He can hear a whisper a block away… and can’t remember why.

 

Open your mind, to a city where mystery chases up and down office back stairways, turns brother against brother, and plays out on frozen sidewalks where lives may be shattered if the enemy even looks at the ragged man passing by in the crowd—and even that man cannot guess what memory will be next to batter his mind.

 

Paul was no detective, no thief, only a student trying to get some distance from his father and brother. When he found himself marked by the power to enhance his senses, he had only that treacherous gift and what few tricks he dared to teach himself, to search for some explanation—or at least the chance to give it meaning by exposing a few petty corruptions.

 

Paul thought if he lived in poverty to keep his existence secret from the world, at least nobody could force him to use that gift as a weapon against others. But just when he thought he was untouchable, the last thing he expected shakes his world and drags him into the perils of his family, his power, and two women who each have a different claim on his life.

 

As Paul begins to play cat and mouse with enemies he can’t even name, he must break every rule that’s kept him alive, in every frantic chase and every gamble he makes to break his family free. And all the while, he knows his greatest enemy may still be what lies behind his own secrets.

 

If you think you know everything a paranormal thriller can do, take a closer look.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076OU90O

 

About the Author:

 

Ken Hughes has been living for storytelling since his father first read him The Wind In The Willows, and everything from Stephen King’s edge to Hayao Miyazaki’s sense of wonder has only fed that fire. He has worked as a technical writer in Los Angeles at positions from medical research to online gaming to mission proposals for a flight to Mars. For more about his stories, songs, and his Unified Writing Field Theory, see www.kenhughesauthor.com

Tags: book, paranormal thriller

 

 

Lauren Pell is chief of security for the Terran station on Krhyllan, a planet wracked by ancient feuds and hatreds. When the king’s young son Deran is attacked by the savage Blood Painter assassins, the feared Blood Painters, Lauren fights, schemes, defies—whatever it takes to rescue him.
Convinced she failed to save the life of her own child, she will save this one, even if revealing some secrets endangers Krhyllan itself.

 

–click for more

 

About the Author:

 

Lynn Ward is a native Texan recently transplanted to California. A speech pathologist in her day job, she reads, does martial arts and humors a neurotic cat. Blood Line is her first novel, after having sold short fiction in the past. Currently, she is working on a new novel

 

Tags: book, novel

 

 

As the Conover family drives from L.A. to Chicago strange things begin to happen. Nine year old Michael sees a face form in the window of the family car. Two creepy children stare at fourteen year old Alison at a motel. A car follows the family for many miles, then hits their car and drives away.

 

Wherever the Conover family goes, wherever they look, they see a large woman and her children coming closer. The woman and her children are superhumanly strong. They can enter a locked room without opening the door.

 

Confused and scared, the Conovers can’t comprehend what is happening to them. Everywhere they turn they see the woman and her children. The woman is Mama, and as she teaches her children, like a lioness teaching her cubs to hunt, the Conovers realize that they are the prey.

 

–click for more

 

About the author:

 

Robin Morris has had stories published in print anthologies and on the web. She collected many of her stories in “Halloween Sky and Other Nightmares.” This is her first novel.

Tags: book, horror

SPRING BREAK GETS WILD ON THE LIVELIEST CRUISE IN THE PACIFIC UNTIL THE UNDEAD CRASH THE PARTY.
Eighteen-year-old Sylva Fleischer and her friends raise the dead for a living for police investigations and mourning families. Two years after her high school crush, a hot guy named Brandon, is assumed dead, Sylva’s friends convince her to go on a spring break cruise in an effort to suppress her depression over him. But when passengers mysteriously die and reanimate into flesheating zombies like she’s never seen before, Sylva plunges into a horrifying struggle between a ship infested with the undead and the scariest thing of all: a second chance with Brandon after she discovers he’s still alive. This is a zombie story that eats right to the core and leaves you licking your chops for more.
Got zombies? Sylva Slasher does…

 

–click for more

 

About the author:

 

Ace Antonio Hall is the author of the novel, Confessions of Sylva Slasher. His short stories They and Raising Mary: Frankenstein have been awarded Honorable Mention for the Writers of the Future Awards 2013 and 2014. He published his short story Dead Chick Walking in Calliope Magazine Fall 2013 #141.

In 2015, Hall has sold his short stories to be published with Weasel Press/The Haunted Traveler, Bride of Chaos/9 Tales, Pure Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 4, Jitter/Prolific Press, and Night to Dawn Magazine #29.

Hall received a BFA from Long Island University and taught English for more than a decade. He is a native New Yorker who now resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Tags: book, novel, zombie

 

 

 

I had the good fortune to interview Matt and Fiona about their new book, Splinters, published by Jolly Fish Press, now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and in local bookstores.

 

 

1. Why did you write Splinters?

 

Fiona: I’ve always wanted to write a speculative YA epic, like the books that inspired me as a kid and made me want to be an author in the first place. Matt and I together have some pretty eclectic tastes in fiction, especially where we’ve rubbed off on each other, so by crossing some very odd inspirations, we realized we could make ours pretty unique.

 

Matt: We’d worked together off and on for a while in our short story days, but had never really tried a novel together. Then one day in the middle of an X-Files binge (I’d been a fan back in the day, she’d never seen it before) we started thinking, ‘Hey, can we try to make a YA version of that for today’s readers?’ and from there, The Prospero Chronicles was born.

 

2. Was there any one person who was your inspiration for your main character?

 

Matt: Nobody from real life. Ben’s kind of an old-fashioned hero in a lot of ways. Very principled, strong, somewhat naïve but still savvy enough to make the right decisions when he has to. I like to think he’s something of an old school hero who’s grown up in a modern world, and throughout the series we’re going to see just what kind of toll that takes on that kind of mindset.

 

Fiona: No, I can’t think of any real life people the main characters are closely based on. They’re blends of things we are, wish we were, and are glad we’re not, with dashes of some of our favorite fictional characters and antidotes to our non-favorites.

 

3. As a writer, what would you say is the most controversial or compelling statement in the book? Why do you feel that way?

 

Fiona: This really shouldn’t be controversial at all, but wander into a movie theater at random and pay a little attention, and you’ll find that it definitely is: the idea that female characters can and should be as important, prominent, diverse, developed and interesting as male ones. I hope it at least goes more or less without saying why that’s pretty important to me.

 

4. What’s the most important thing readers will learn from Splinters?

 

Fiona: Other than what I’ve just mentioned? We’re not particularly didactic with it. They’ll learn a lot of very dangerous and impractical ways to protect themselves from otherworldly shapeshifters. Seriously, Mina’s an expert, and she’s fictional. Do NOT try this stuff at home.

 

Matt: I’d like to say how this book has an overall message that two opposites can work together for a greater common goal, and in a way it does, but its overall theme that you can’t trust anyone because they might just be an alien out to get you really kind of makes that point a little moot.

 

5. What problem do you feel the readers will identify with? What’s your best advice on how they can deal with that?

 

Matt: For lack of better wording, being a teenager sucks, or at least it feels like it does. A lot of the time it can feel like the whole world is out to get you, and though in this story it actually is, in real life that’s rarely the case. My advice on this is simple. Treat everyone around you like a bear; assume they’re really more afraid of you than you are of them. Of course this isn’t always the case, so you’ll have to play it by ear, but just remember that not everyone is out to get you because they’re usually more focused on their own problems.

 

Fiona: Ben and Mina both have to deal with choosing between what’s expected of them and what they believe in. They’re both smart and hardworking people from pretty well-off families. Mina has her issues relating to people (a problem in its own right I’m sure many can identify with), and Ben has to live with his mother’s wanderlust, but both of them should have had an easy time of building nice lives for themselves, acceptance by their neighbors and parents, good grades, an easy route to college, if they tried. They’d even have a fair chance of being left alone by the Splinters if they kept their heads down, but they both see the chance to help people, and they choose that instead. That’s one of the themes that definitely comes up throughout The Prospero Chronicles, the fact that the choices that will make you respectable and popular and successful in other people’s eyes aren’t automatically the right ones.

 

6. When do you write? Is it easier to write in the morning or at night? As you write as a team, do you discuss things and move forward, or do you write separate passages and then merge them?

 

Fiona: I write whenever I have a few minutes throughout the day, and then we both get most of our best work done in the morning and afternoon on the weekends. When we work together, we lay out a full outline first, and then every week we talk out the details of the next two chapters and then write our parts separately (he writes Ben, I write Mina). Then we swap and make notes to each other for edits to make it all work together.

 

Matt: Fiona and I are kinda opposites when it comes to how and when we can write. Give her a few minutes a day and she’ll put a chapter together slowly but surely. I can only really work on the weekends, and in weird fits and starts. Still, when I write in one of my writing binges, I can really write. It’s not uncommon for me to get 5,000-6,000 words of material done in a single weekend this way.

 

7. Who’s your favorite author?

 

Matt: I have some odd, eclectic tastes in authors, but Stephen King definitely has to top the list. Other favorites include, but are not limited to, George MacDonald Fraser, Max Brooks, George R.R. Martin and Alan Moore.

 

Fiona: I can’t choose, sorry, I love them for too many different reasons. First ones to mind are J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Lauren Oliver, Max Brooks, and I’ve recently been on a Shirley Jackson binge that might put her on the list.

 

8. Where can we buy the book?

 

Fiona: It’s in some stores, mostly in the LA area I think, and available to order from pretty much anywhere. And of course here’s the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Splinters-Prospero-Chronicles-Matt-Carter-ebook/dp/B00N6WPXK6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1413133199

 

Matt: What she said.

 

9. What made you decide to team up to write the book?

 

Matt: It wasn’t so much a what but a when. We’d done a lot of projects together before, nothing really major, just some odds and ends shorts. We’d planned to do a novel together some day, but no idea really stuck, not until we got The Prospero Chronicles, and once we did get that together, it was just a matter of mapping and putting it together.

 

 

Fiona: We’ve been writing partners since long before we were married. Mostly we helped with brainstorming and critiquing each other, sometimes, as Matt said, teaming up for a short story (some good but none that saw publication). He taught me horror, and I taught him YA. We’d always wanted to do a big project together, and when the YA X-Files premise came up, it all clicked.

 

 

Thank you Fiona and Matt for stopping by. And good luck with your new book!

 

 

Jolly Fish is hosting a Rafflecopter Giveaway in honor of the new release:

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tags: book, F.J.R Titchenell, Matt Carter, Splinters

 

 

When I first started telling my friends about the book I was writing, I was surprised to learn that only one of them had an e-reader.  The rest read printed books.

 

I read both print and ebooks.

 

I find that I primarily buy print books that I want to make notes in and plan to keep.  And of course, the impulse buys in bookstores are printed books.  Right now, I think that about one third of my new books are hard copies, and the other two-thirds are digital.

 

I believe that e-readers, like all technology, will stop working and become outdated at some point in the future, and the “content,” as the books are often called, we have loaded onto them will be lost.

 

Plus there is the troublesome fact that we don’t actually own this “content” we purchase.  We are renting digital rights, which can be withdrawn at any time.

 

But still I was surprised to find that only one of all the people I knew read regularly on an e-reader.

 

My audience had just become very much like these friends I have never met in person, the ones out there reading and writing in this ether, in the space between us.  Transmitting thoughts, words and ideas over an invisible electronic ocean.

 

So my book will being transmitted through space via waves and frequencies I don’t fully comprehend, through the magic of Internet retailers.

 

Yet I will trust my finished work to it, a balancing act between the new and old worlds of reading.

 

And I will keep print copies.

 

 

Tags: book, e-book, reading