Running Toward Illumia - by Angel Leya

I'm happy to host Angel Leya's blog tour for the Running Toward Illumia series! Her book one of four is free. Check out her magical, engaging writing style. Over to you, Angel...

Hi, I’m Angel Leya, and I write clean young adult stories with (at least) a touch of magic and romance. My latest story is Running Toward Illumia, Astrea’s tale of finding herself while running from the one thing she wants most: To find her sense of belonging.

Astrea’s lived in the Mist all her life, and she loves it there. In fact, she’d do just about anything to feel like she fits in with her Rudan people, even hunt a unicorn to feed her starving tribe.

Illumia is the first city beyond the Mist, just past the Dragon Range. Astrea’s come up with 10 reasons to never go to Illumia. I’ll let her tell you more.

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Travel to Illumia

 

10. They don’t have fog.
Who needs sunshine? I’m a Mist girl. Great for concealing movement, comfortable like an old blanket, and you never have to worry about dry skin. 

9. They don’t all have red hair.
That’s why this tribe is here, despite being sent to the fog to die. And why we call ourselves the Rudan, rather than the Banned.
Wish my hair was redder. And I could use a few more freckles. But I’m one of the Rudan, I swear. I’d be dead if I wasn’t.

8. They’re weak.
Fog weeds out the weak. And if the fog doesn’t, the Lynx, ogres, or Rudan will. Illumians live the easy life. They have no reason to be strong.

7. They’re not very welcoming.
The Rudan take in anyone who can survive the fog. Illumians kicked us out (or at least my parents, but children of the Banned are no less welcome).

6. Illumians are idiots.
Everyone says so.

5. Big government.
I know all five of my council members, and they earned their spot. Like Seneca, first huntress—my mentor. Illumians probably have no idea who runs their council.

4. The journey’s dangerous.
Even if you can navigate the fog, streams filled with flesh-eating fish, and ogre-infested swamps, there’s the dragon range. There’s one pass, guarded by Illumians. The rest is mountain. Treacherous, dragon-housing mountains. No other way around it. Going to Illumia is a fool’s errand.

3. My family’s not there.
If you think getting one person into Illumia is hard, try five. Two brothers, plus Mamaa and Pawpaw.
Course, the whole tribe’s basically family. I’d want to take them all.
Except maybe Mavin. He’s a jerk. (Kidding. Sort of.)

2. I can never come back.
Going to Illumia is a one-way trip. Illumians and dragons ensure that.

1. I don’t want to.
Do I need any other reason?

***

Thanks for reading! If you’d like more, click for an excerpt from Banned, Part 1 of Running Toward Illumia.

Get all 4 parts of Running Toward Illumia today:

1.    Banned (free!)
2.    Lost (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)
3.    Drenched (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)
4.    Marked (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)

Earth to Centauri - by Kumar L

It is my pleasure to host Kumar's blog tour for The Earth to Centauri series (released December 2017)! Be sure to check out his fascinating book trailer here.

Earth to Centauri - Alien Hunt

The year is 2118. The First Journey from Earth into interstellar space has been successful, but the explosive secret carried aboard Voyager 1 will have grave consequences.

As Captain Anara and her crew returns to Earth aboard their faster than light spaceship Antariskh, civil war breaks out on the world they have just left behind. A cryptic message warns her of the dispatch of mercenaries to Earth. Their mission - unknown but deadly. She may have just days to prevent unimaginable carnage on Earth and stop the outbreak of interstellar war.

Her crew and the National Investigation Agency or NIA, engage in the greatest undercover search for the mercenaries in the streets of the megacity. As they race against time to uncover the plot, a traitor is unmasked and Anara herself comes under suspicion. She must use every ounce of her resourcefulness to protect 30 million people and one unique innocent life.

Immerse yourself in an edge of the seat thriller on a realistic future Earth and geek out on the technology just a few decades away from today.

Released in December 2017

Book II is coming soon!

Read the prequel Earth to Centauri - The First Journey

The Timelost - Human vs Alien

A pilot stranded on a faraway planet, timelost. An alien seeking symbiosis.

Visceral alien battles, planetary wars. Experience the adventure...along with edge-of-the-seat SF audio in this Star Wars meets Alien thriller.

In 2014, I started sequencing original SFF to audio using the Booktrack free studio tool, and it offered up a unique, creative experience. I was amazed at how the placement of some well-crafted audio, synced by word, sentence or paragraph could make a story come alive—in the same way a soundtrack makes a movie come alive. To date, I have produced a few dozen, text-and-audio renditions of my stories, drawing on the wide variety of sound clips from the Booktrack audio library.

The Timelost, my most recent production, is a gritty, dystopian foray into the macabre.

The world-building was intense, as I tried to incorporate elements of ‘galactic empire’, the theme of ‘a few struggling against many’, and extraordinary alien adversaries. I also wanted to develop the concept that an ordinary person, the pilot Miko, when plunged into a hostile, colonized, or uncolonized world with chilling advanced alien technology, could become a hero. And not just by circumstance.

The movie Prometheus, even though I had seen it after writing The Timelost, deeply moved me and confirmed my fascination with a SciFi, man-vs-alien conflict. Human and alien genesis theories intertwine as the characters scramble to survive many bizarre and unexpected hostile encounters. The story took on overtones of fantasy horror as it gained momentum, with elements not dissimilar to the Cthulhu mythos a la Lovecraft and the imaginative works of R.E. Howard.


I invite you to enter Miko’s distorted world in The Timelost. The Booktrack text-and-audio based format thrusts the reader into the terrifying unknown of planets of deep space...

Read on Booktrack
Read on Amazon

Dragon of Skar + more...

This month's tale, for all Conan enthusiasts: the dark exploration which picks up where the film “Conan the Barbarian” left off, The Dragon of Skar...
 

“Highly recommended for those of you who are looking for a good adventure, this is highly enjoyable (And this is coming from a girl, mind you). Intense and action-filled with a perfect audio to top it off. Pure genius!”

Enjoy it with a soundtrack here.

Check out fellow author Lincoln Cole's new techno-thriller, Crispr.

A ton of giveaways this month, including "Grinneth" (Fantasy-Adventure), "Touched by the Tithys"  (Fantasy-SF), "Denibus Ar" (Archaeology mystery), and many others by various authors. Scroll down and click any of the image links below.

For those of you who signed up for the free ARC, The Timelost, many thanks! The story is finished. ARC's are available. Sign up for a free review copy here.

Happy reading!

Temple of Vitus Xmas Giveaway

Many free books this month...

 

Adventure and mayhem strike in The Temple of Vitus,

 

Shipwrecked on the coast of an unknown land, Risgan the Relic Retriever stumbles upon a mysterious cult in the ruin of ancient temple grounds. An odd but alluring acolyte takes him under her wing...He gambles with his life...and quite possibly the love of his life....

“Once again Chris Turner delivers. This perfect combination of well-placed audio with an awesome adventure story...”

Enjoy it with a soundtrack here.

Other giveaways include "Land of Maja" (Action-Fantasy), The Movie Maker (near future SF), Flowerfly (YA SF), Beastslayer (Sword and Sorcery), and many others by various authors. Scroll down and click any of the image links below.

For those of you who signed up for the free ARC, The Timelost, many thanks! The story is in its final phases and will be available in mid-January. Sign up for free ARC copies here.

 

Happy reading!

The Forgetful Man by L.A. Frederick Blog Tour

I am pleased to host L.A. Frederick's blog tour for The Forgetful Man and Second-In-Command (released November and December, 2017)!

The Forgetful Man And Second-In-Command Available Now

Hello all.

I’m delighted to announce my two sci-fi novellas, The Forgetful Man and Second-In-Command are available now, having launched in November and December respectively.

The stories are dark, with gruesome happenings throughout. They are from the sci-fi genre and in an urban setting, based in modern times in the fictional city of New Hampton. To give you an idea of the type of city you’re dealing with reviewers have referred to the city as reminding them of Gotham City or Sin City.

The mystery theme plays a big part in both novellas and in my overall series.

These novellas delve into the background of a few characters and add a little more information to the overall world itself.

Now, to the good stuff…

The Forgetful Man:

Do you ever feel like someone else? Like you could just focus and change into something new, something different.

New Hampton is full of mystery these days, and the man who is beginning to forget is the epitome of unusual within the cutthroat city. Will the urban jungle swallow him whole or will he remember the truth...

Second-In-Command:

You have got to be a fighter to rise through the ranks of New Hampton's criminal underworld.

You must be willing to do the necessary, especially when you have designs on a top spot within the most notorious gang in the city's chequered history. Guy Hagan was not aware of what was required. He will learn and carve out a legacy that others will never forget.

It was not always that way for Guy but nice guys finish last, and he is not planning on finishing last.

Summary:

These stories are all set before the events of my debut novel The Rain: The Government Rain Mysteries and as such are set in the same world.

Think of the series like a jigsaw, you can read in any order. The story could be read the main novel, The Rain, first and then the prequels in any order. Alternatively, you could read the prequels and then the main book. Whichever way you choose to read you will achieve the same result, but within reason, it will be a unique trail of breadcrumbs for each reader.

The Government Rain Mysteries Series:

Prequel Novellas & Short Stories (Read in any order):

The Last Doctor- myBook.to/BGSBlogTheLastDoctor

The Lost Boy- http://subscribe.lafrederick.com/subscribe
The Forgetful Man- myBook.to/BGSBlogTheForgetfulMan
Second-In-Command- myBook.to/BGSSecondInCommand

Novels:

Book One- The Rain- myBook.to/BGSBlogTheRain
Book Two- (Currently writing)

The Mannethorn's Key by Simon Lindley Blog Tour

I am pleased to host Simon Lindley's blog tour for Mannethorn's Key (to be released January 5th, 2018)!

World-Building 101 by Simon Lindley

The Realm, The Land, Middle Earth, Narnia – I presume you have spent some time visiting at least one of them. I know I have. And, if all goes well with the ‘travel brochures’, Drageverden will soon be another fantasy ‘tourist’ destination. However, I expect people will only visit if the place promises immersive adventure!

World-building in fantasy is as critical to a plot as character development. When done well, it can transport the reader so absolutely that they yearn for the place long after finishing the book.

I’ll share with you some of my challenges, and the process I go through in creating a land that I am confident is not only believable but tangible, tactile and immersive for my readers.

One of the difficulties I’ve struggled with at times is purple prose. As writers, we sometimes lean to the flowery – long, buttery descriptives – waxing poetic, sprinkled with a fine, magical dust, like morning dew settling on the vine and… oh, I beg your pardon!

I have learned to 1) be succinct, 2) alternate between long and short/slow and faster-paced sentences, and 3) avoid overuse of adverbs. Purple prose detracts a reader as much as a similar life scenario. We’ve all been in one of those awkward moments when someone has talked for well over twenty minutes about, say, fruit flies because, well, they’re a fruit-fly expert, and we nod, and nod, and nod and mm-hmm — until we nod off.

Another habit I picked up came from kindergarten: Show & Tell. I love to tell people things. He saw a dog. Maggie was angry. The bird was tired. The danger is that by doing so, a writer creates a barrier rather than an invitation. We must ‘walk’ as we write, immersed in the land and noting its effect upon our character/s. I must show, not tell.

Like all trips we take, we discover as we go. I make an effort to step from character interiority back into Drageverden regularly, to generate an interaction between the two. It is easy to blurt out all the details of a place, but that is not how we naturally absorb our surroundings, and it quickly becomes tedious. Our character must shake as she enters the darkness of the spider’s lair, snap her head back at the whisper over her shoulder, brace with teeth clenched as the dust cloud rises from the horde cresting the last knoll – and we must be there with them.

Tolkien carried his readers along – experiencing the ground under a hobbit’s foot, smelling the foul mead and men of the Prancing Pony, and anticipating the Brandywine narrowing near the ferry, still far too distant to escape the Nazgul. He rarely tells. What’s more important is that no matter who you talk to, Middle Earth is different for everyone. Why? Tolkien let the scenes play out as much by emotion as he did geography and although he painted a vivid picture of the land, he left our conviction of and immersion in Middle Earth to fill in the deeper details.

So I haven’t provided you much regarding DrageVerden. Oh, I could talk, believe me – ask anyone who knows me and you’ll soon discover I rarely shut up — but you must ‘walk’ alongside the giants crossing the Arvian Plains to understand the shock of it all, or spend a day with Ka the drakehawk to experience her love for the Swamps of Ierloquetze. Brochures never do a place justice. You have to book the holiday.

Okay, okay! I’ll give you a little foreshadowing prior to your trip: Drage is Danish for dragon. Verden means land.

Happy Trails!

Simon Lindley is an author, musician and intrepid explorer in the real world and along the rolling landscapes of his imagination. His book, Mannethorn's Key, the first in the Key of Life Trilogy, will be released in print and ebook formats January 5, 2018 at fine retailers everywhere. It is also available for pre-order now.