Friday, July 13, 2012

The Friday 56 - Inescapable



Rules:
Grab a book, any book. 
Turn to page 56. 
Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. 
Post it. 
Add your (url) post below in the Linky at http://fredasvoice.blogspot.com/.

New Bewitching Book Tours Reader Magazine

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Guest Post & Giveaway with author Danica Winters



The Moment of Inspiration


I love to write and to create. There are a thousand parts in the process of creating a novel between having great ideas, feeling them out, plotting, writing, editing and then running the gamut of publishing (which is saying nothing about learning the art of the craft, which takes years and many classes). The process of a making book is incredible, even if you look at the creation side of the work and not the publishing (which is Amazing and involves a team of editors, copy editors, line editors, proofers, cover designers, marketing teams, media specialists, etc.).

 Much of the time, a writer is alone in their little world sitting at their desk, tapping away at their keyboard. One of my favorite quotes when I explain my work is: “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” It’s absolutely true. I have people talking in my head all the time, telling me what they want to do, where they want to go, and how they want their voices to sound. I’m just the messenger for my characters.

Review: This Dark Earth

*This is a sponsored review. All opinions are 100% mine. 


There is a viral outbreak across the United States causing people to literally eat their selves, followed by uncontrollable seizures; spasms, and Tourette’s. Your heart will race like crazy until it finally explodes, but your body won’t die as you’ll become one of the undead or more commonly known as a zombie. 

The infected are sent to White Hall, where doctors and nurses attend to the victims. Eventually, they turn into zombies and chaos occurs, but not just inside White Hall. Planes drop nuclear bombs upon the United States. Is this our own government or an enemy country? They may never know exactly how it happens, but for one doctor, Lucy, all she cares about is finding her family. With the help of Knock-Out, a non-violent man, Lucy makes it to her home where she finds that her husband has turned. She finds her ten-year-old son, Gus, has survived.

It’s not safe staying at Lucy's home, so they leave, mostly on foot due to the nuclear bomb knocked out most electrical devices. They come upon a small band of military men, whose crooked leaders has just fallen. There’s no hope for survival or a future, until the young Gus comes up with the idea to build their own city, or more like a fortress around a bridge in Arkansas.

Guest Post with Author Robert Dean

Two sequences made me want to become a writer. The Madonna – diner scene in Reservoir Dogs, and the car clean up in Pulp Fiction. Safely put, Quentin Tarintino is completely to blame for the affliction I exist with today. Being a kid who was obsessed with skateboarding, books and music, writing really never dawned on me. It just kind of happened as I was watching these movies, and I heard these people say such bold things, in these absolutely gritty, and hardboiled situations.

           I wondered how does one create such a universe that was so complex in comparison to what I was reading? As a kid I would devour books like Silence of the Lambs, or anything by Stephen King, but it was Tarrintino that showed me something different, that magical chorus of angels beaming down as they turned on some kinds of light switch complete with gunfire and sex. He showed me that saying fuck, and killing people could be sexy, if done correctly.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Guest Post with author Susan Leigh Noble



Developing a well-rounded, believable character is just one challenge writers face. But you aren’t limited to just writing about human characters. Animals can play an important role in your story. Having lived and loved many cats during my life, I found developing cats as characters in my novels to be extremely easy.

Of course one of the first things you must decide when using a cat as your character is will they be able to communicate or “speak” to other animals as the animals do in Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy mysteries or are they going to be restricted to just cat-like behavior such as the cats Koko and Yum Yum from Lillian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who series.

In my novel, Summoned, one of my main characters, Tosh, is a small grey cat. Since this is a fantasy novel, I had the liberty to have the cats actually communicate telepathically. Cats with this ability are actually called STACS. (Yes, that is just CATS spelled backwards. ) However, telepathy is not the only method of communication used. A lot of what a cat says is through non-verbal behavior which provides another outlet for telling the story.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Review - Grimm Fairy Tales: Volume 11

GRIMM FAIRY TALES: V0LUME 11
Publisher: Zenescope 
Pub Date: May 15, 2012 
ISBN: 9781937068332 
Author: Joe Brusha 
Pages: 172

In this twisted, sometimes erotic, graphic novel series, Sela Mathers (a modern day Snow White) is dealing with the aftermath of The Dream Eater Saga. She overhears an elder telling the story of Jack the Giant Killer to a group of kids. In this tale, Jack’s family is killed by a ruthless king, resulting in Jack giving up his soul to the Dark Hords in exchange for the power to destroy giants. What is shocking about this tale is that it is true.

Sela’s love‘s, Erik, soul has been captured and is now in Limbo. With the help of Druanna, she travels to the Limbo to save Eirk’s soul, but she comes face to face with the realms’ wicked leader Alicia and her deadly assassin, Jack the Giant Killer. Alicia, along with her undead army, has plans for Sela.