Steve Stred's Blog, page 89
August 2, 2019
The Night Crawls In Preview!
FRIDAY!
Hello my FRIENDS! It’s FrIdAy!! Which means a new blog post!
This ones a goodie!
As previously announced – I’ve partnered with the fantastic crew over at the Ladies of Horror Fiction to facilitate the first annual LOHF GRANT!
Applications are open and for full details (why I decided to do this and partnering with them and funding and blah blah) click the link!
To help offset the first grants awarding – I’m releasing a new collection of Poetry & Drabbles (exactly 100 word stories) called “The Night Crawls In” if you haven’t seen the cover yet – here it is!
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Preorder links are live and we currently have 10 preorders! The release will come out September 1st!
US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VR2D7ND/
CAN https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07VR2D7ND/
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07VR2D7ND/
AUS https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07VR2D7ND/
Proceeds: all proceeds from the preorders will go towards funding the first grant. All sales after and in the future (including the physical copies) will go towards future grants!
The artwork was once again done by Mason McDonald, a great friend but also my usual cover artist!
NOW! How about I share the title drabble with you all?!!
The Night Crawls In. (A Drabble)
The path rolled its way through the trees. The branches overhead worked to create a claustrophobic enclosure. If you listened close enough you would swear you could hear the sun yelling to be let in.
A thin sheen of sweat had developed on Casey’s forehead. He’d slowed considerably the further he’d dragged his body along.
He’d stopped looking back at the trail of blood and flesh travelling behind him a few hours back.
He focused on the farmhouse, now only a hundred feet away. He couldn’t wipe the sting from his eyes anymore.
The wolf kept pace, ready to pounce.
END
Hope that gets you interested! The collection will contain 33 drabbles and 17 poems!
Now I’ve had a few folks ask what they could do to get involved and help out. The response has been amazing and I’m so happy to see the horror community jump on this!
So how you can help;
Obviously pre-order! If you don’t read ebooks, the physical book will be available for September 1st and all first day sales will also go towards the initial grant.
Like any posts, share any posts, DM people you think would want to read this stuff
Tag authors you think would be interested in applying! I don’t know the number of applicants so far but I do know that there are already some applications and that’s amazing!
Do you have a blog and want to host a drabble or poem? Let me know! Message me here or DM on any of my socials! Gavin at Kendall Reviews and Mike at High Fever Books have already been kind enough to jump on board and offer up a post!
Now other business –
Freebies!
Today is the last day to snag a copy of Wagon Buddy, Jane: the 816 Chronicles or Left Hand Path: 13 more tales of black magick. A few weeks back I had YURI, Invisible and Frostbitten: 12 Hymns of Misery up as freebies as well.
It’s interesting to see the difference between the volume of downloads. Granted I typically offer up Invisible, Jane, Frostbitten and Left Hand Path as my most common freebies. I think those are good entry points into my catalog. This time I’ve decided to add two I usually don’t; YURI in round one and for the first time Wagon Buddy. I don’t believe I’ve ever offered Wagon Buddy before as a freebie and it shows.
For the first freebie – over the three days there were 352 downloads – 250 of those were YURI. Here’s hoping I can get 5-10 reviews from that.
So far – and it’s early on day two – there’s been 125 downloads – 100 of those have been Wagon Buddy. If I can get another 50 today, it’d be great to get another 5 reviews from that.
I’m going to skip over what I’m working on, as I’ve been sharing that a bunch lately and there isn’t much of an update. I submitted two short stories recently to two amazing places, so we’ll see how those fall. I received a rejection recently for a three hundred word piece of flash fiction, so that’ll see the light of day here at some point!
MUSIC:
Kendall Reviews just featured the 5th edition of my Tunes From the Crypt. This was a soundtrack edition and the feedback’s been great. If you missed it;
{Feature} Steve Stred’s Tunes From The Crypt #5 – Soundtrack Edition
As for what I’m jamming;
Fit For An Autopsy – Mirrors
The new song from FFAA is devastating in the best way possible!
Fit For An Autopsy – Black Mammoth
Another tune from these guys!
The Interrupters – She Got Arrested
I’ve been doing a daily music post of Twitter and this was yesterdays. Love this album and this band. They are in Edmonton in October and I’ll try to get out and see them!
Stone Temple Pilots – Atlanta (Live)
Another of my Twitter music posts recently. This is one of my fav STP songs and hearing it performed live here gives me shivers. RIP Scott.
Well that’s all for now! It’s a long weekend up here in Alberta so I got Monday off! Not sure what our plans are but here’s hoping we get decent weather!
Later!
July 26, 2019
LOHF Writers Grant!!
Hey all! I’m back with a blog post – but this ones a slightly different one.
I won’t babble on about music and life and books.
Instead – I’m going to share the exciting news. The wonderful women over at Ladies of Horror Fiction have kindly partnered with me to announce the first annual LOHF Writers Grant!
That’s right – we are working together to award a writer who meets the criteria listed a grant each year to help them with their writing journey! Whether its to pay for a cover, editing, a class, towards a laptop or software or WHATEVER!!! It’s just a way to give back, help another writer and hopefully grow this year after year!
So for full details – as well as the announcement of a new book(!!!!) please click the link!!
https://www.ladiesofhorrorfiction.com/2019/07/26/2019-lohf-writers-grant/ [image error]
July 12, 2019
Novellas & Cover Reveals!
Hey all! I’m back! After a brief hiatus of regular Friday blogs, I’m back this week to fill you in on what’s been going on and some awesome music I’ve been cranking!
But first – just a heads up, there won’t actually be a blog next week 
June 21, 2019
See you soon…ish!
Hey all! Happy first day of Summer!
Not to start off this blog with a bummer… but this will be my last blog post until Friday July 12th.
Next week I’ll be heading out, back to where I grew up, to attend my Grandpa’s memorial. Then I have a week off of work. So no blog post on June 28th or on July 5th. I’ll still be active-ish on social media, depending on connectivity, but for blog posts – it will return on the 12th.
If you haven’t seen – I’ve teamed up with Gavin over at Kendall Reviews to give away a paperback of ‘Let’s Go Play At the Adams” this weekend.
Enter here;
{Giveaway} Your chance to win the controversial Let’s Go Play At The Adams
I was going to give away another copy of my collection Dim the Sun but I’ll hold off until next week to do that, as I don’t want to create any confusion!
I’m steadily working on stuff, reading stuff and keep your eyes open for some announcements soon!
I’ll finish this briefer blog post with some tunes I’m digging!
This week will be all hardcore/metal core bands.
The Ghost Inside – With the Wolves
This tune kicks serious ass. I shared their album before – but this song is a stand out and just a head banger.
Wolf Down – Stray From the Path
I really, really loved this album, but found after the singer change and the bigger focus on anarchy from the band, I lost touch. But this song is fantastic.
Deez Nuts – Stay True
Don’t let the jokey name fool you, JJ and Deez Nuts crush it. One of my fav bands and this song keeps me focused and grounded on the tasks before me. Saw them live in Vancouver and they crushed.
Terror – Keepers of the Faith
Of course, finishing with some fantastic Terror. Seen them live twice and they were awesome.
Alright, that’s it – that’s all!
Stay true.
Steve
June 14, 2019
{Insert blog title here}
Friday has arrived. And what a week it’s been, friends!
I couldn’t think of anything witty to title this post so you can call it whatever you damn well want! 
June 10, 2019
Book Review – The Targeter by Nada Bakos
The Targeter by Nada Bakos
Release date – June 4th, 2019
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I’m a big fan of alternative history or exploring ‘other’ options of how things might have played out. This will sound like I’m a big proponent of conspiracy theories, but I know we, as the public, are not always privileged to know all of the details of what happens. We are told only what we need to know or what a government agency deems necessary for the public to know. Hence – all of the redacted parts when a Freedom of Information Act request is granted.
This love of alternative stuff led me to find the show ‘Hunting Hitler.’ This show had three seasons on the History Channel and really what I was enthralled by was seeing just how immense the war effort had been. The cast and crew travelled across Europe and South America, showing different places and massive war time construction efforts. As someone who has never been a member of the military or involved in anything like this, it is fascinating to see.
During the shows run, Nada Bakos was brought on board and I was immediately drawn into her level-headedness and how she always worked to state facts/ideas and never worked towards sensationalizing the story. Sadly, I found she wasn’t featured enough, as she became one of my favourite people featured.
Which led me to her book ‘The Targeter.’ Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for approving me for this book. I only read a handful of non-fiction books each year, but when I saw Bakos’ name pop up, I knew I needed to throw my hate in the ring and read about her previous career.
This book is an exhilarating romp following the behind the scenes story of how Bakos’ was involved in tracking Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a mastermind with ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
Nada does a fantastic job of sharing her story with us in spurts and as the hunt pics up, it reads like a well-made war movie.
I had a great time reading this and as a Canadian, it’s always interesting to read about how the USA functions at some of the top tier levels.
For those who are reading this for any ‘Hunting Hitler’ dirt, this book doesn’t deal with it at all. But that shouldn’t stop you from checking this fast-paced thriller out.
I really enjoyed that citations were added at the end to help with the logistical nightmare keeping this stuff in order must have been.
4/5 stars!
June 7, 2019
The Stranger… things in life.
Hey, hey! Friday has arrived and here I am back with a normal blog post. If you remember correctly, I didn’t do a full real blog post last week as The Stranger was arriving and I did a giveaway with Kendall Reviews!
Response to the give away was huge. I was blown away with how many people were interested in snagging the super limited All-Black edition of The Stranger. 531 entries to be exact. Couldn’t believe it.
Big congrats to Sara over on Instagram for winning it!
The Stranger so far has been seeing some really nice reviews and the various photo’s I’ve seen of the book in the real world look amazing! Next week I’ll get a collage together of some of the ones I’ve seen so far.
If you haven’t snagged a copy and want to;
One of the stranger things I’ve noticed – in the week before and the week following the release of The Stranger, there has been a surge of folks snagging my previous release The Girl Who Hid in the Trees. I’m chalking this up to a ‘holy hell, amazing steve has another amazing release out but I haven’t read his last phenomenal release so I need to snag it now!’
June 3, 2019
Book Review: Cydonia – Michael Morar
Cydonia – Michael Morar
Genre: Sci-fi
Publication Date: May 10th, 2019
Page count: 608
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When I started really looking at reviewing books – not just a paragraph or two about them (which if you look at my first reviews on Goodreads you’ll see that’s what I did) one thing I really wanted to focus on was helping folks GET reviews. Getting reviews is super tough. I’m a small fish in the indie author scene, but on June 1st released my 9th book.
By this point you’d think I was confident and can just message people to ask if they’d like an ARC to read. To be truthful – I will write down a list of who I am wanting to message (and most of these folks are people who have said I can ask them about reading an ARC from me any time) and then it will take me 2-4 days to build up the steam necessary to message them! It’s so stressful. Yes, the worst they can say is no, or sorry not right now – but I never want to feel like an imposition! And the funny part is – I’m never really stressed if they’ll like the book or not – as it’s their reading experience!
So – Cydonia is a special one for me. Michael kindly messaged me through my site/blog and asked if I’d be up to reading his debut (which came out on May 10th of this year, 2019). We exchanged a couple emails and I said sure – pop it over and I’ll prioritize it. He kindly read and reviewed my novella YURI as well, which is always nice to do a book swap, and here we are!
I would’ve had this done sooner if not for a few things cramping my reading progress – 1) I wanted to finish reading ‘Let’s Go Play At the Adams’’ and 2) I was trying to finish up some stuff for my May celebration of Pypermaynia!
Cydonia is sci-fi true and true and I’m always in awe of authors who can write in that genre. I have tried my hand kind of with my horror/sci-fi novella Jane, but full on sci-fi is daunting. As a reader it can also feel daunting when diving into a sci-fi release simply because you’re never too sure how in-depth and Science based the plot with be.
Thankfully Michael focused more on the story while having the Science based stuff really accessible and as a really nice feature to prop up the human story featured throughout.
The story itself follows three main characters (at least for me it did, there’s a few others who Michael treats has involved, but for my reading experience it was these three.)
Morar introduces us to Sarah Pauley almost immediately, in a really fun, exciting opening. The story revolves around a conflict on Mars and Sarah is the ‘outcast’ of the Pauley family. The one who doesn’t believe there should be a war. Her husband meanwhile, Robert Pauley is the second main character here. Robert is high up in the political landscape. His character was an interesting one that went back and forth between wanting to ensure Sarah was alive and safe, but also interested in how much violence he could inflict, while trying to keep climbing the political ladder.
Lastly Morar introduced us to Markus Arundel. When we first are introduced to this character Morar almost gave Arundel a storyline of being disinterested in the war and the political conflict, but we soon fine that is furthest from the truth. Markus was a fun character and a character I would have loved to see even have his own series based on his past and his exploits.
Overall this book goes through some peaks and valleys. At 600 pages you are bound to have some lulls and spots where the dialogue could have been tightened and a few scenes cut out for posterity. If we were to ask Michael about that, as the author he’d have a strong rebuttal, so the other thought I had that would make this flow and become a stronger read would be to split into two or three books. Almost go ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ style and have each release focus on one of the characters and then wrap it all up together. That’s not to say the book is bad, its actually far from it, but I worry the listed page count will be a deterrent for some folks, when really it shouldn’t be.
At the end of the day this was a great read and when I think of the achievement of writing a 600 page Sci-fi release for your first novel I’m left stunned.
Kudos to Michael for such an accomplishment and I thank him kindly for letting me visit Cydonia.
4/5 stars for a frolicking Mars based story with a ton of great interpersonal storylines.
You can get Cydonia here;
Synopsis;
CYDONIA is set in the near future. Humans have colonised Mars after discovering molecules that will transform Earth’s energy economy. Two global organisations competing for lucrative Martian territory have, following inconclusive legal efforts, declared war. The worlds watch as elite mercenary armies prepare for a modern, corporate warfare, fighting in freezing, brutal conditions never before endured by armed forces.
Robert Pauly, Cydonia’s ruthless Deputy Director General, is driven by his love for his wife Sarah and his limitless ambition. Fearing both loss of Sarah and that of his job, the former homeless orphan turns against his employers and pushes instead for peace, but soon discovers his own propensity for violence.
Sarah Pauly doesn’t care about the Cydonia Corporation, or Mars, or the war. Bitter and driven, she will do anything, even endanger her own life, to escape the shadow of her aunt, the Director General.
Markus Arundel, a disgraced mercenary captain, has travelled to Mars to lead the initiative on the battlefield. But jaded by years of violence and plagued by paralysing nightmares, he suddenly resolves to retire, that is until his own superiors insult his already wounded pride.
May 31, 2019
May wrap up, PYPERMAYNIA and Contest
Hello, my find furry friends!
Today is the last day of May, which also means it’s the last day of the unofficial Canadian month long celebration of my favourite author Andrew Pyper. This month I attempted (and failed) to read his other books I haven’t read yet! I managed to get two done…
The Homecoming (see link for review)
https://stevestredauthor.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/the-homecoming-review-pypermaynia/
and
The Trade Mission (see link for review)
https://stevestredauthor.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/book-review-the-trade-mission/
I also was able to interview the man himself!
This was a total thrill and something I’ll cherish for the rest of time.
I still plan on reading the other three Pyper books I didn’t read in May coming up, so watch for those reviews!
May Wrap Up;
I’ve never done a monthly wrap up before, mainly because I do all of my reading on my Kindle, so I can’t post a picture of my book stack. So instead, here’s the books I read
Book Review: The Trade Mission
The Trade Mission – Andrew Pyper
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As most of you have seen, I’ve been celebrating all things Andrew Pyper this May – dubbing it PYPERMAYNIA. I started the month off by reading his latest The Homecoming which was a stunning work of family tension and psychological thrills. It catapulted itself into my favourite book position and one I’m actually considering re-reading, which is something I very, very rarely do.
My ambition was to read The Homecoming, The Trade Mission, The Killing Circle, The Guardians and Kiss Me, his short story collection. Sadly, I have failed you all, as in the month of May I read The Homecoming and last night finished The Trade Mission. I’ll still be reading the other three here in short order, I’d just hoped to get through all five.
In May, Andrew also kindly agreed to a short interview and it was one of my literary highlights to ask him some of the burning questions I had clanging around my head. I cheekily even asked him two more questions via DM that he amazingly answered, but all in all, I’m super happy about PYPERMAYNIA and I hope some others were able to add his books to their TBR or even read some of his work.
Now, as for The Trade Mission – this was a book I’d had on my TBR for a little while. I’m a sucker for all things ‘Lost World’ sounding. Whether it’s the Amazon rain forest, a forgotten island, Dyatlov Pass or something just set in Siberia, then I’m game. The synopsis is one that would always grab my attention – a group of Canadian entrepreneurs have travelled to South America trying to increase interest in their start up business. While there they go on a sight-seeing trip up one of the numerous rivers. After a celebratory party one night they are kidnapped by unknown assailants and from there it becomes a tale of survival.
The story is told from the point of view of 38 year old translator Liz Crossman. The other main characters are the two faces of the business Wallace and Bates as well as 50 something Barry and another co-worker Lydia. I can’t honestly say I remember what Barry and Lydia’s jobs were but enjoyed both characters immensely.
The opening to the story in my opinion is a decent set up for what the business is and why they are down in South America, but ultimately wished it was a tad shorter. The true grit in this tale is Pyper’s psychological journey once the characters are captured.
The jungle itself is one of the biggest antagonists in this story. They are in the middle of nowhere with the only source of travel being on the river, which itself plays host to a number of animals wanting to turn them into a snack.
The survival aspect and tale in this story is top notch. From their capture through to the ending I enjoyed watching each characters descent into turmoil and madness. It should be noted that at the same time of reading this, I was also reading The Silence by Tim Lebbon and Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ by Mendal Johnson. While I haven’t finished The Silence yet, I did finish Let’s Go Play and this trio of stories all play with the mental aspect of survival as well as what happens when the odds are turned against you. They worked well to heighten each other and I really lucked out into each working off of one another.
Overall this is another exciting entry into Pyper’s bibliography and one I’m glad I finally got to read. I’m looking forward to finishing off the rest of his work and will await the announcement of his next release!
4/5 stars to a gripping tale of survival that takes place in a world where everything is out to kill you.
