Blog Tour: Moxie's Problem

Fantasy

Date Published: August 8, 2014

Do you like fantasy coming-of-age stories?

You won’t find one more unusual or more humorous than Moxie’s Problem.

Moxie is an obnoxious, teenage princess who has led a sheltered life. Until now. She struggles to come to grips with reality. This fantasy comedy takes place against a backdrop of Camelot. But it’s a Camelot in a parallel universe.

In Moxie’s Problem, Moxie, a teenage princess, leaves her father’s castle for the first time to travel to her betroth’s home. She is escorted by three Knights of the Round Table, Percivale, Gareth and Bors. Along the way Moxie is stunned by the real world, so different from life in the castle. For one thing, the knights ignore her demands and her commands. They expect her to sleep on the ground, get up at dawn and eat what they can catch or find. Moxie notices how independent they are. The knights do what has to be done whether it’s deciding on a route or fighting brigands. Moxie realizes she hasn’t been trained to do anything. She doesn’t have a life.

When Moxie finally meets her betrothed, she hates him on sight, refuses to marry him, breaks the engagement and demands the knights to escort her home. Percivale and the others are reluctant to spend more time with Moxie but finally agree.

Moxie and the three knights suffer through more adventures together as she gradually puts together a plan to make something of her life. Moxie decides she wants to be the queen after her father dies. But her father refuses to name her as successor. Her uncle also wants the crown and tries to eliminate Moxie’s competition.

Meanwhile, Camelot strives to defeat the vicious Saxons on the football field.  Merlin, a wizard, investigates the ‘Magic of the Mind’ using primitive Rorschach charts and Stonehenge is a theater-in-the-round. Sir Tristan writes a play that sounds like something Shakespeare will write a thousand years later. The three knights when not escorting Moxie go on quests in Sherwood Forest and what is now Scotland.

Review

I liked the diversity and originality of this novel. You think that you are going to know what you're getting, but Quense really manages to surprise his readers. 

I really enjoyed the pacing and how it was steady throughout. It is fast paced and doesn't let up and didn't have moments that dragged. It made for a fast and furious read.

About the Author

Hank Quense writes humorous and satiric scifi and fantasy stories. He also writes about fiction writing and self-publishing. He has published 18 books and 50 short stories along with a few dozen articles. He often lectures on fiction writing and publishing and has a series of guides covering the basics on each subject. He is currently working on a series of two humorous novels that take place in the Camelot era.

He and his wife, Pat, usually vacation in another galaxy or parallel universe. They also time travel occasionally when Hank is searching for new story ideas.

To get informed about Hank's new stories, subscribe to his email list. Use this link: http://eepurl.com/ca87ET You'll get a free copy of one of his novels when you do.

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PROMO: Secret Tryst

Contemporary Romance

Date Published: Feb 27, 2018

Damien Morgan learned a long time ago that love was just a figment of someone’s warped imagination and good girls simply didn’t exist because women were master manipulators. Nonetheless, he’s happy to wish his brother well when he decides to take the plunge.

Serenity Hanscom is shocked that she’s been invited to the wedding a year after her sister played matchmaker for the groom and had an active role in a plot to murder his sister-in-law. Despite the rather unusual circumstances, Serenity accepts the invitation because it’s an opportunity to mingle with Miami’s elites. But the second she catches sight of Damien, she’s reminded of the horrible events that led to her father’s imprisonment, all because of him. Determined to ignore him, as the evening goes by, she finds herself drawn to him more and more.

Will their plan to stay clear of love backfire on them and instead become the first step to an unexpected happily-ever-after?

Excerpt

This is UNEDITED and will be cleaned up when the book releases in February. This is for sneak peak purposes only!

Once everyone stood up and cheered for the bride and groom's kiss, Serenity sunk in her seat and tried to hide. Her glass was almost empty but it sounded like the ceremony was finished. She stood and joined the crowd of people clapping their hands. Soon, the yacht would return to shore and she'd run.

The bride and groom walked past her fast. The captain said, "Please wait in your seats for five minutes while we transition to the reception. Waiters will offer everyone a glass of champagne for this short intercession."

More champagne might help her survive this. She slumped into her seat and held her hand high to signal she wanted a glass. The waiter handed her glass to the man at the end of the row and her neighbors passed it. Once everyone in her row had a glass, the server moved forward and she nodded her head at the people next to her then took a sip. The champagne tasted sweeter without staring at people her sister almost killed or the man that set her father up. Her skin grew goose bumps and the air grew warmer. There was something tasty in the air itself. A second later, Damien turned around and as he stared at her, he winked, "This will be over soon, sweetheart."

"Don't be sexist." She swallowed her sip and took a deep breath. Damien had no right to say anything like that, to her. She turned her nose in the air. "I'll never be your sweetheart."

"Relax." He then motioned for the man next to him to change seats. Without another word to her, he came and sat beside her. "I'm here to make amends."

"How?" He clicked his glass with hers. She refused to drink and shook her head. "Damien Morgan, that's impossible. You and I can never be friends."

"Why?" He raised his eyebrow.

Tonight he insulted her. Years ago he ruined her life and he had no shame about any of it. She sipped her champagne as steel ran up her spine. "I know who you are and how you knew my father."

He sipped his own glass. "Neither of our father's were boy scouts, sweetheart."

"Perhaps I wasn't clear. Don't patronize me with the nickname 'sweetheart.' It's insulting." Her free hand formed a fist at her side. Damien Morgan was the last person on earth to insult her, again. She knew better than to get riled up. She forced her hand to uncurl itself and gulped another sip. In one minute, she could get up with the crowd and lose Damien.

"I'll happily be your sweetheart."

"Never going to happen." Sometimes she wished she was a guy who could tell another to back away and be respected. She folded her hand over her waist. "Forget this conversation."

"Serenity..."

"Wow." Her eyebrows both raised as she shook her head. "You do know my name?"

"I should not have insulted you earlier. I'm sorry."

"Don't." Sorry echoed in her ear. If it was anyone else, she'd close her eyes, say a prayer and then wish him well. However Damien wasn't anyone else, and he had no idea. She finished her drink and then waved for the waiter to get another. Once she had her drink, she squared her shoulders and stared hard toward the now empty altar. "You didn't know I would walk in on your conversation about me earlier. You didn't know I remembered you at my father's house. And for the record, you say what you want about me. I don't care."

About the Author 

USA Today Bestselling Author, Victoria Pinder grew up in Irish Catholic Boston before moving to the Miami sun. She’s worked in engineering, after passing many tests proving how easy Math came to her. Then hating her life at the age of twenty four, she decided to go to law school. Four years later, after passing the bar and practicing very little, she realized that she hates the practice of law. She refused to one day turn 50 and realize she had nothing but her career and hours at a desk. After realizing she needed change, she became a high school teacher. Teaching is rewarding, but writing is a passion.

During all this time, she always wrote stories to entertain herself or calm down. Her parents are practical minded people demanding a job, and Victoria spent too many years living other people’s dreams, but when she sat down to see what skill she had that matched what she enjoyed doing, writing became so obvious. The middle school year book when someone wrote in it that one day she’d be a writer made sense when she turned thirty.

She’s always been determined. She is amazing, adventurous and assured on a regular basis. Her website is  www.victoriapinder.com.

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Blog Tour: The One Apart

Paranormal

Date Published: 12/4/17

Only one obstacle stands in his way of enjoying a normal life. He remembers—every life he's lived before.

Tres is about to be born... with the biggest burden any has ever had to bear. He is beginning again—as an ageless adult trapped in an infant body.

He and his teenage mother face life filled with extraordinary challenges as they strive to protect, nurture, and hide how truly different he is. But Tres alone must solve the greatest mystery of all: who is he? The answer is linked to the one question he's too afraid to ask: why am I?

In his quest, Tres discovers that all is considerably more interconnected and dynamic than he could ever imagine—and fraught with far more danger. He cannot hide from the unseen threat stalking him since his birth.

Life as he knows it—as all know it—is in peril. And Tres is the only one aware.

Excerpt

A casual knock pre-empted the arrival of an attending nurse. Sancha heard the sounds of a metal cart rolled in, its wheels locked in place at her bedside. She took a quick puff of air and released it as the knuckles of her fists began to turn white.

She heard a rustling of linens, then Maria leaning toward her from her chair on the opposite side of the bed.

Something heavy and warm was laid against Sancha’s arm.

“Sancha…” Maria pleaded this time. “Please.”

Sancha squirmed against the uncomfortable pressure on her arm.

“I can’t let you live the rest of your life,” Maria whispered, “knowing you never even saw him.”

Sancha swallowed. Her breathing quickened. She rolled her lips between her teeth. And she opened her eyes—as slowly as humanly possible.

The brightest pair of crystalline blue eyes stared back at her.

They blinked tenderly, giving away how new to blinking they actually were. Their steady gaze pierced straight through to something rooted within Sancha.

The eyes blinked again, temporarily cutting off the intense connection before opening again to resume it. Sancha rested on her bed in silence, mesmerized by the novice rhythm of blinking resembling Morse code.

Every muscle in her body relaxed. Her mouth began to form an unthinkable smile.

She couldn’t help herself.

The baby—her baby—beamed at her with his big, round eyes and flooded her with the total contentment and perfect peace that wafts only from brand-new life.

About the Author

Justine Avery is an award-winning author of stories large and small for all. Born in the American Midwest and raised all over the world, she is inherently an explorer, duly fascinated by everything around her and excitedly noting the stories that abound all around. As an avid reader of all genres, she weaves her own stories among them all. She has a predilection for writing speculative fiction and story twists and surprises she can’t even predict herself.

Avery has either lived in or explored all 50 states of the union, over 36 countries, and all but one continent; she lost count after moving 30-some times before the age of 20. She’s intentionally jumped out of airplanes and off the highest bungee jump in New Zealand, scuba dived unintentionally with sharks, designed websites, intranets, and technical manuals, bartered with indigenous Panamanians, welded automobile frames, observed at the Bujinkan Hombu Dojo in Noba, Japan, and masterminded prosperous internet businesses—to name a few adventures. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree that life has never required, and at age 28, she sold everything she owned and quit corporate life—and her final “job”—to freelance and travel the world as she always dreamed of. And she’s never looked back.

Aside from her native English, Avery speaks a bit of Japanese and a bit more Spanish, her accent is an ever-evolving mixture of Midwestern American with notes of the Deep South and indiscriminate British vocabulary and rhythm, and she says “eh”—like the Kiwis, not the Canadians. She currently lives near Los Angeles with her husband, British film director Devon Avery, and their three adopted children: Becks, Sam, and Lia. She writes from wherever her curiosity takes her.

Avery loves to connect with fellow readers and creatives, explorers and imaginers, and cordially invites you to say “hello”—or konnichiwa.

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Blog Tour: Sid Sanford Lives!

Literary Fiction

Date Published:  9/18/2017

Publisher: 50/50 Press

 

Sid Sanford always follows a path, just not his own. From backyard Wiffle ball games to New York City skyscrapers, Sid finds triumph and pain in equal measure during his uncertain, and at times violent, thrust into manhood. A colorful, loyal family, a plethora of eccentric friends, and a few star-crossed soulmates highlight his journey, but it’s ultimately up to Sid whether his destiny fulfills his potential or drowns in the bottom of a bottle.

Review

This was one of those reads that really made me feel a deeper connection than I was expecting. It really is a novel with a lot of heart and will make you think. It has light moments as well as deep moments, a great balance.

The characters, plot, and pacing were all spot on and really helped to elevate the novel. A superb literary novel. 

About the Author

Daniel Ford is an author, journalist, and the co-founder/co-host of Writer’s Bone, a literary website and podcast that champions aspiring authors and screenwriters. Sid Sanford Lives! is his debut novel. Ford lives with his fiancée Stephanie in Boston, Mass. He can often be found coaxing words out of a half-empty bourbon glass.

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Blog Tour: Love on the Edge

Inspirational Romantic Suspense

Date Published:  December 5, 2017

Publisher:  LLC: Swan Press

Lanie Owens has just survived a horrific attack by a stalker. Her grandfather, a retired army colonel, drives her to a resort in Maine where she can heal in peace while the authorities track down the man who almost killed her. To Lanie’s dismay, he hires a bodyguard to protect her. Lanie’s nightmares are debilitating, but giving up control of her life is unacceptable.

Former Army Ranger Matt Saunders knows all about nightmares. He’s spent the last year recovering from an injury he sustained during his last tour and the hellish events that caused it. Anxious to prove that he is fit to go back overseas, he accepts the bodyguard job. The resort is everything they imagined - tranquil, safe, and a place to heal. Gradually, they open up to each other and realize they have a lot in common – except their future plans. When a resort video goes viral, Lanie's stalker knows just where to find her.

About the Author

Kerry Evelyn has always been fascinated by people and the backstories that drive them to do what they do. She graduated from Bridgewater State University with a Bachelor of Science in Education and Sociology. A native of the Massachusetts South Coast, she taught in an inner city elementary school before moving to Florida to teach in a rural setting, and then in her own neighborhood. Fast forward a few years, and she's now a crazy blessed wife and homeschooling mom to the two sweetest kids you'll ever meet (she's also super biased). When she's not homeschooling or writing, she's mentoring moms through Mom Mastery University, sharing essential oils, and planning super fun events for her kids and their friends (although her own kids have yet to be impressed, being that every event has some sort of learning snuck in to it). She loves God, books of all kinds, traveling, taking selfies, and escaping into her imagination, where every child is happy and healthy, every house has a library, and her hubby wears coattails and a top hat 24/7.

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PROMO: Sketched

Thriller

Date Published: November 2017

Fledgling police sketch artist Piper Cooke has always been different.

Gifted with second sight, but cursed with a life of tragedy, she has survived the feral streets of Dixon and has triumphed over her troubled upbringing. Piper faces her biggest challenge yet, however, when her visions compel her to disobey police orders and send her right into the wicked grasp of a madman.

Her life should've ended back in the blood soaked suburban basement, but it didn't. Instead, the brutal trauma that should've been the end of her only makes her unique abilities stronger.

Years after her escape, a series of hideous visions force Piper out of hiding and back into the city that almost destroyed her years ago. Plagued by premonitions of doom, she finds herself compelled to track down Dixon's most twisted serial killer yet.

Follow Piper through a horrifically unsettling labyrinth of family secrets, corruption and the sickening workings of humanity’s darkest minds.

Excerpt

Chapter One

July 23rd 2012 12:35 pm

Dixon City - Suburbs

 She had given up on the hope of surviving this.

 Perhaps it was hours ago that the switch had been flicked in her brain, but it could have been minutes. It could’ve been days. Anything remaining of Megan’s sanity, that rational part of her that had the ability to form coherent thoughts had dissolved as quickly and completely as a sugar cube in a cup of scalding tea.

 The only thing she knew now for sure was pain. It had taken over her mind, hand in hand with a kind of fear that she couldn’t have possibly comprehended before. It was a combination that no one survives to talk about.

 Her world had been reduced to the basement she was being held in.

 Beth.

 She had assured Megan that the dealer was legitimate. The house had seemed safe enough. Nevertheless, a nervousness had blossomed the moment they stepped off the bus, and it had continued to grow in her stomach with every step the two of them had taken to the address Beth’s new online ‘friend’ had given her.

 “C’mon Megan. Don’t be a chicken shit,” Beth had scowled.

 Beth was scary when she was mad.

She always had been. Her narrow eyes and wiry red hair gave her an off-putting look that she’d used to her advantage since childhood. Beth had practically dragged Megan up the cracked concrete path that led to the house, her freckled arms so much more powerful.

There had been a dog barking in the background, she could remember that much. For some reason, its yapping had sent warning signals off all through her body, only increasing the tension that was building steadily inside her.

Megan had known that they were risking it by skipping school to buy drugs in the worst part of town. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that this was how all immoral teenage girls were punished. Instead of knocking on the door of a drug house, she should’ve been in first-period biology. But she wasn’t.

She hadn’t wanted to be chicken shit.

Megan blinked at the paneling and matted green carpet that decorated her prison. Beth had escaped. Of course she had, she had always been the stronger one. Thick boned and fearless like some kind of suburban Viking.

It hadn’t come as a shock at all when, through eyes clouded with tears, she saw Beth begin to successfully loosen her wrist bonds. Her skin had torn from the rope, and the blood that coated her hands like red satin gloves eventually helped her to slide free.

Beth hadn’t looked back at her when she slipped through the basement window. Her face had been so transformed with fear and outright panic that she looked more like a wild animal than a human.

It had been when Megan helplessly watched the soles of Beth’s sneakers disappearing through the casement window that the rational part of her mind had broken.

Two girls never escaped. There was always one left behind.

There was always one set of parents collapsing with grief in the background while the survivor’s family turned their elated smiles to the news cameras.

Megan Coogan, who had willingly allowed Beth to cheat off her in school almost daily. Megan Coogan, who had lied to Beth’s parents so that their daughter could make out with some nameless boy in the dusty corner of a playground.

That Beth would carry on, finish school, get married, get a job, maybe even have kids.

Megan Coogan would never leave this basement.

The sound of footsteps on the creaking stairs sent a surge of adrenaline through Megan’s system, drowning out her thoughts and causing her limbs to go rigid. Breathing heavily, she listened to the wood groan as he moved slowly down the steps, as if deep in thought.

The door opened carefully, and he stepped in the room.

About the Author

E.M. Townsend is an incredibly talented writer who hails from the Great White North. This amazing wordsmith crafts intricate tales of horror and suspense that will keep you up at night. S. Prescott Thrillers has named E.M. Townsend as one of the hottest new novelists in the genre.

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PROMO: Sorcerers' Dynasty

Sci-fi Fantasy

Date Published: October 2017

An epic struggle to claim eternity.

Since time immemorial the world has been a theater of illusion...

Ruled by a Sorcerers' Dynasty.

Beyond the arctic wall of ice lies a new and unknown world. One man plans to sacrifice the known world and everything in it to gain immortality in paradise. The world is filled with lies and liars and America's most controversial alternative media journalist Dan Sheraton wants to find out why. Strange things have been seen out in the New Mexico desert, and when an even stranger phone call leads him on a dangerous adventure to a mysterious destination, Sheraton discovers earth shattering epiphanies. When an insidious plot hatched by a shadowy global corporation threatens the survival of mankind the most unlikely hero emerges.

Excerpt

Excerpt from Sorcerers’ Dynasty by Stephen Perkins copyright 2017 all rights reserved.

Introduction:

September2001, D.A.R.C. facility (Center for advanced research and development) deep beneath the arctic ice rim

The new age of darkness was about to fall. It was the epoch of nightmares, demons, and hateful spirits, hatched out from the foul womb of mankind’s subconscious.

And yet, there was nothing new except what had been forgotten. Since time immemorial, the world had always been merely a theater of illusion, albeit a very persistent one, ruled by a sorcerers’ dynasty.

A long shadow slowly crept from a dark corner of the laboratory and into the spangled light. From between the array of shiny consoles and computer monitors blinking gold, green, and blue, Dr. Nathaniel Martin proudly gazed upon his twin creations.

More than any of his inventions over the long centuries, of these he was most proud. Though patents for his most brilliant creations had been filed under the property of his benefactor, Serenity Corporation, the sensory thrill derived from the sheer act of creation, and the idealistic notion merely one of his inventions may benefit mankind, had sufficed and sustained him. For, what were material wealth, comfort, and fleeting fame, Martin pondered, next to the higher considerations of advancing the interests of his fellow man?

Among his other ground-breaking inventions, he pondered the significance of one of his other great discoveries, the secret to human immortality. Would that his desire to share it with the world at large came to bear, Martin thought, but for the iron hand of his benefactor, Serenity Corporation. Though Serenity represented his master, Martin contemplated, throughout the centuries, it had shown itself to be unprincipled, ungrateful, and selfish, believing in nothing save its own material enrichment.

In cool deliberation, he stroked the silvered strands of his well-trimmed beard. Stepping from out of the shadows, he arched his skeleton thin frame over the glass canopy. They were as much symbolic as material flesh, he thought, one black, the other white, representing mankind’s inherent duality. Now, his decades of painstaking research into the creation of sentient life had at last come to triumphant fruition. The doctor glanced at a young laboratory technician standing nearby, tapping figures onto the screen of a digital tablet.

“Congratulations Doctor,” the young colleague said. “Your advanced gene editing process created the first trans-human sentient beings. But now, you’ve successfully drawn the roadmap to mankind’s evolutionary future.”

A proud smile drew across the doctor’s countenance. Owl large brown eyes twinkled beneath gold rimmed spectacles. “I believe you are correct,” Martin replied in a profound whisper. “Indeed, both specimens represent the next evolutionary step for mankind. They shall be placed with carefully vetted and deserving families,” Martin said. “Public records will be made to look legitimate. It will appear as if they were adopted. They shall be attended only by authorized technicians posing as family physicians. They shall appear human, their lives playing out normally. No one, shall suspect anything amiss.”

Setting down the tablet, the technician drew closer to Martin.

“It shall be intriguing to observe how varying environments shall influence social development and assimilation, doctor.”

Martin’s slender fingers floated over the canopied glass like wild birds. His active mind churned with grand speculation.

“Yes, this experiment presents a unique opportunity,” Martin agreed. “After reincarnating, with no memory of their past lives, the fundamental and hypothetical question of the ages shall be determined. Which factor ultimately determines human development, is it nature, or nurture?”

Ruminating deeply, he wondered if making his private deal with the Archons, would, in the end, be worth it. Had he made a mistake? Would having agreed to resurrect the ancient spirits, bring about unforeseen, even disastrous consequences?

“I wonder which shall ultimately prevail to inherit the garden of Eden,” Doctor Martin speculated.

“Will it be good, or evil?”

A sly smile drew across Martin’s haggard but handsome features. No one, he was quite certain, not even Serenity Corporation, or the Archon spirits, possessed knowledge there was yet another sarcophagus secretly buried within the Arctic ice.

Momentarily silent, Martin grew enamored with the vivid implications of his own speculative thought.

“Imagine, if my own spirit, in combination with those of the four Archons, were to inhabit one immortal trans-human machine, shall I, have become God?”

About the Author

In just his first year as an independent author, Massachusetts native Stephen Perkins' thrilling, entertaining, and thought provoking novels Raging Falcon, American Siren, Escape to Death and now the dark supernatural thriller Sorcerers' Dynasty have fast gained a loyal and rabid audience. While enjoying the books, be sure to check out Newsspellcom.org for a unique perspective on the news of the world one shall not surely discover anywhere else! Or, stop by for a visit on Twitter 

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