Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
In the Darkness...
After Anna Bowden witnesses someone—or something—lurking in her backyard, it starts a chain of frightening events that leads to a gruesome discovery.
If you like this story... Love Caster, a paranormal romance short story, will be out soon!
viewBook.at/leahhamrick
If you like this story... Love Caster, a paranormal romance short story, will be out soon!
viewBook.at/leahhamrick
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Oops, there I go again, barging in on someone else’s blog, grasping for an unsuspecting new audience. No one is more demanding than Mrs N in more ways than two and this piece is inspired by one of her more painful questions.
Writers’ Delusions by Geoff Nelder
This is the question Mrs Nelder stabbed me with when she once peeped over my shoulder at my list of story rejections being three times longer than the acceptances.
W”hat on Earth made you think you could be a writer?”
Answer: I didn’t know I was okay at writing until a teacher made me stand in front of the class and stumble through an essay I’d scribbled. A silly tale about a red squirrel scrambling on the gnarled boughs of the village’s oldest oak tree, stealing an acorn from a tree spirit to bury under a pupil’s desk. Imagine my surprise when every kid sneaked a peep under their desk.
Yes, those words held power and I liked it. Through my teens I wrote jokes. Sold some to British comedians and my first was published in a magazine in 1969. At university I became a co-editor of the rag-mag, a dreadful collection of very funny, awful smutty and politically-incorrect gags. We’d gather in the bar and brainstorm until the beer ran out. That was nearly half a century ago and I still see those jokes. Uncredited, no royalties. It was for charities then, still is. During that time I studied geography, mathematics and literature. Struck dumb, me, when the lecturer read out loud William Langland’s Vision of a Fair Field full of Folk. This is a wondrous sample of that early medieval poem:
‘In a somer sesoun, whan softe was the sonne,
I shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,
In abite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
Wente forth in the world wondres to here,
And saw many selles and selcouthe thynges.
Ac on a May mornyng on Malverne hulles
Me biful for to slepe, for werynesse of walkyng;’
I shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,
In abite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
Wente forth in the world wondres to here,
And saw many selles and selcouthe thynges.
Ac on a May mornyng on Malverne hulles
Me biful for to slepe, for werynesse of walkyng;’
I learnt it by heart, while hiking on those actual Malvern Hills, a short bike ride from my house. I took my son on those hills a few years ago and the ‘sonne’ softly warmed our backs. I learnt the energy in words of sensual Show. Engaging the reader via all their five senses in every story. I read the great writers and they all do it. Even those science fiction and thriller books that the literati often overlook. Consider these two words from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: ‘She gave him a perfumed hug.’ You know which two words. Did you experience that hug? You were there, right?
After graduating, twice, I taught high school where writing lies takes over. Not really, but all teachers have to write masses of words. We talk about a target of 2000 words a day on our novels but teachers often achieve that when writing lesson notes, worksheets and above all, end-of-term reports. Most teachers hate that but writerly ones love it. It gives us the opportunity to be creative with an otherwise tedious activity. (assuming the school isn’t using computerized multi-guess reporting). One of my favourites: ‘The dawn of legibility in John’s writing revealed his utter incapacity to spell.’ Such chores honed my writing decades ago.
Not that I’ve stopped learning the craft. I’m with Pablo Casals – the famous cellist on why he continued to practise at 90: ‘Because I think I’m making progress.’
I remain fascinated enough by gnarled oak trees and squirrels to write them into my stories. This 2017 year sees publication of my ‘Girl in a Wandering Wood’ in The Horror Zine. I’d overheard the phrase wandering wood and thought what if a wood actually wandered? So, a botanist is trapped in a copse, animated by a spirit trying to stop her escaping. A squirrel helps her out, kind of. The same squirrel I wrote about in 1957.
A sample flash story. First published in Bobbing Around: (2004)Vol 3 No.6 A newsletter by psychiatrist Dr Bob Rich.
Nothing Upstairs
By Geoff Nelder
He should take advantage of the perspective from the top floor of a bus. Forrister’s car lingered in Foley’s Vehicular Care Centre for its annual medical but he had to put in a work appearance.
Green vinyl seats as opposed to his red leather but not bad. His nose expected sour milk odours—a foolish bias, so his eyebrows arched with surprise as fresh air slapped his face from the open top windows. Even so, those reasons for individual travel, cocooned in his Ford, came to him—personal space, sublime solitude listening to opera. He sought the least offensive fellow traveller. The beard looked normal enough: its owner gazing through a demisted circle on the window as London glided past.
An uncomfortable moment passed as Forrister obliged the window-side occupant to move a corner of his coat and shuffle up. In his car, Forrister would by now have tuned in to Classic FM talking back, unheard, to the presenter, so he turned to his companion.
“Cold, today.”
No response. Could be his new friend had defective hearing but more likely incredulous anyone had the temerity to strike up a conversation. Twenty minutes before disembarking—he had to give it another shot.
“Hey, there’s Putney Cinema. Don’t go in Screen Three, it’s squeezed in between One and Two—you only hear the other two films and at the same time!”
“Grooten!”
“Pardon?”
“For—is that all?” Beard conversed all right but in gibberish and to the window. Suddenly, Forrister’s head received a blow from behind as a robust woman thrust her elbow over the seat.
She treated Forrister to a cloud of gardenia fragrance.
“Grooten?” She barked. Beard turned, looked at her and nodded.
What? He hadn’t appreciated the rapidity of language development since he last used public transport. Contorted out of recognition. Forrister couldn’t participate. The woman had slumped back into her seat and the beard brushed again at the condensation. Forrister had to try again.
“Full today then,” Forrister said, sketching a wave at the one empty seat.
Nothing.
Then: “Jaffa. Man…”
“I have an orange. Would you like a piece?”
Before the Beard could reply, the elbow dented Forrister’s head again.
“Grooten?” she asked. He shook. She re-slumped.
Dejected, Forrister re-bagged the orange, stood and weaved his way to the winding stairs, three stops early. Before the descent he glanced back.
The woman took Forrister’s seat. Beard took an ear-piece out of his left ear.
And shared the cricket.
About the Author
Geoff Nelder is a professional liar, badass editor, and fiction competition judge. He was awarded Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society for his research into air pollution and microclimates and used his students as unpaid researchers to discover urban heat islands in Yorkshire towns and villages. He taught now-out-of-date Geography and IT to the ungrateful alive but escaped on his bike to write.
His publications include science fiction novels Exit, Pursued by Bee and the ARIA trilogy; and thrillers: Escaping Reality, and Hot Air. Many of his short stories have found homes in mags such as The Horror Zine, Perihelion, Ether Books, Encounters, Jimston Journal, Delivered, Screaming Dreams and many anthologies such as Monk Punk, Science Fiction Writers’ Sampler (with Gregory Benford and David Brin), Twisted Tails, and Zombified.
His non-fiction include books on climate and he co-wrote How to Win Short Story Competitions.
Latest is an experimental science fiction short story, The Chaos of Mokii, published as an ebook by Solstice Publishing at http://mybook.to/ChaosOM
Links:
Where can we buy the books?
Geoff’s UK Amazon author page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
And for US readers http://www.amazon.com/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
How can we follow you on Facebook?
Twitter Handle? @geoffnelder
GoodReads? As Geoff Nelder
Are there any other sites we should know about?
That’s it, thanks for reaching this far, if you did. May the rest of your life be deliriously wicked in the best possible way.
Preview attachment Malverns2.jpg
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Everyone, meet author Christopher Davis!
Good Morning and thank you for having me.
I’ve two novels on tap so far for 2017—one short and one full length—and both will be published by the good folks at Solstice publishing.
Walking to Babylon—the first up and released February 2nd—is the longer version of a story that I wrote for the Multiple Myeloma Research charity anthology Paladins. My story in the anthology was titled Low and Outside and as you could guess takes both its title and story line from the game of baseball, as the story is told over a couple of beers at a farm team game in Las Vegas.
The collection was published in England and is stocked with some of the best indie crime writers on the scene today from both sides of the pond. Paladins was put together for a crime writer friend—Craig Furchtenicht and his wife—Henrietta—who at the time—was fighting a valiant battle against Multiple Myeloma. She has since lost that battle and writing the longer story was my way of remembering the smiles posted from a hospital room on Facebook as she struggled to keep those of us writers participating, in the game.
Walking to Babylon is not for the faint of heart as it follows a pair of unlikely Vegas mob types—Sammy Soriano and Tommy Two Guns Viglierchio—as they grow up busting balls for the old man.
Vigleirchio has cancer and Soriano knows it, but there is really nothing that he can do except be a friend. After a hard life of drug use, fast living and even faster women, Viglierchio chooses to end it all one night in the desert outside of Las Vegas under a silver summer moon.
Ain’t No Law in California is a much longer post-apocalyptic, western that has lived on the hard drive of my computer for six or seven years. The original story was slated to be a traditional western and written as three stories, in the hope of gaining the attention of the shorter e-book publishers of the time.
After two complete re-writes and another in first person, I scrapped the idea and the story took on a more SCI-FI, Steam-Punk, Dystopian feel. A couple of folks read through it—after having read the original version—and it seemed that the Dan Bardwell series of odd westerns would get off the ground.
An untitled follow up is nearly complete and both are written as traditional as can be with the exception that they take place a hundred and fifty years in the future after a nuclear war has nearly wiped humanity out.
Walking to Babylon was just released on the 2nd of February and Ain’t No Law in California is making the various rounds of editing and should be out before spring and available through Amazon or Solstice Publishing?
***
Christopher Davis is a central California native and grandfather of three rambunctious little ones. When not tending herd, he can be found trying his hand at writing Crime, Western and Horror fiction. Chris lives with his wife and a little dog that has nearly lost his mind.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Good evening everyone!
Sometimes all you need is a good support system and a computer... Okay, I don't know why I wrote that, but it is what it is 😂
Frost on my Pillow book trailer, by non other than, moi. Er, me. I meant me. Haha. Enjoy!!!!!
https://youtu.be/s-Nyhhq3ETo
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
A love-filled anthology sure to make your toes curl!
Check out Cupid's Arrow, which features my short story about the infamous Anna Bowden, a good witch who will do anything to kiss her boyfriend, even with her overbearing dad at their throats every step of the way.
This anthology is a little bit different from normal romantic stories. There is no sex, because we wanted to attract a younger audience as well as the older crowd.
You can be sure to find hot kisses, and good plots in this book though, and I definitely recommend it!!
It's called Cupid's Arrow, and is available on Amazon and Kindle unlimited. It's so in print too.
Have fun, curl up in your favorite chair, and get ready to swoon!
Xoxo-Leah Hamrick
Monday, February 6, 2017
Author CJ Warrant is a guest on my blog this week!
First and foremost, I want thank you for having me. It’s a great pleasure being here and to take over your blog.
There is some much I want to say, but mostly, I would like to introduce myself.
My name is CJ Warrant, and I write Dark Romantic thrillers and Suspense. I’m half Italian and half Korean—and yes, I do eat kimchi and pizza, and sometimes both at the same time.
I was born just outside of Seoul Korea, and my first language was Korean. But when I came to this wonderful country, I had to learn English—side by side with my mother and siblings. Through out the years, and meeting so many diverse people, I have picked up on some other languages.
I was army brat through and through, and had the privilege to travel with my family, and meet so many great people and see different parts of the world.
One of the places that stuck with me to this day is Wisconsin. Yes, I said Wisconsin. We only lived there for a year, but it was a year to remember.
Reason being, I learned not everyone is mean because of my nationality or how my eyes looked. My connection with my family grew stronger. But then our family dynamics shattered when a driver, who wasn’t paying attention to the road, killed my younger brother. And the house we lived in was, or still might be…haunted. (More of a playful ghost, from what I remembered anyway.)
Anyway, my debut novel, Forgetting Jane was developed from that experience from living there, but of course, the plot has a more sinister side to the story than how I lived in that farmhouse.
As for my writing,
My first novel, Forgetting Jane is published through Solstice Publishing and is available at:
Amazon: myBook.to/ForgettingJane
I currently have several stories in the works. Two series, and another couple single titles. All Dark romantic thrillers.
I also have Forgetting Jane coming out in audio book and it’s in near completion. If you would like more detail, please subscribe to my newsletter to get more detailed news about my books. Just follow the link below.
You also can find me at:
www.pinterest.com/cjwarrant/
If you would like to come by and say hi to me, I’ll be at the La Grange Public Library with some of my author friends. We’re doing readings and some giveaways on February 7th, at 7:00 p.m.
Thank you again for letting me introduce myself. It was fun being here!A paranormal romance that is sure to melt your heart...
She makes him burn hotter than the sun, and he makes her more frigid than the arctic... but that's okay, they were born that way.
getBook.at/FrostonmyPillow
getBook.at/FrostonmyPillow
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