagues in the workplace with respect and dignity. Since her first job as a guidance counselor, Selisse has continued her commitment to justice as a teacher and as a leader of several social service organizations prior to founding Out & Equal Workplace Advocates. She has master’s degrees in education and theology from the University of Texas and San Francisco Theological Seminary respectively. Selisse and her wife, Cynthia Martin, were legally married in California in 2008.

*The Parks Award was given by Parks – liberi e uguali, a nonprofit organization advocating for LGBT workplace equality in Italy.

**The KQED Local Heroes Award was given by a public television station.

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates

Founded by Executive Director Selisse Berry, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is the world’s largest nonprofit organization specifically dedicated to creating safe and equitable workplaces for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The organization has grown significantly with dramatic increases in attendance for the annual Workplace Summit, the expansion of regional affiliates across the United States, and many global initiatives. Out & Equal has created numerous programs to advance its mission, including the first Global Summit in London, the annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit, the LGBT Executive Forum and Leadership Celebration, bimonthly Town Call seminars and the world’s largest registry of LGBT Employee Resource Groups.

Out & Equal is committed to creating safe and equitable workplace environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees. We believe that people should be judged by the work they do, not by their sexual orientation or gender identity. Every day, we work to protect and empower employees to be productive and successful—so they can support themselves, their families, and contribute to achieving a world free of discrimination for everyone.

AUTHOR LINKS AND CONTACT INFO

Website: OutandEqual.org

@OutandEqualOut & Equal Workplace Advocates

"Manner-Man" by Sherrill S. Cannon (Available Now)

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:09:45 -0500

PRESS RELEASE WITH VIDEO TRAILER

Superhero Shows Kids

How to Stand Up to Bullies!

What a man! It’s Manner-Man! This dynamic superhero helps children learn manners, how to cope with bullies, and how to look within yourself to find your own inner superhero.

Manner-Man incorporates messages and characters found within some of author Sherrill S. Cannon’s earlier books. This is the fifth rhyming children’s book by this award-winning author, whose bestselling books include Gimme-Jimmy, The Magic Word, Santa’s Birthday Gift, and Peter and the Whimper-Whineys.

“I am strong, and my flash is bright, and I will defend you and make things all right.” These are the magic words of Manner-Man, who arrives shouting, “To the Rescue,” as he shows kids the manners they need to be considerate of others. Meet the children who form the Manner-Man team and find out how you can join!

Watch the video on the attached pdf or at:http://youtu.be/vzZcFyB0jNo

MANNER-MAN (ISBN: 978-1-62212-478-7) is now available for $12.50 and can be ordered through the publisher’s website: http://sbpra.com/SherrillSCannon or at www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com.

The book is also part of a fundraiser for Juvenile Myositis (http://sbpra.com/cureJM), where 50 percent of the cost of the book goes to the CureJM Foundation to help find a cure. Seven-year-old Addie, of Addie’s Angels, has been battling this incurable disease since she was three, and is featured in the SBPRA YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anIGaQXkhg0. She is one of the characters in Manner-Man and is the little girl in the turquoise blue dress on the cover!

WHOLESALERS: This book is distributed by Ingram Books and other wholesale distributors. Contact your representative with the ISBN for purchase. Wholesale purchase for retailers, universities, libraries, and other organizations is also available through the publisher; please email bookorder@aeg-online-store.com.

About the Author: Former teacher Sherrill S. Cannon has won a dozen awards for her four previous children’s rhyming books, and is also the author of six published and internationally performed plays for elementary school children. She has been called “a modern day Dr. Seuss” by GMTA Review.

Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co, LLC
www.AuthorMarketingIdeas.com www.PublishOnDemandGlobal.com www.StrategicBookClub.com

ABOUT: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co, LLC provides book publishing, book marketing, and e-Book services to over 10,000 writers around the world, employing 150 people who live throughout the US and work virtually through telecommunication. Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co, LLC is experiencing over 30% growth per year, having published approximately 3000 authors with almost 100 new releases per month. Our books are available through Ingram, the largest book distributor in the world, as well as in bookstores, through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all online channels. Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co, LLC attends and exhibits at the major book expositions in London, New York, China, and Germany each year.

To follow us on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/2cwerv7

To follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/SBPRA

To follow us on Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3690863

Guest Post with Author, Jade Kerrion

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:09:50 -0500

TITLE: Deleted Scene from “Perfection Unleashed”

I love the extra features that accompany movie DVDs, like the director’s commentary, movie bloopers, and deleted scenes. My debut novel, Perfection Unleashed, which won multiple awards, is frequently compared to an action movie, anime, or graphic novel, and today, I thought I’d give you a peek into one of its deleted scenes.

But first, what was the scene in question, and why did I delete it?

The deleted scene was the prologue, and it set the context for the entire Double Helix series. The scene helped transport readers from “today” into the “not-so-distant future,” and described key players in a world transformed by the Genetic Revolution, including mutants with psychic powers. It also introduced Galahad, the perfect human being, and foreshadowed the existence of the abominations, inhuman by-products of the path to perfection.

Clearly it was an important scene, but why did I delete it?

The prologue didn’t do much more than the first chapter did. By the first chapter, readers are introduced to Galahad, and hear the banshee-like wails of the abominations. By the first chapter, we know that mutants with psychic powers populate our world, even though we have to wait until chapter three to meet Danyael, the alpha empath, Galahad’s physical template, and the protagonist of Perfection Unleashed.

It was a hard decision. The prologue was the scene that launched the movie in my mind, which eventually became the Double Helix series. I was, perhaps not irrationally, deeply attached to the scene. Still, in the final count, the prologue slowed down my attempt to plunge my readers straight into the action. I took a deep breath and hit delete.

Figuratively speaking, of course. The prologue never made it into Perfection Unleashed, but I did save it as a deleted scene, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share it with you today. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

PERFECTION UNLEASHED—PROLOGUE

The large octagon-shaped building that housed Pioneer Laboratories seemed especially desolate on that Christmas Eve when the child was born. It brooded as it kept watch over the manicured lawns all around, unimpressed by the gently falling snow. The lights that usually spilled from its many windows had been extinguished, save for one glowing softly from the highest floor.

Shepherds did not keep watch over the child that night, but scientists did. Two gray haired men whose seeming age was belied by the youthful vigor in their lithe frames waited in the dimly lit birthing chamber, speaking in lowered tones about nothing in particular. It would have been bad luck to speak about the only thing on their minds—the child—even though they knew, logically, that that no amount of conversation could change the outcome of that night. Still, they could not bring themselves to anticipate success or even discuss outcomes, not after having failed so many times before.

No angels heralded the birth of this child. It was the soft beep of the incubator as the timer ticked down to zero. Conversation stilled as the scientists moved quickly to the machine. They exchanged glances but said nothing as one scientist held his hand over the incubator’s controls. The moment of truth was at hand; the successful birth of this child would redefine the boundaries of genetic manipulation.

The scientist inhaled deeply before pressing down on the switch that would open the incubator and release the infant from the now-perfected artificial birthing process. Both scientists held their breaths as the translucent cover of the incubator swung silently to the side to reveal its precious contents.

The rules of life were broken. The science of life was rewritten in that single magical moment when the child was delivered into the world.

The perfectly formed, healthy male infant was the most beautiful thing the scientists had ever seen. With trembling hands and near reverence, they lifted the child from the chamber and wiped the birthing fluids from its soft skin before wrapping it in warm clothes. Warm and content, the child transitioned from incubator to world without the slightest fuss, making a soft gurgling sound—a happy sound—as it snuggled into the scientist’s arms.

The other scientist gingerly touched the child’s tiny, perfect hands and then smiled as the delicate, little fingers closed tightly around his. He looked up at the other man, almost afraid to hope even though he longed to believe. “Do you think…?”

“We would need to run tests over the course of the child’s life, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s done.”

Yes, it was finally done. Genetic manipulation had always been part art, part science, and completely magical. What began with the unraveling of the double helix and the cracking of the code of life in the Human Genome Project had finally led to mastery over life itself. The human genome had been mapped, scrutinized, and analyzed. Gene therapy, genetically modified food products, and cloned pets were parts of everyday life. Cloned human beings, once deemed impossible and outrageous, were steadily becoming the norm.

The journey was also littered with failures. Mutants tarnished the purity of the human race, typically created inadvertently as a result of genetic selection taken to an extreme. And in the past few years, increasingly dangerous psychic-level mutations threatened to tip the balance of power entirely.

But there was still that last step—the creation of a human being from a swirling mixture of nucleotides, building the double helix of life a base pair at a time, one gene at a time, to create the perfect human being. For the two scientists, it had been a lonely and difficult road, littered with failures, but the child born on a cold and quiet night made it worthwhile. They forgot the nagging despair they had felt during those long nights of painstakingly careful genetic coding, forgot the helpless anger they’d felt at the mocking derision of their colleagues. They held success now—sweet success—in their hands.

“What shall we name the Gene Child?” one scientist asked as they left the birthing chamber together. Their footsteps echoed hollowly down the empty corridors as they walked towards the nursery, carefully carrying the product of thousands of hours of work. “Gene Child” was an interesting and potentially acceptable scientific classification for this unique creature that had neither father nor mother, but it would need another name. “How about Galahad, after the last, the peerless knight of the mythical Round Table?”

The name seemed appropriate for the perfect little being. The scientist carrying the child set it down in the crib that had been prepared, a smile curving his lips as he gazed upon the sleepy infant. “Welcome, Galahad,” he said. The birth of the Gene Child was their ultimate gift to the world on this quiet Christmas Eve.

But another voice was heard that night. Deep within the bowels of the building, a low, inhuman moan, aching with pain and anger, shuddered its way from behind the thick walls of its prison to break the calm silence of that perfect starless night as something far too grotesque to be human welcomed Galahad—its brother—into the world.

Author Bio:

Jade Kerrion unites cutting-edge science and bioethics with fast-paced action in her award-winning Double Helix series. Drawing rave reviews for its originality and vision, and described as “a breakout piece of science fiction,” Perfection Unleashed, and its sequels, Perfect Betrayal and Perfect Weapon, are available in print and e-book through Amazon and other major retailers.

About The Double Helix series:

His genetic code sourced from the best that humanity offers, Galahad embodies the pinnacle of perfection. When Zara Itani, a mercenary whose abrasive arrogance exceeds her beauty, frees him from his laboratory prison, she offers him the chance to claim everything that had ever been denied him, beginning with his humanity.

Perfection cannot be unleashed without repercussions, and Galahad’s freedom shatters Danyael Sabre’s life.

An alpha empath, Danyael is rare and coveted, even among the alpha mutants who dominate the Genetic Revolution. He wields the power to heal or kill with a touch, but craves only privacy and solitude—both impossible dreams for the man who was used as Galahad’s physical template.

Galahad and Danyael, two men, one face. One man seeks to embrace destiny, and the other to escape it.

The award-winning Double Helix series, consisting of Perfection Unleashed, Perfect Betrayal, and Perfect Weapon, will challenge your notions of perfection and humanity, and lead you in a celebration of courage and compassion. Science fiction, urban fantasy, and action-adventure readers will enjoy this thrilling roller-coaster ride as it twists and turns through a world transformed by the Genetic Revolution.

Social media and buy links:

Connect with Jade Kerrion: Blog / Facebook / Twitter

Perfection Unleashed: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

Perfect Betrayal: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

Perfect Weapon: Amazon / Amazon UK / Smashwords

~*~*~

BACKUP LINKS (if, for some reason, the links above do not transfer through a simple cut and paste)

Social Media Links

Blog: http://www.jadekerrion.com

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JadeKerrion

Perfection Unleashed

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008E98YFM

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008E98YFM

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/175081

Perfect Betrayal

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009YLG59Q

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009YLG59Q/

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249761

Perfect Weapon

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009YMFSE8

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009YMFSE8

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249762

Guest Post with Author, Andy Gavin "Untimed"

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:00:46 -0500

How you came up with the idea for the book and how you created your characters.

Typically, Untimed began from a fusion of ideas. Lingering in my mind for over twenty years was a time travel story about people from the future who fell “downtime” to relive exciting moments in history (until things go wrong). I worked out a time travel system but had no plot or characters. Separately, in 2010, as a break from editing The Darkening Dream, I experimented with new voice techniques, especially first person present. I also read various “competition.” One of these was The Lightning Thief (the first Percy Jackson novel), which has an amazing series concept (if a slightly limp execution). I love mythology and history, and liked the notion of something with a rich body of material to mine. I wanted an open ended high concept that drew on my strengths, which brought me back to time travel.

Some of the mechanics from my earlier concept merged well with a younger protagonist, voiced in a visceral first person present style. I started thinking about it, and his voice popped into my head. I pounded out a chapter not too dissimilar from the first chapter of the final novel. Then the most awesome villain teleported into the situation. I can’t remember how or why, but it happened quickly and spontaneously. Tick-Tocks were born (or forged).

The Tick-Tocks are supposed to be mysterious, and I really wanted to reveal their secrets layer by layer. It was even important that by the end of the book, while you understand a lot more about them, you don’t really know exactly where they come from or what their up to. A great nemesis needs this. Think Darth Vader or Professor Moriarty. Their secrets aren’t all on the table to begin with. Additionally, one of my favorite emotions to play with is “creep.” My first novel, The Darkening Dream, is all about creepiness, and I think it’s much more effective and scary than plain horror. So the Tocks are supposed to be creepy. Not exactly horrific, but just mysterious and creepy. That’s one of the reasons they don’t talk. Creepy.

Charlie’s character derived automatically from his voice, which I tried to make authentically 15. And while he’s sweet, and fundamentally optimistic and good natured, realism demanded a bit of an edge. Teen boys think about shit and sex. Sorry, but it’s true. I rub up on issues that make some squirm, even if I deal with the lightly: teen pregnancy, drinking, slavery, etc. But to sweep these under the carpet wouldn’t do justice to the 18^th century – or our own.

As to Yvaine. Well, she’s based in part on the kind of girl I wanted to meet when I was a teenager. This seems odd, considering how messed up she is, but like Charlie, I didn’t have much luck with girls in High School. In the 80s, being a “computer guy” and even worse, into video games, was pretty much the kiss of death (see 16 Candles for reference). Yvaine is smart, capable, and in charge, but she’s also damaged and emotionally needy. I thought the combination worked.

Lastly, I’ll talk about Donnie. I’ve noticed that the most effective jerks tend to have some real charisma. Because of Yvaine, Charlie never really likes Donnie, but he maybe could have briefly. Donnie holds his little band together throw a mixture of intimidation, generosity, camaraderie and loyalty. He may be mostly out for himself, but he really sees himself as the protector and leader of his gang, and he acts this way to hold up his own self image. Even in the end, his loyalty to Stump is his own undoing, which is kinda sad – but that’s life. Real villains are heroes in their own stories.

CONNECT WITH ANDY HERE:

Andy Gavin’s Web Site:
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/

Andy Gavin’s Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/andygavin

Andy Gavin’sTwitter:
https://twitter.com/asgavin

Andy Gavin’sBlog:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/allthingsandygavin

Andy Gavin’s Pinterest:
http://pinterest.com/andrewgavin/

Andy Gavin’s Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Gavin

Andy Gavin’s Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5406978.Andy_Gavin

UntimedGoodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16277039-untimed

Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-Books-Blog-Tours/242431245775186

Untimedblog tour site:
http://untimed.blogspot.com/

UntimedBook Summary:

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, even his own mother can’t remember his name. And girls? The invisible man gets more dates.

As if that weren’t enough, when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously.

Still, this isn’t all bad. In fact, there’s this girl, another time traveler, who not only remembers his name, but might even like him! Unfortunately, Yvaine carries more than her share of baggage: like a baby boy and at least two ex-boyfriends! One’s famous, the other’s murderous, and Charlie doesn’t know who is the bigger problem.

When one kills the other — and the other is nineteen year-old Ben Franklin — things get really crazy. Can their relationship survive? Can the future? Charlie and Yvaine are time travelers, they can fix this — theoretically — but the rules are complicated and the stakes are history as we know it. And there’s one more wrinkle: he can only travel into the past, and she can only travel into the future!

Link to excerpts fromUntimed:
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/untimed/sample/

Andy Gavin’sBio:

Andy Gavin is a serial creative, polymath, novelist, entrepreneur, computer programmer, author, foodie, and video game creator. He co-founded video game developer Naughty Dog and co-created Crash Bandicoot andJak & Daxter. He started numerous companies, has been lead programmer on video games that have sold more than forty million copies, and has written two novels.

His first book, The Darkening Dream, has been well-received by fans and critics alike. Publisher’s Weeklycalled it “gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying.” Untimed is an even more ambitious follow-up. It is a lavish production with a cover by acclaimed fantasy artist Cliff Nielsen and twenty-one full page interior illustrations by Dave Phillips.

Prices/Formats: $5.99 ebook, $14.99 paperback, $24.00 hardcover
Publisher: Mascherato Publishing
ISBN: 9781937945053 ebook, 9781937945046 paperback, 9781937945039 hardcover
Pages: 325
Release: December 19, 2012

Amazon paperback buy link ($14.99):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937945049?tag=tributebooks-20

Kindle buy link ($5.99):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AQN4OZS?tag=tributebooks-20

Guest Post with Author, George S. Stranahan

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 22:25:42 -0500

My junior year at boarding school included German, Greek history, and for English we read Milton’s Paradise Lost and had to write a 500 word essay every weekday. Like everybody I wrote it longhand in pencil on lined paper. Mr. Gurney marked them up and returned within a couple of days, long after I remembered or cared for what I had written.

The next thing I wrote was my Ph.D. thesis on neutron proton capture at age 29. I wrote on Smith Corona, very slowly and deliberately. I had counted the number of pages of the shortest thesis currently in the physics library, and was determined to present one page less. That was not that easy, for there were many mathematical equations that each required a separating sentence before the next.

I didn’t write again until age 40, the year I spent teaching in the Okemos, Michigan high school. I had made a deal with the superintendent that if he smuggled me into the classroom I would write for him what I found there. What I found there were stories, stories of adolescents lost, confused, experimenting, yet sometimes hopeful. These I wrote each night in long hand in a spiral notebook, and in so doing found that I was writing the story of my own adolescence.

Now-a-days I rewrite these stories into a blog file titled You have to have three drinks to play in this sandbox. Three drinks are my own rule, and I follow it. A number of these will appear in my next book Phlogs Too, a sequel to Phlogs: Journey to the Heart of the Human Predicament that won the Colorado Books award in 2010. My friend, Hunter Thompson, was one of many whiskey writers. I wondered if I was one too, and there’s only one way to find out. My own assessment? Sometimes, but stay away from poetry.

A Predicament of Innocents is, like the Phlogs books, a deliberate mixture of photographs and words. They complement each other, or sometimes contradict each other. In either event there’s a tension between the pictures and the words. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there’s an ambiguity, they’re not at all equal, and I think put together they present a challenge to the reader, Horseman, pass by.

Why write, why photograph? Why read, why look? You show me your thing, I’ll show you mine.

EDUCATOR OF 56 YEARS ADVOCATES LEARNING WITH CHILDREN RATHER THAN TEACHING TO THEM

A Predicament of Innocents features essays and photographs from George S. Stranahan

ASPEN, CO – December 2012 – “When a parent asks, ‘What did you do in school today?’ and the kid answers, ‘Nothing,’ I worry that this is indeed an accurate and complete account all too often,” writes 56-year progressive educator George S. Stranahan in his new book A Predicament of Innocents: Might the schools help?(People’s Press, Feb. 19, 2013).

In his decades of teaching at the army, university, primary, high and charter school levels, Stranahan’s primary concern has been the role of education in building and shaping today’s society. He believes and provides evidence-based arguments in his book that education is something that should be done with children, not to them.

“A teacher as instructor is in charge of everything – he does it to the kids. A teacher as community organizer makes a democratic classroom where everybody influenced by a decision has the opportunity to participate in the decision,” Stranahan explains. “Doing learning with them means they are indeed engaged in their own education, not just passively sitting there having it done to them.”

A Predicament of Innocents is a provocative collection of essays and photographs of local schoolchildren exploring the art of teaching, the minds of children, and how the current educational infrastructure stifles the growth of both. The book examines educational practices, debates and theory, and through it, Stranahan ultimately strives to force dialogue on the national level about what “school” really means.

“The public education, now attached to the military industrial complex, has totally lost its mission and will do great damage to society,” the author said. “I hope this book scares readers. I hope they see it as a call to action. If WE don’t wake up and pay attention to what’s going on in schools, nobody else will.”

Innocents is a follow up to Stranahan’s 2009 Phlogs: Journey to the Heart of the Human Predicament,which won the Colorado Book Award’s Best Pictorial Book and Indie Next Generation’s Grand Prize for Coffee Table / Photography Book. The author’s photography has been exhibited in museums across the country, including the Toledo Museum of Art, New York Metropolitan Art Museum and Southport Summer Festival in Boston.

Stranahan’s six children fired up his passion for nurturing the problem-solving abilities and creativity in every single child. He is a founder of Michigan Montessori Internationale, the Aspen Community School, the Early Childhood Center the Carbondale Community School, and the Roaring Fork Teacher Education Project in partnership with the Graduate School of Education at Colorado University Boulder. Stranahan served as Executive Director of the Aspen Educational Research Foundation (now COMPASS) and sat on the boards of many community foundations and nonprofit organizations. The passionate educator has been featured in Newsweek, Engineering and Science, Education Week and several other education journals and magazines.

PeoplesPress.org

Education: do we do it to children or with them? When you look at the children’s faces in the portraits of this book, you will see their eyes pleading for the with answer. The essays and vignettes also present clear, passionate and evidence-based arguments for the with approach.

This collection of essays and photographs by a long-time progressive educator and photographer explores the art of teaching, the minds of children, and how the educational infrastructure stifles the growth of both. The portraits of schoolchildren taken over six decades invite pause and reflection — what are they asking for?

Innocents examines educational practices, debates and theory, and advocates learning with children rather than teaching to them. This is a passionate book about the intersection of education and the love of learning.

George S. Stranahan is a lifelong educator. In 56 years of teaching he has left his mark in army, university, primary, high and charter schools.

He is a founder of Michigan Montessori Internationale, the Aspen Community School, the Early Childhood Center, the Carbondale Community School, and the Roaring Fork Teacher Education Project in partnership with the Graduate School of Education at Colorado University Boulder.

Stranahan served as Executive Director of the Aspen Educational Research Foundation (now COMPASS), and sat on the boards of the Aspen Institute and Colorado Mountain College, among many other community foundations and nonprofit organizations.

Stranahan is also a lifelong student. He received his B.S in Physics from the California Institute of Technology, and after two years in the Army, his M.S. and Ph.D in physics from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He eventually completed a Postdoctoral fellowship with Purdue University and has even learned the art of ranching from working the irrigation and fields on his Colorado ranch.

He has been featured in Education Week, Engineering and Science, Newsweek and several other education journals and magazines. His first book, Phlogs: Journey to the Heart of the Human Predicament,released in 2009 and won the Colorado Book Award’s Best Pictorial Book and The Indie Next Generation’s Grand Prize for Coffee Table / Photography Book. The author’s next essay and photography collection, A Predicament of Innocents, releases in February 2013 and features local schoolchildren spanning 30 years.

Stranahan’s photography has been exhibited in museums across the country, including the Toledo Museum of Art, New York Metropolitan Art Museum and Southport Summer Festival in Boston.

The passionate educator has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the 2012 Jackie Morales Distinguished Award for Community Service; 1997 Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award; 2011 Molly Campbell Service Award; 2005 Kentucky Colonel commission; and 2002 Aspen Hall of Fame induction. The Mayor of the City of Denver proclaimed “George Stranahan Day” on November 2, 1996. But his primary concern has been the role of education in building and shaping today’s society. His six children fired his passion for nurturing the problem-solving abilities and creativity in every single child.

Spotlight Post for "Kissing Kendall" by Jennifer Shirk

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:31:56 -0500

About Jennifer Shirk: Jennifer Shirk has a bachelor degree in pharmacy—which has in NO WAY at all helped her with her writing career. But she likes to point it out, since it shows romantic-at-hearts come in all shapes, sizes, and mind-numbing educations.

She writes sweet (and sometimes even funny) romances for Samhain Publishing, Avalon Books/Montlake Romance and now Entangled Publishing. She won third place in the RWA 2006 NYC’s Kathryn Hayes Love and Laughter Contest with her first book, The Role of a Lifetime.

Lately she’s been on a serious exercise kick. But don’t hold that against her.

Feel free to follow her on Twitter or become a friend on Facebook.

Social Media Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JenniferShirk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorjennifershirk
Website: http://www.jennifershirk.com/
Blog: http://www.jennifershirk.blogspot.com/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3112488.Jennifer_Shirk

About KISSING KENDALL: Kendall Grisbaum is finally taking charge of her life—pouring her heart into opening a new bakery business and even allowing her best friend Georgie to play matchmaker for her. Trouble is, the one guy she secretly wants is Georgie’s older brother, Brad, who is decidedly off limits.

Brad can’t seem to get his little sister’s best friend out of his mind. He and Kendall used to be close friends, too, and as a local policeman, Brad can’t help but play protector, looking out for Kendall. When he offers to help her renovate her new bakery space on the side, their friendship—and their attraction—flares back to life.

Amid the temptation of doughnut muffins and blueberry cobbler, a new temptation draws them both closer. Can they take a chance on love when it means risking their friendship, even when not doing so risks everything?

Buy links:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kissing-Kendall-Maritime-City-ebook/dp/B00AKQTJ6U/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1355013380&sr=1-4&keywords=jennifer+shirk

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kissing-kendall-jennifer-shirk/1113924255?ean=2940015717211

KISSING KENDALL on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16285484-kissing-kendall

Guest Post with Author, William Jack Sibley

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:40:01 -0500

Below, In the voice of my main character, “Lester Briggs.”

1. If you could travel in a Time Machine would you go back to the past or into the future?

Past definitely. Past is prologue.

2. If you could invite any 5 people to dinner who would you choose?

Manu Ginoblli, George Jones, Melissa Etheridge, Oprah and President Obama.

3. If you were stranded on a desert island what 3 things would you want with you?

“Little Ray”, the hat Mr Otis gave me and an empty Wal Mart.

4. What is one book everyone should read?

The Bible

5. If you were a superhero what would your name be?

Captain Lovelorn!

6. If you could have any superpower what would you choose?

The ability to give everyone their perfect soulmate.

7. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

“Tutti-Fruitti” - my Dad’s recipe, slowly hand-cranked on a long summers eve, surrounded by family and friends.

8. If you could meet one person who has died who would you choose?

Job

9. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

A fried peach pie!

10. What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

(The Author speaking - “I’m the only person on the planet who has MY writing voice!”)

11. Night owl, or early bird?

Early bird

12. One food you would never eat?

Beets

13. Please tell us in one sentence only, why we should read the book you’re in.

Cause everyone, EVERYONE wants to love and be loved. Sometimes it’s a lark and sometimes a lifelong pursuit. Frequently messy, maddeningly evasive and reliably frustrating it is everything dastardly and divine at once. What it is never not is NOT worth the price of buying a ticket and taking the ride. We are born passengers. All of us.

SIGHS TOO DEEP FOR WORDS

“Sibley (Any Kind of Luck, 2002) blends skillful storytelling with a sharp insight into human nature in this darkly humorous, intricately plotted tale of a prison inmate who, through years of correspondence, falls in love with a woman he has never met—a woman who turns out not only to be a gay man, but a closeted gay minister.

Lester Briggs is serving a five-year prison term for stealing—of all things—a church. Out of prison early for good behavior, Lester leaves behind his cellmate and lover of convenience, “Little Ray,” and heads for the small town of Rockport, Texas, where he hopes to find Laurel Jeanette Yancey, the love of his life. He finds instead the closeted gay minister who has been writing to him; the minister’s lesbian sister; a kindly, old gas station manager who offers him advice and later a job; and a whole host of other colorful characters (most of whom end up having some bearing on the plot, however minor). Plotlines reach levels of mistaken identity, confusion and startling coincidence not often seen outside of farce or soap opera, but this infuses the events of the story with a genuine humor and insight that keeps the material fresh. Sibley deftly handles his characters’ emotions, from the brief connection between a distant father and son, to the emotional roller coaster Lester Briggs finds himself on—in love with the mind of a man and the body of that man’s lesbian sister, all while struggling to adjust to the realities of life outside of prison. It’s to Sibley’s credit that the emotional reality of the characters never suffers for the sometimes outlandish convolutions of the plot. Readers looking for an entertaining book with surprising touches of depth and emotion are sure to enjoy this fresh, dramatic tale.

Funny, touching, heartbreaking and insightful.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WILLIAM JACK SIBLEY - novelist, playwright, screenwriter, rancher

“What we ran away from so many years ago — small towns, narrow minds, sexual repression, artistic suppression, suffocating families, unfulfilling jobs, busted marriages, lack of opportunity — whatever it was, it does come back to bite you in the butt,” says William Jack Sibley. “What my first novel, Any Kind Of Luck (Kensington Publishing, NYC, August, 2001 — paperback, August 2002, ISBN: 1575667665) ultimately conveys is that one should never be afraid to face those initial anxiety-provoking terrors — going home, losing a relationship, career failure, death, illness, loneliness, apathy — whatever. When difficult circumstances arise it helps to remember that all we’re really being offered is another brilliant opportunity for growth.” (Any Kind Of Luck was nominated for the 2001 Lambda Literary Awards - http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/previous_winners/paw_2000_2003.html, runner-up for the Texas Institute of Letters, “Funniest Book of the Year”, John Bloom Award, and the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award -http://www.forewordmagazine.com/ftw/ftwarchives.aspx?id=20020320.txt„ as well as chapter excerpted in ”Southern Lights: PEN South, Literary Review, Vol II”, Manya DeLeon Booksmith, ISBN: 0966460804; and Genre Magazine, chapter excerpt, August 2001 issue.) Any Kind Of Luck has remained the No. 1 seller in the Amazon.com Las Cruces, NM “Purchase Circle”, outselling bestsellers on the list including works by Joyce Carol Oates, Tony Hillerman and “Harry Potter” Book 5. It was the sole August Book Review selection for the Las Cruces, Thomas Branigan Memorial Library Book Review Luncheon, moderated by Win Jacobs (8/12/03).

“ANY KIND OF LUCK” was recently added to the “Top 100 Gay Novels In American Literature” - http://www.elisarolle.com/ramblings/top_100_gay_novels_2.htm

Once Upon a Castle by Alan S Blood Book Blog Tour

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:31:37 -0500

Once Upon a Castle by Alan S Blood Book Blog Tour

Special Guest: Alan S. Blood

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:46:44 -0500

Special Guest: Alan S. Blood

Guest Post with Author, S.F. Chapman

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:02:00 -0500

About the book: The Ripple in Space-Time

During the warm and sleepy mid-summer’s days of 2010, I had a few gossamer ideas for a new science fiction tale floating around in my head.

I now suspect that these bits and pieces came to me at that particular time mainly as an intriguing distraction to draw my attention away from the more pressing and daunting task of beginning my third novel, the soft science fiction piece entitledXea In The Library.

Xea is the sequel to my first work, the post-apocalyptic mystery called Floyd 5.136.

In one of those wonderful little moments of inspiration that led to much larger things, an irresistible title came to me while taking a long, hot shower: The Ripple In Space-Time.

I’d been considering the intriguing notion of ‘Space-Time,’ Albert Einstein’s speculation that space and time are inextricability linked together as the four dimension, after enjoying Isaac Asimov’s nonfiction work Atom: A Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos, CalTech’s fantastic Mechanical Universe video lectures and Carl Sagan’s seminal series Cosmos.

The title fused together with a first chapter during a burst of nervous energy on the afternoon of August 12th.

For months I had been playing around with the idea of alternating viewpoints in a novel and I decided to write chapter 1 in the dry, formal style of a newspaper obituary. Where the novel would go from there, I had no idea at the time.

With Xea In The Library looming, I set The Ripple aside.

Almost exactly 6 months later, I returned to The Ripple In Space-Time.

Of all of my seven novels to date, I had the most fun writing this sometimes brutal, sometimes poignant and often quite tongue-in-check tale.

The Ripple in Space-Time will be available worldwide in paperback and as a Kindle e-Book on February 1^st 2013.

Synopsis:

Inspector Ryo Trop of the Free City Inquisitor’s Office is called in when the Lunar Ultra Energy Lab is destroyed by a mysterious blast.

Ryo quickly discovers that a complex and sinister scheme is afoot as he searches for clues in the moldering feudal fiefdoms of the Warlords that dominate human affairs in 2445.

As he struggles with the difficult case, the same question keeps popping up: Could the recent wave of space piracy be connected to the disaster?

About the Author:

S F Chapman has done it all. He spent 4 years as a truck driver, 8 years as a scientific glass blower and 20 years as a building contractor. He’s a computer geek, handyman, music lover and relentless tinkerer.

But he is most excited about his latest endeavor. In the next five years, Chapman plans to release 12 books. His first, I’m here to help, launched on July 1, 2012. His next release is the science fiction detective tale The Ripple in Space-Time due out on February 1, 2013.

Born in Berkeley, Chapman is a California boy for life. He grew up on the Pacific coast and has spent the last 54 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He’s the third of twelve children, born to an endearing stay-at-home mother and traveling salesman father during the 1960s Space Race.

While working on his liberal arts degree at Diablo Valley College, Chapman chose mostly classes in the English Department, focusing on science fiction literature, composition and short story writing. He generated nearly a dozen short stories in two years and considers that period to be the beginning of his writing career.

S F’s six works so far are the post-apocalyptic soft science fiction MAC Series consisting of Floyd 5.136, Xea in the Library and Beyond the Habitable Limit; the science fiction detective story entitled The Ripple in Space-Time, the literary novella I’m here to help and the general fiction tale of death and destruction called On the Back of the Beast. He is currently alternating between two entirely different writing projects; the first is a rough and tumble literary novel about homelessness called The Missive In The Margins and the second is a science fiction detective squeal to The Ripple in Space-Time dubbed Torn From On High.

He is the proud papa of a 19-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter.

S F’s huge gray male tabby cat keeps him company while he writes and was the inspiration for Striped Cat Press.

Guest Post with Author, R. Thomas Roe

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:28:40 -0500

How much of the book is real?

Much of the novel is real. The geographic venue of the novel is as accurate as I could make it. The Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers are located as depicted, as are Forkland, Eutaw, Demopolis, the Columbus Road, the Eutaw Road, Saint Johns Church, the hotel at Forkland, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the battle sites and events. The fictional part of the novel deals almost solely with the activities of the characters. Rosehill Plantation is modeled after a plantation at the site described in the novel. Some of the characters in the novel are modeled after real people that lived at the times indicated. The University history of being burned down by the Union Force occurred as described, as did the attempt to thwart it. The presence of diseases such as Yellow-jack or Yellow fever and Cholera took many lives in the years the novel encompasses. Likewise, childbirth was an iffy situation for both mother and child. Blood transfusions had not been rendered relatively safe procedures at that time. The tremendous violence that occurred after the War in Greene County was sourced primarily from the testimony referenced in the preface.

Your own family history helped shape the overall plot and factual elements. What other research did you have to do to flesh out the story?

Just relatively minor points did I have to research primarily for clarity. How transfusions were carried out, I had to research. I researched the history of the University of Alabama to get the facts depicted in the novel. I had done quite a bit of reading on Alabama history before writing this novel, which gave me a basic understanding of what had occurred during the Civil War years.

How much does River’s father’s disappearance affect him as he’s growing into a man?

River was guided primarily by his mother’s Indian background and her teachings of Indian principles and culture throughout his life. His father’s contact with River was limited by reason of his lifestyle as a trapper and by the fact he was no longer around after River was five or so years old.

Are your fictional characters based on anyone in real life?

Yes. James Henry is based on a real person, but the story line is partly fictional. River’s mother and father are based on real life. His mother did move on down to Forkland as depicted and lived in the same location as described in the novel. His father did disappear as described, presumably on a trapping trip. River’s mother was a Cherokee Indian. River was a composite character from many I knew or had read about. River was created for the novel. The African American characters in the novel, Mammy and Will, were recreations of stories I was aware of that dealt with characters my family was in contact with in times past. They were composite characters drawn up from those that lived in former times.

The Alabama Rebel: A Novel of Courage Amid Conflict

Synopsis: This historically based novel is a window into Alabama both before, during and after the Civil War. River Hunter is the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scotch-Irish father who has a unique perspective on a society that undergoes a radical shift forced on it by the War. River’s father is presumed dead after disappearing on a trapping trip into the mountains of the Carolinas, so, River’s mother gathers her children and they move to the cotton belt of Alabama to avoid being shipped west by President Jackson during the Removal time for Native Americans. River rapidly adapts to the new life and has an insatiable appetite for knowledge, reading books at every opportunity. In time he obtains a formal education at recognized academies and universities. Following his heroic service in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and schooling at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools, River becomes an attorney. He is then betrothed to a beautiful young woman who has inherited a substantial plantation upon the death of her husband in the War. Many problems plague the young couple from the forces existing in the South after the War to the prejudicial attitudes of River’s in-laws to the polarized politics between the newly freed Slaves and their former owners. This fascinating novel exams all sides within the context of a very unique segment of American history.

Book Information:

ISBN: 978-1935991816

Fiction, 286 Pages

Signalman Publishing, October 2, 2012

Available on Paperback

GMTA PUBLISHING: Guest Post with Author, Pam Grimes (Winner of the Shirley You Jest! Book Awards)

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 19:36:37 -0500

GMTA PUBLISHING: Guest Post with Author, Pam Grimes (Winner of the Shirley You Jest! Book Awards)

Guest Post with Author, Jenny Milchman "Cover of Snow"

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:26:29 -0500

No Plan B: How Not to Give Up, Never, Not Ever

As I write this, my first novel, Cover of Snow, is coming out in 35 days, 2 hours, 55 minutes, and 45 seconds. But who’s counting? Well, I am, or at least the countdown at the bottom of my website is: http://jennymilchman.com

If I’d known way back when to start counting, the first number wouldn’t have reflected days, but years. It took me over thirteen of them—years, that is—to reach this point, and whenever I share that number I get one of two reactions.

Some people nod in instant agreement. “Took me twelve,” they say. Or nine. Or even—gasp—twenty-two.

While others are shocked. “How did you last thirteen years?” they ask.

At that point, I usually start wondering, too. It’s like recalling childbirth. How did you get through all the anxiety and pain and the feeling that you just couldn’t do it? (In case you had a fast and easy labor, well, there are also writers whose books sold in seventy-two hours and became instant bestsellers. I’m just not one of them).

I thought I would share some thoughts about how I hung in there. Even if you’re not a writer, they may apply to a dream you’re hoping will come true, or a goal you wish to achieve. Hey, maybe they’ll even help in labor.

But before I do, I have to describe a few of the dark moments I faced during those thirteen years.

There was the night that a bestselling author was scheduled to read at a Barnes & Noble two hours from my house. I went to book signings and events to see how authors did these things, in case I ever got the chance myself, and also because writing, like most careers, is only helped by community-building and getting to know people in the field.

Yes, I was looking for help. By this point—ten years in—pretty desperately looking.

It started to snow while I drove, so the two hour drive became three hours. Of course, I got lost. I was late. When I called my husband (who is the best GPS ever—why can’t the Garmin be more like him?), I snapped at him out of sheer stress. I ran into the bookstore, frantic, feeling guilty for snapping, and my heart sank when I saw how crowded the event was. I couldn’t find a seat. I forced myself to stick around, last on line both because of the time I arrived, and because I was hoping to chat for a minute or two, at least introduce myself. But by the time I reached the front of the line, the author looked so exhausted that I just mumbled a hello. I didn’t even say my name.

I went outside, where the snow had thickened, and contemplated my long drive home to make peace with my husband. When I got there, my preschool-age son had thrown up for the first time. And I wasn’t even there.

Can we say low point?

There were a lot of what I call bridesmaid events. Book launches I attended for friends when my own book had been set on simmer for years. When you’re a bridesmaid, you’re happy for your friend. You really genuinely are. There are so many talented writers out there, and it’s a triumph when any one of us gets the recognition she or he deserves. But do you picture yourself in something long and white, too? Of course you do. Do tears rise when you contemplate never wearing it?

I’m here to tell you—of course they do.

Then there was the time I was at work. At a certain point I stopped practicing psychotherapy to take care of my kids and focus on writing. Boy, was this a leap of faith. Mostly on the part of my husband, Mr. Human GPS, who had to tolerate my snapping almost as many times as there are numbers in that countdown. (OK, not that many. I hope). I hadn’t earned a dime from writing. Who was I to take this sort of financial risk?

But this was before I stopped working outside the home. My first two books hadn’t sold, but I had just sent my third novel off to my first agent, and if those numbers make your head spin, it gets worse. I got a message that my agent had called. Great, I thought. Can’t wait to hear her plan for selling the new book.I placed the call between sessions.

“I read your book,” my agent said.

“Imm hmm,” I replied. “Great. Thank you.”

A pause. “And I didn’t like it.”

What did I do then? Well, I got a second agent. After sending eighty queries out and attending a writing retreat. To put some sort of time line to this, my first child was a year old when I was dumped by my agent, and I was about to give birth to my second by the time I got signed again.

How did I survive that moment and all the others? Not just survive, but get past it so that one day I could reach a time when things finally worked? I chalk it up to three things:

Support. There’s the aforementioned husband, and my family. It’s possible to do these things alone, but when you have support it gets a whole lot more possible. I honestly don’t know if I could have done this on my own. I feel like writing is who I am, who I’m meant to be. But boy am I grateful for the other people who thought so, too. If you don’t have that support built into your life, it’s possible to get it in writers groups, from good friends, even clergy. Seek out supportive figures. You deserve them, and you need them.
Fantasy. When things were bleak, I propelled myself into a different scenario. I pictured it just as if it were happening. Sometimes it seemed realer than what was happening. It may be easier to do this if you’re a writer of fiction, but it’s doable for anyone. Jot some notes, draw a (doesn’t matter if it’s bad) picture, or watch a movie about someone who experiences a triumph. See it as if it’s happening to you. Before you go to sleep, tell yourself it is happening. One day, it might be.
Commitment. Just before Jim Carrey got his first big part, he wrote himself a check for ten million dollars. Taylor Swift’s parents moved the whole family to Nashville when she was just a junior high school girl who liked to write songs. And Olympic athletes often follow their coaches to far-flung locations. Me, I stopped working outside the home. Whatever you want to do, find a way to commit to it, either symbolically or with a tangible action. Make a statement—to yourself and the world—that this is what you intend to do. Because when you do, as Will Smith says, “The universe is going to get out of your way.”

The most despairing moment I ever faced along this journey wasn’t any book that didn’t sell, or agent that dumped me, or rejection that came in. It was the times I decided to give up. I couldn’t do this anymore. It was never going to happen. Those are powerful words—game-killing words. Don’t let yourself say them. Don’t sink that low.

You can tolerate a lot of badness so long as you just stay in the game. Unless you quit trying, you haven’t failed—you just haven’t succeeded yet.

Another thing Will Smith says? “There is no reason to have a Plan B because it distracts from Plan A.” In the words of Van Morrison, Born to sing.

Let’s all get out there and make some music.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New Jersey whose short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Adirondack Mysteries II, and in an e-published volume called Lunch Reads. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the chair of International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program. Her first novel, Cover of Snow, is published by Ballantine.

Synopsis of “Cover of Snow”

Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong. When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide.

The first few hours following Nora’s devastating discovery pass for her in a blur of numbness and disbelief. Then, a disturbing awareness slowly settles in: Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life. Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them.

Unraveling her late husband’s final days, Nora searches for answers—but meets with bewildering resistance from Brendan’s best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his brittle mother. It quickly becomes clear to Nora that she is asking questions no one wants to answer. For beneath the soft cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep its presence unknown … and its darkest secrets hidden.

Excerpt…

Chapter One

My husband wasn’t in bed with me when I woke up that January morning. The mid-winter sky was bruised purple and yellow outside the window. I shut bleary eyes against light that glared and pounded.

A second later I realized my toes weren’t burrowing into the hollows behind Brendan’s knees, that when I flung out my arm it didn’t meet his wiry chest, the stony muscles gone slack with sleep. I slid my hand toward the night table, fingers scrabbling around for our alarm clock.

Seven-thirty.

It was late. As if drugged, my brain was making sense of things only after a dull delay. But it was a full hour past the time I always woke up. We always woke up. Brendan slept a cop’s sleep, perpetually ready to take action, and I had been an early riser all my thirty-five years.

Bits of things began to take shape in my mind.

The morning light, which entered so stridently through the window.

Brendan not in bed with me. He must’ve gotten up already. I hadn’t even felt him move.

But Brendan had been working late all week; I hadn’t yet found out why. My husband had good reason to sleep in. And if he had risen on time, why didn’t he wake me?

I felt a squeezing in my belly. Brendan knew I had an eight o’clock meeting with a new client this morning, the owner of a lovely but ramshackle old saltbox in need of repair. My husband took my burgeoning business as seriously as I did. He would never let me miss a meeting.

On the other hand, Brendan would know that if I slept late, then I must be worn out. Maybe getting Phoenix off the ground had taken more out of me than I realized. Brendan probably figured he’d give me a few extra minutes, and the morning just got away from him.

He must be somewhere in his normal routine now, toweling off, or fixing coffee.

Except I didn’t hear the shower dripping. Or smell the telltale, welcome scent of my morning fix.

I pushed myself out of bed with hands that felt stiff and clumsy, as if I were wearing mittens. What was wrong with me? I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror and noticed puddles of lavender under my eyes. It was like I hadn’t slept a wink, instead of an extra hour.

“Brendan? Honey? You up?”

My words shattered the air, and I realized how very still our old farmhouse was this morning.

Padding toward the bathroom, one explanation for the weight in my muscles, not to mention my stuporous sleep, occurred to me.

Brendan and I had made love last night.

It had been one of the good times; me lying back afterward, hollow, cored out, the way I got when Brendan was able to focus completely on me, on us, instead of moving so fiercely that he seemed to be riding off to some distant place in the past. We’d even lain awake for a while in the waning moments before sleep, fingers intertwined, Brendan studying me in a way that I felt more than saw in the dark.

“Honey? Last night tired me out, I guess. Not that it wasn’t worth it.”

I felt a smile tease the corners of my mouth, and pushed open the bathroom door, expecting a billow of steam. When only brittle air emerged, I felt that grabbing in my gut again. Cold tile bit my bare feet.

“Brendan?”

My husband never started the day without a shower, claiming that a night’s sleep made him ache. But there was no residue of moisture filming the mirror, nor fragrance of soap in the air. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my shoulders for warmth, and trotted toward the stairs, calling out his name.

No answer.

Could he have gone to the station early? Left me sleeping while my new client waited at his dilapidated house?

“Honey! Are you home?” My voice sounded uncertain.

No answer. And then I heard the chug of our coffeepot.

Relief flowed through me, thick and creamy as soup. Until that moment, I hadn’t let myself acknowledge that I was scared. I wasn’t an over-reactor by nature usually.

I headed downstairs, feet more sure now, but with that wobbly, airless feeling in the knees that comes as fear departs.

The kitchen was empty when I entered, the coffee a dark, widening stain in the pot. It continued to sputter and spit while I stood there.

There was no mug out, waiting for its cold jolt of milk. No light was turned on against the weak morning sunshine. Nobody had been in the icy kitchen yet today. This machine had been programmed last night, one of the chores accomplished as Brendan and I passed back and forth in the tight space, stepping around each other to clean up after dinner.

That thing in my belly took hold, and this time it didn’t let go. I didn’t call out again.

The sedated feeling was disappearing now, cobwebs tearing apart, and my thinking suddenly cleared. I brushed past the deep farm sink, a tall, painted cabinet.

With icy hands, I opened the door to the back stairs, whose walls I was presently laboring over to make perfect for Brendan. Maybe, just maybe, he’d skipped his shower and called in late to work in order to spend time in his hideaway upstairs.

The servants’ stairs were steep and narrow, with a sudden turn and wells worn deep in each step. I climbed the first two slowly, bypassing a few tools and a can of stripper, then twisted my body around the corner. I took in the faded wallpaper I’d only just reached after months of careful scraping.

Perhaps I didn’t have enough momentum, but I slipped, solidly whacking both knees as I went down. Crouching there, gritting my teeth against the smarting pain, I looked up toward the top of the flight.

Brendan was above me, suspended from a thick hank of rope.

The rope was knotted around a stained-glass globe, which hung in the cracked ceiling plaster.

Brendan’s neck tilted slightly, the angle odd. His handsome face looked like it was bathed entirely in red wine.

Suddenly a small cyclone of powder spilled down, and I heard a splitting sound. There was a rip, a tear, the noise of two worlds cracking apart, and then a deafening series of thuds.

The light fixture completed its plummet, and broke with a tinkling sprinkle of glass. A tangle of ice-cold limbs and body parts slugged me, heavy as lead blankets.

And I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until the warble my voice had been before became no more than a gasping strain for air.

Author Biography

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, is forthcoming from Ballantine in January 2013 and is available for pre-order now. Her short story The Closet was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in November 2012. Another short story, The Very Old Man, has been an Amazon bestseller, and the short work Black Sun on Tupper Lake appears in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II.

Jenny is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program. She is also the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated last year in all 50 states and four foreign countries by 350-and-growing bookstores.

Jenny hosts the Made It Moments forum on her blog, which has featured more than 250 international bestsellers, Edgar winners and independent authors. She co-hosts the literary series Writing Matters, which attracts guests coast-to-coast and has received national media attention, and loves to teach and speak about writing and publishing for New York Writers Workshop, Arts By The People, and WomenWhoWrite.

Contact Jenny!

Website: JennyMilchman.com

TakeYourChildtoaBookstore.org

Twitter @JennyMilchman Facebook Cover of Snow Goodreads Jenny Milchman

Guest Post with Author, R.J. Tolson

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:38:00 -0500

Choosing actors that would have play my characters in my book was fairly difficult as I don’t watch a lot of shows or movies and so I don’t have a large variety of actors to choose from that I know. But I have still found a few, based on personality like Jackie Chan for the elderly but powerful village chief that matched well. For some like Channing Tatum and Arnold Schwarzenegger, their images closely matched how I pictured characters like the two large men Endragio and Adamus.

· Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (True Blood) – Chief Luis (Young)

· Jackie Chan – Karlir

· Arnold schwarzenegger– Adamus

· Danielle Radcliffe - Blane

· Johnny Depp – Chief of Dentro

· Jennifer Lawrence – Autumn

· Ed Sheeran – Jordan of Red

· Justin Bieber - Kolt

· Louis Tomlinson- Leon

· Lewis Watson – Zephyr

· Channing Tatum - Endragio

· Meryl Streep - Delphi

· Jeremy Sumpter - Sora

· Leonardo Dicaprio - The Outsider

· Taylor Lautner - Nicholas

· Russel Brand - Hovan

· Jet-Li - Kuchi

· Tom Felton - Fonos

· Bill Murray - Vice Chief Greer

· Emma Watson - Katjul

R.J. Tolson

Author Biography

R.J. Tolson is a 19-year-old CEO, model, musician and debut novelist.

He founded the website building and computer programming company RJTIO and its divisions, RJTINC, Forever Trust Charity and RL Infinity International. He also serves as president of both the metaphysical philosophy group Sages of Essence and literary organization Living Writers.

The accomplished teen can speak 6 languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Greek, Korean and Japanese. Currently studying in his second year in college, as only a freshman R.J. taught a metaphysics college level online course once a week.

A jack-of-all-trades, R.J. played varsity soccer in high school and received his black belt in nin-jit-su and senjutsu. And with his love of music and experience as a lyricist, composer and musician, R.J. releases in summer 2013 his debut album Human, comprised of house, acoustic, pop and hip/hop.

Writing is perhaps R.J.’s greatest passion. In 2012 he launched the first novel of his young adult Chaos Chronicles series, Zephyr the West Wind. Forthcoming titles from the new author include a Zephyr sequel Hugh The Southern Flame and romance novel Blood Red Love.

R.J. was born to a dentist father and lawyer/professional tennis player mother. He lived throughout Virginia, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. before heading to college on the west coast.

Synopsis

17 years ago, in the island village of Dentro, lived a large and powerful demon. With just a howl, mountains were obliterated. With the help of an outsider, the chief of Dentro destroyed the demon and sealed its dark power into three powerful ancient weapons: a spear, shield, and a sword. After leaving the unwelcoming village, the man who helped destroy the demon took the sword in an effort to keep it away from the village. Months later, a villager bore the son of the outsider, breaking one of the sacred village laws in doing so.

Born into a village filled with people who hated him, Zephyr grew up without knowing why they did. With no friends, and eventually no family with the passing of his mother, Zephyr was forced to survive by himself as an outcast. Zephyr’s only wish being to make his mother proud and force the village to recognize him while surviving in a world filled with demons, paranormal abilities, love, hate and undiscovered lands.

CONNECT

Website: RJTolson.com

Twitter @RJTolson Facebook Author RJ Tolson Goodreads RJ Tolson

Guest Post with Author, Shannon Greenland

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:58:00 -0500

I got my start in romantic suspense novels for adults. It was my critique partner that said, “Shannon, you have a young voice. Ever thought of writing for teens?” My response: “Hm….”

I mulled it over for weeks, jotted down some ideas, and just wasn’t feeling the love. Then one Saturday at 6 in the morning I was sitting in a lawn chair with my friend, Britta, greeting our morning yard sale shoppers. We were drinking coffee, trying to wake up, and I said, “Brit, I think I want to write for teens but I have no idea what I want to write.”

She said, “What’s your favorite show?” I said, “Alias.” She said, “Why don’t you write about teen spies.” And that is the exact second the proverbial light bulb went off. I raced inside and got a tablet and a pencil. We sat for hours, energy clicking, pretty much ignoring the yard sale shoppers, and we roughly plotted out the entire Specialists series.

The whole thing is crazy when I look back on it. What was even crazier is that I wrote Model Spy, the first book in the series, in about two weeks. I couldn’t walk away from the laptop. I was SO excited. And any writer will tell you, when that magical energy hits, you definitely take advantage of it.

AWARD-WINNING YA SPY SERIES COMES TO E-READERS

Penguin Publishing brings back Shannon Greenland’s The Specialists, featuring girl tech genius GiGi, after successful paperback release.

NEW YORK, NY – October 2012 – Shannon Greenland’s award-winning teen spy series The Specialists is brought back to the spotlight after six years in paperback. The 5-book series releases on Kindle, Nook and all e-readers this winter from Penguin Publishing.

Inspired from the hit television show Alias, Greenland’s book series begins with Model Spy (originally debuted in 2007) when 16-year-old Kelly James is caught uncovering top-secret information for her irresistibly cute and nice friend David. Rather than serve a jail sentence, she accepts the option to change her identity and enlist in a government spy agency that trains teen agents. Instantly, Kelly Spree, a.k.a. girl genius GiGi, is born and sent on her first mission as an undercover model with a partner she’s surprised to find as an agent himself.

The Specialists e-book release comes on the heels of Penguin’s publication of Greenland’s stand-alone novel The Summer My Life Began, which was chosen as a Hot YA Read by the She Knows Book Lounge, and devoured by librarians who called it “terrific” (School Library Journal) and “a breeze to get through; light and entertaining” (Texas librarian Jen Bigheart).

Greenland’s impressive nine-book career – she also previously released three romantic suspense novels – has earned her awards from National Booksellers, Romantic Times, National Readers Choice, American Library Association, Daphne du Maurier and many more prestigious literary organizations.

“Brilliant,” Kidz World; “Greenland makes you ride along, and I love it!” Echelon Press; “Hours of good reading,” Scribes World; “The imagery used to twine the characters lives is amazing,” Writers Unlimited; “Sure to surprise,” The Readers Studio; “Witty and very adventurous. Readers will not be disappointed,” Teens Read – are just a snippet of the high-praised comments Greenland has received for her writing.

Readers can grab a copy of any of Greenland’s novels wherever books are sold or downloaded. The Specialists Series is also available in audio book format.

Shannon Greenland

Author Biography

Shannon Greenland dreaded reading and writing as a kid. Ironic, as she’s now a successful award-winning author. Her 5-book series for young adults, The Specialists, as well as her other novels, received such honors as National Booksellers Best, Daphne du Maurier and Romantic Times recognition, National Readers Choice, CAPA nominee, Aspen Gold Readers Choice Award, Holt Medallion and the Popular Paperback award from the American Library Association.

Penguin Publishing launched Greenland’s latest novel The Summer My Life Began in May 2012, and brings her entire spy series to e-form this winter.

When not writing, Shannon’s eager for adventure outside of a book’s pages. Hiking, rafting, climbing, caving, swimming, snorkeling, sailing, surfing, mountain biking, spelunking, canoeing, power lifting, running, camping, para sailing … she’s done it all.

Originally from Tennessee, the world traveler divides her time between Florida and Virginia where she mentors, tutors, and teaches math and gives authors talks at area schools.

CONNECT WITH SHANNON

Website: ShannonGreenland.com Twitter @ShannonGreenlan Facebook Shannon Greenland GoodReads Shannon Greenland

THE SERIES

Guest Post with Fantasy Author, John Dahlgren

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:27:17 -0500

Well, I’ve always wanted to be a fiction/fantasy writer for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Sweden with the Nordic sagas and mythologies, not to mention the beautiful and untouched landscapes and ancient forests, I was inspired quite early to write fantasy fiction. My favorite books as a kid (except Hans Christian Andersen) were The Wind in the Willows and Treasure Island as one perhaps can detect a whiff of in the Sagaria books. Scandinavia has had a very long tradition of fairy-tales. Even today, some people (especially out in the country) still put out food on their doorstep for the gnomes, trolls and fairies as to keep them happy and not coming up with mischief. Thankfully, these superstitions are harmless. As a psychologist, I’ve always found fantasy to be the most illimitable form of writing (that is not to say that there are no rules for fantasy. It has to make sense as I learned at Oxford while studying creative and fiction writing).

For me, the experience of being a writer is a pure joy. It’s a great feeling to shut out the everyday world and being transported to a place where almost everything is possible and meet some of the most fascinating characters one can think of. They’re only limited by your imagination. The trilogy Sagaria is quite heavy influenced by Scandinavian mythologies and is perhaps more “Saga-like”. The Tides of Avarice- A Sagaria Legend is more violent and contains some colorful language. After all, when you’re writing a pirate fantasy book, it’s hard to not have a high-seas adventure without swordfights and you can’t have a swordfight without someone being slit from stem to stern. Greed, treasures, rum and tavern brawls are also useful ingredients.

However, both books are intended for the YA and adult audience. I’ve tried to make my characters as fresh and three-dimensional as possible and avoiding clichés as much as possible. That’s one reason I chose to write the books almost entirely in an anthropomorphic way (but in an adult manner). Although the Sagaria books are for teens, I would like to talk about fantasy for children as I think it’s an important topic. The most important element in fairy tales, to me, is the moral choice presented to the hero. The child learns that choices have consequences, and the child can choose what kind of person she wants to be. Only by “going out into the world” does the hero learn, and acquire happiness. The fairy tale is future-oriented and guides the child, so that instead of escaping into a world of unreality, she is given tools to help her develop character and courage to face what the world presents to her. Often the hero is lost, alone, frightened. These are feelings a child identifies with. Yet, her hero is guided and given help along the way because of his determination and courage. In this way, fairy tales work their own kind of magic, for in reading them, the child feels understood and enriched. I think all fantasy books are inspired in one way or the other from what we experience in real life e.g. newspapers, television, history books, personal experiences and so on (at least for me). So reality creates fantasy but then fantasy creates reality (think Jules Verne’s fiction book written in 1865 about traveling to the moon and in 1969 we all know what happened).

So, why has fantasy fiction struck a chord with modern readers? It is partly because fantasy has deep roots in the stories of the past (folklore, myth etc.). It’s also because fantasy is filled with ideals of courage, loyalty, compassion and honor. These are values which sometimes seem lost in a world racked by war, treachery and opportunism. Fantasy opens up a world where everything may be possible. Mainly though, it’s because fantasy fiction holds out the hope of happiness. Fantasy doesn’t deny the existence of sorrow and pain as so many people seem to think. The possibility of failure is absolutely necessary for the sense of the pure joy one feels when victory is finally and with difficulty won. Like a candle-flame, fantasy cast a shadow at the same time that it illuminates. Yet it’s the illumination that’s important. Fairy-tales or fantasy offers the hope that a happy ending is possible and we all need to believe this. Fantasy denies ultimate despair. It holds out the hope for a better world, and signposts the way.

These have been my guidelines when writing fantasy.

John Dahlgren

Author Biography

Born in Sweden, John Dahlgren grew up close to the vast and untamed landscapes of Scandinavia and was influenced from an early age by the Nordic sagas, fairy tales and mythologies. This enchanting environment triggered his imagination and later inspired him to become a fiction writer.

He went on to study creative and fiction writing at Oxford University and competed in the school’s short story contests each year.

As a trained psychologist and member of the Swiss Psychologist Federation, Dahlgren began writing nonfiction articles for numerous scientific journals and a Swedish magazine. But his passion was fiction, and so he debuted as a novelist in 2011 with the young adult story The Tides of Avarice, a finalist for best Fiction/Fantasy in the International Book Awards and Silver Medal winner in ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards. He released months later a second YA fantasy novel, Sagaria, and is currently engaged in several book projects for both younger readers and adults.

Dahlgren lives now in Neuchâtel, Switzerland with his wife and two children, where he’s worked for the past twelve years as a marketing director at an international pharmaceutical company.

Three worlds are in immediate danger!
And unfortunately one of them is yours.

After the mysterious kidnapping of his eccentric grandfather, Sagandran Sacks sets out on a rescue mission. Although he suspects things might get strange, he doesn’t expect his search to bring him to a parallel world!

After traveling, or rather falling, into the magical realm of Sagaria (a world that looks like it’s straight out of a fantasy novel), young Sagandran finds himself on a breathtaking rollercoaster ride through every fantasy adventure he could possibly wish for (and some he would wish he hadn’t).

Expect the unexpected at every moment. Chivalrous frogs, bungling wizards, blabbering rodents, captivating trolls, annoying gnomes, magical theme parks, chatting furniture, mad jello puddings, madder ghosts and beautiful but merciless evil-doers are just a few of the encounters that await you! Not to mention, the most powerful and ruthless sorcerer ever who desperately wants your world! Oh, and by the way, he wants your soul too…

Breathless suspense, helter-skelter adventure and riotous good humor – all the trademarks of a John Dahlgren story are here in abundance.

BLIMEY!

It’s something all pirates are taught when they’re small, but too many of them forget:
Never get on the wrong side of a librarian.

Especially if the librarian is a lemming!

Sylvester used to read about cannibals, impenetrable jungles, lethal carnivores, mysterious fortune-tellers, voodoo magic, cutthroat pirates, shipwrecks, mutinies, spaceships and much else in his books, but he never thought he’d encounter them for real.

Can Sylvester save his sweetheart, Viola, her frighteningly gritty mom and the other friends he’s acquired along the way? Can he find his long-lost father, rescue his hometown of Foxglove from the murderous rule of its ruthless mayor, and discover true happiness?

Oh, did we mention that Sylvester has mistakenly received the most sought after treasure map ever? This means he also has to escape from the cruelest and craziest pirate captain who ever sailed the seas of Sagaria – the horrifying Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane who will stop at nothing to get his map back! A map which leads to a treasure beyond the wildest dreams of avarice…

It’s kind of a tall order.

Website: JohnDahlgren.com

@dahlgrenbooks The Tides of Avarice

But then Sylvester is a librarian. And a lemming.

CONNECT WITH JOHN DAHLGREN

Website: http://www.johndahlgren.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dahlgrenbooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Tides-of-Avarice/175673775809057