Eric Garrison's Blog, page 9

Sinking Down (Road Ghosts 2) is now in paperback!

Okay all of you folks who prefer REAL books over ebooks, now is your chance to be among the first to own a copy of Sinking Down, the second book in my urban fantasy Road Ghosts Trilogy!

What’s that you say? It looks cool, but you want to start at the beginning? I can help you with that, just check out Four ’til Late first!

No, you don’t have to read these in order, they’re written to stand alone (though you’ll get a few spoilers, that can’t be helped).

This is a book that’s all about paranormal adventure. There’s romantic trouble, a loveable (but kinda disgusting) little monster, a ghost, a demon, ghouls, bonding at the pub, a race against time down midwestern highways, a ghosts-eye view of one of the largest cemeteries in the world, vampire wannabes, a Haunted Forest in an unlikely place… It’s an exciting followup, the T2: Judgement Day of the Road Ghosts Trilogy.

And of course, the ebook is still available everywhere!

Spectral Delivery – Coming Soon! (plus Whiteboard Wednesday)

For Whiteboard Wednesday this week, I thought I’d give you all a preview. Last year for InShoStoWriWe (Indiana Short Story Writing Week), I wrote a 6400 word story set in the Road Ghosts universe. “Spectral Delivery” is a humorous ghost-filled Valentine’s Day story. The story takes on pizza delivery runs with Brett, seen through the eyes of a new character named Enid.

Seventh Star Press will be releasing this title in February as a single, an introduction to the Road Ghosts world. I hope you’ll read it and want to follow more of my characters’ supernatural adventures.

This cover is just  my rough concept. I will have a cover reveal and an announcement when the ebook is available for download.

Happy New Year – Steampunk Fireworks Whiteboard Wednesday!

Happy New Year from Silly Hat Books!

My 2013 – Outside My Comfort Zone

It’s been a huge year for me. They say that we grow the most when we’re outside our comfort zone. I think I’ve grown a lot this year.

2013 was my biggest year ever as a published author, with Reality Check being my first small press novel, published through Hydra Publications, followed by Seventh Star Press releasing the first two Road Ghosts novels, Four ’til Late and Sinking Down.

It’s also been a big year for me creatively. I wrote a Road Ghosts short story, “Spectral Delivery”, and another Skye novel, Restless Spirit (my 6th “win” at NaNoWriMo). I competed five times in the Iron Writer Challenge, producing five flash stories in the process. I’ve also brewed a “magical” beer based on one described in Blue Spirit (at Red Tash‘s suggestion), and have an Indiana honey mead that’s waiting to be bottled. Mmmm. I’ve had fun making my terrible whiteboard doodles on Wednesdays for your amusement.  I even made a silly little TARDIS duct tape hat.

In family news, my stepdaughter graduated high school and started at IUPUI. Amy continues to get praise from her clients (which is no small feat, since she works for the Indiana Department of Revenue in bill collection!).  My cats are still crazy and adorable. I was sad to lose my stepdad, and we had some other scary moments toward the end of the year.

I was far too social this year, having attended more conventions than I ever have before. Most were networking successes, some saw some in-person paperback book sales (but I stink at sales, I really dislike it). Don’t get me wrong, I do love connecting with old and new friends at conventions, it’s just draining to an introvert like me, and going to so many this year was exhausting.

New friends came into my life this year, one or two have become important, close friends even, which is always a wonderful surprise to me. I’ve overall been more at home being myself than I ever have, even though I’ve had some panic attacks and setbacks, I’m sturdier on a daily basis. This is a very good thing.

I’ve also been much, much more open about who I am, with far more people, with my more private side. This has been my year to expand the inner circle and share my inner self with anyone who calls me friend. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, feel free to ask. If you’re “in the know”, then THANK YOU for all the love and support you’ve given me as I have spread my wings wider and freer this year.

Looking toward 2014, I can only hope for more success in making my writing dreams come true, and to continue to be surrounded by friends and love. I expect to have at least three books published this year, and likely will be releasing a bunch of short stories as well. I have ambitious projects afoot at my day job that promise to be outside my comfort zone. I need to keep at that, in my day job, my writing career, and in my own personal development, because if we live in the bubble of the comfort zone, we stagnate.

So here’s to being just uncomfortable enough to grow and thrive in 2014.  Cheers!

99 Cent Reality Check! Hydra for the Holidays for your new Kindle/tablet/smartphone!

Reality Check is on sale for for 99 cents today! Go get it! Hydra Publications is throwing a Hydra for the Holidays party! It’s an Amazon Countdown sale starting Christmas Day, which means that the prices will go like this:

Christmas: $0.99

December 26: $1.99

December 27: $2.99

…and after that, prices will be back at $3.99 for Hydra ebook titles.

So, when you get a new Kindle, iPad, android tablet, or smartphone for Christmas, you can fill it up with Hydra books like my 4.8 star, #1 science fiction adventure, Reality Check!

Of course, if you would like to get any of my Starbucks-latte-priced Seventh Star Press titles, here are the links you’ll need:

Stop! Don’t buy my Reality Check today!

…because the ebook goes on sale tomorrow for 99 cents! Hydra Publications is throwing a Hydra for the Holidays party! It’s an Amazon Countdown sale starting Christmas Day, which means that the prices will go like this:

Christmas: $0.99

December 26: $1.99

December 27: $2.99

…and after that, prices will be back at $3.99 for Hydra ebook titles.

So, when you get a new Kindle, iPad, android tablet, or smartphone for Christmas, you can fill it up with Hydra books like my 4.8 star, #1 science fiction adventure, Reality Check!

Of course, if you would like to get any of my Starbucks-latte-priced Seventh Star Press titles, here are the links you’ll need:

Sinking Down video trailer released!

Here it is! I used art by Bonnie Wasson with a killer creepy/blues soundtrack to make this video trailer for Sinking Down (Road Ghosts, book 2)! I hope you enjoy it, I’m rather proud of the result.

Sinking Down now in Amazon Kindle store!

Yay! My second Road Ghosts book, Sinking Down, is for sale as an ebook! It was released by Seventh Star Press today!

http://www.amazon.com/Sinking-Down-Road-Ghosts-Garrison-ebook/dp/B00HEVK0RQ

It’s the story of the Little Ghoul and how her sad, mostly-dead state is a fate others in the Road Ghosts gang may face, too, if they can’t help her in time.

Sinking Down has everything you want in a book:

A creepy/cute tween ghoul
Road-tripping and fighting with “Uncle Gonzo”
A ghost’s-eye-view of Crown Hill Cemetery
 A look into Chicago’s drunken vampire gamer community
The Haunted Forest
Actual ghost hunting techniques in action
Lizzie being her badass self
The debut of Skye MacLeod

…and as they say, much, much more!

Sinking Down is the Empire Strikes Back of the Road Ghosts Trilogy! Just between you and me, it is my overall favorite story of the three. You can read it by itself, but it’s best read along with the first Road Ghosts book, Four ’til Late!

The third Road Ghosts book, Me and the Devil, is in the works and should be out by Spring of 2014.

Restless Spirit beta-reader edition!

The tradition lives on! I printed a couple dozen copies of my latest novel to give out to family and friends as Christmas gifts. The feedback I get from those folks will help me when I revisit this for a rewrite in a few months, making it a better book.
Someday, maybe these will be collectors’ items. :-)

Guest Post – ‘Putting The Fear Factor Back In Tentacles’

Guest Post: “Putting The Fear Factor Back In Tentacles”

Putting The Fear Factor Back In Tentacles

by Ciara Ballintyne

There are masses of tentacles in my latest story, Confronting the Demon. Coil upon coil upon coil of suckered flesh, rasping over stone, smashing walls to bits, and tearing people in half.

OK, slightly gruesome…

Not everyone likes tentacles, and that’s fine. After all, there are plenty of things I don’t like, and I’d be put out if someone told me it was wrong. One reviewer, in particular, described the tentacles as an eye-roll moment.

In one sense, the reviewer is absolutely correct. Tentacles are a little clichéd.

So why did I choose to use them?

They were included originally because the inspiration for the story was a line from Terry Pratchett’s The Last Hero, which was essentially a reference to the fact that the tentacles on whatever creature had been caught for dinner didn’t spoil it at all. I’m pretty sure it was a chicken – or at least something that isn’t supposed to have tentacles.

So with that inspiration, there simply had to be tentacles in the tale.

Of course, I could have changed that on revision, particularly since I rewrote the entire story. But I didn’t. I made a conscious choice to keep them, and I had a reason.

While tentacles were once firmly the domain of fantasy, in the form of the mighty kraken, or horror (think Lovecraft’s Cthulhu), these days you are far more likely to find tentacles ensconced in the erotica genre.

If you didn’t know that, I’ll give you a moment to get your head around the notion.

Doing all right there? Need a drink? Busy on Amazon, maybe?

Now, I respect the right of any person to get it on anyway they like, but I’ll admit the notion of tentacle erotica gives me pause. I mean… tentacles. They’re like… slimy. And covered in suckers. I refuse to eat anything covered in suckers. The very notion of putting it on one’s tongue is enough to make my skin crawl, and that’s dead. If it were alive…

I think I’d be more likely to run shrieking in terror. I mean… suckers!

It seemed to me that somewhere along the way people had gotten a little confused and started to think tentacles were sexy instead of scary. This seems to be an infection that has spread to dinosaurs and now zombies. If you start to think a zombie is sexy, you are in real danger of having your brains eaten, and should probably seek medical attention!

It was with this in mind that I deliberately chose to keep the tentacles. Confronting the Demon is high fantasy, and this demon is huge, with a nest of tentacles sprouting from its shoulders, so I considered this a blow struck in the defence of some of the classic fantasy novels – The Fellowship of the Ring, of course, and the tentacled creature that attacks the Fellowship outside the mines of Moria, the Mist Wraith in the Shannara books by Terry Brooks, Cthulhu of course, and more. I’d give you more examples, but sadly if you Google tentacles and fiction, the top results are all erotica.

Tentacles are not sexy. Not the ones in Confronting the Demon, anyway. If you tried to cozy up with one of these babies, it would probably be the last thing you did. I wasn’t kidding about the guy who gets torn in half. The only thing these tentacles get wet is the cobbles – slick with blood!

Confronting the Demon – putting fear in tentacles since 2013.

The gates to hell are thrown wide when Alloran is betrayed by his best friend, Ladanyon, and framed for forbidden magic. He is hunted by the guards and the wizards both, tormented by the gruesome murder of his friends and loved ones, and crippled by fear for the living.

Now Alloran must face his demons, or damn the woman he loves.

Also featuring bonus short story ‘A Magical Melody’

Genre – High Fantasy (17+)
Length – 110 pages
Published – September 24th



TRADE PAPERBACK Amazon $6.99 ~ Amazon UK £4.39

KINDLE – US Kindle Store $2.99 ~ UK Kindle Store £1.93

ALL OTHER E-READERS

Kobo $2.22 ~ Nook $1.99 ~ Apple device $1.99

What early readers are saying about the novella

“Ballintyne gives wonderful descriptions and I found myself becoming lost in the magic of her words in a picturesque world with every turned page!” Bella Doerres

“The power-packed action will leave you breathless and the eerie suspense will make you chomp on your own nails, beware!” Satarupa



“With imagination and detail that paints a full scene for the mind’s eye, Ciara takes us on a short but exciting journey into a world of magic, love and demons from hell.” Miranda Wood of DustyKattís Stuff Reviews

“I actually enjoyed a good fantasy novel that didnít take days and days to read, but still offered the opportunity to get caught up in its world and story.” Tracy Riva Global eBook Awards Judge

“This story wasn’t quite what I expected; it was better! The first pages surprised me, reminding strongly of THE WAY OF SHADOWS by Brent Weeks (the scenes, setting and story feel). I was immediately drawn in.” – Dr. S. Drecker

“I will be recommending this to all my paranormal addicts.” – Leanne Herrera

Ciara Ballintyne was born in 1981 in Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, one masochistic cat, and one cat with a god complex.

She holds degrees in law and accounting, and has been a practicing financial services lawyer since 2004. She is both an idealist and a cynic.

She started reading epic fantasy at the age of nine, when she kidnapped Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings from her father. Another two years passed before she began her first attempts at the craft of writing. Confronting the Demon is her debut book.

She enjoys horse-riding, and speculation about taking over the world. If she could choose to be anything it would be a dragon, but instead she shares more in common with Dr. Gregory House of House. M.D.

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Alloran stared at the alley mouth, mallet hanging slack in one hand and chisel in the other. This wasn’t yesterday’s alley. It was a different one, but it felt the same. Like seventh-circle demon. Like hellcat, now that he recognised the feel of one. Gooseflesh covered his bare arms. Did a shadow move in the darkness? A cat? Something else, something bigger than a cat? Surely, there couldn’t be Ladanyon wouldn’t.

Yes. He would. The man he’d once known, the man who’d been his best friend for nearly a century, wouldn’t. But the man he’d become, after summoning a few demons – he would. His footsteps dragging, Alloran ventured deeper into the alley.

Once he looked, the body, hidden beneath a thin blanket of rotting food and assorted garbage, wasn’t hard to find. It was a man this time. He nudged food scraps off the corpse’s face.

The victim had jade eyes, a nose too big for a bearded face, and almost invisible blond brows. The details hit him with the force of a hammer blow. A wizard. A mentor. A man he’d known all his life.

His knees hit the ground and his bones turned to water from the shock. The wizard, Mandron, lay close enough to touch with his belly sliced open by teeth sharper than any blade and his entrails gnawed on. The rest of him left to rot. Sweat dripped down Alloran’s face. Another victim of a hellcat. Another victim of Ladanyon. What was the chance that Ladanyon coincidentally killed two people he knew and accidentally left them somewhere he would find them?

None. Every part of this had been planned, right down to the finest detail. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Ladanyon knew too much. He must be watching, watching and playing, as a cat does

with its food. Alloran’s gaze darted up and down the alley as if Ladanyon would pop out of an alley or appear on a rooftop.

Nothing stirred.

The corpse’s fist held a rolled-up piece of paper. With trembling fingers, he pulled the note loose and unrolled it.

How do I surpass you? Let us examine the matter. I have mastered the minions of hell and enslaved them to my will.

The paper fell from his numb fingers and fluttered away.

Jealousy? Was that all? Thirty years had passed since Alloran gave up research. Ladanyon had nothing to prove, given he made every discovery worth mentioning since then.

Alloran wiped sweaty palms on the coarse fabric of his pants, his hands coming away filthy from the dust embedded in the cloth. The bodies would just keep stacking upñuntil Ladanyon ran out of things he had mastered better than Alloran. He backed out of the alley.

‘Where’d you run off to yesterday?’

Alloran jumped and spun around, bringing the mallet up reflexively as his stomach sunk. The sight of Dek, even with his arms folded and a scowl plastered across his square features, elicited a sigh of relief.

‘What’s the matter with you, man? Yer white as a sheet.’

Alloran affected a frown. ‘Don’t like dead bodies. Don’t like violence. Got the heeby-jeebies. Supposin’ they come back?’

That was true enough, as far as it went. Everyone thought he’d Choose martial magic when he came of age if only because of his height and the breadth of his shoulders, but he’d never been interested. What he wanted to know was why and how. Why and how for everything. It was a pursuit more dangerous than martial magic as it turned out. He licked his lips and tried not to look at the alley. This was what too much curiosity brought.

Dek was staring at the alley, squinting in the sunlight. Alloran slapped him on the back before the mason could connect the alley and his partner’s nerves.

‘We got work to do, aye?’ He gently tried to steer Dek towards the statue. ‘Where ‘ave you been all mornin’ anyway?’

Dek turned away from the alley. ‘Answerin’ questions for the hell-damned city guards, which is where you woulda been if you hadn’t run off faster ‘an a deer.’

‘Didn’t know nothin’. Don’t wanna know about no bodies or talk to no guards.’ Turning his back on the alley and its gruesome contents, he strode back towards the statue and hauled himself up on to the scaffolding. His arms were cold despite the heat of the summer afternoon, and he rubbed them. ‘Top’s all done, I reckon’. We’ll be needing to break all this down and get started on the bottom half.’

Alloran slapped the rough timber with a gloved hand, trying to shunt the corpse and its message from his mind. Eyes that weren’t there bored into his back. At least, he hoped they weren’t there. To be sure, he glanced over his shoulder, scouring the edges of the square for movement.

Dek clapped a hand to Alloran’s shoulder, causing him to flinch and fumble his mallet. ‘Hey, you got a parcel, did you know?’

‘A parcel?’ Alloran lost his battle with the mallet, jerking his foot out of the way just in time. ‘From who?’

Dek shrugged. ‘How should I know? Came in the regular delivery. Down there.’

Alloran’s gaze followed Dek’s nod. A crate sat at the foot of the statue. He’d been so pre-occupied with the alley, the corpse, and Ladanyon that he didn’t even notice. Stomach twisted in knots, he swung down from the scaffolding.

The crate was nailed shut. His breath whistling through gritted teeth, he seized a claw hammer and wrenched the nails out.

He removed the lid. A scream clawed its way up his throat and choked off into a whimper. The topaz eyes of a sorceress stared at him from a face locked in death. The pain of the crate lid falling on his toes was a distant thing.

Ismyn. Nearly eighty years ago, she was his first lover. He stepped back and stumbled, landing on his arse in the dust. Dek yelled from somewhere nearby, but the words were meaningless.

Recently dead. Her complexion was still the colour of clotted cream, and death hadn’t filmed her fixed gaze. Straw filled the bottom of the box, absorbing blood from the stump of her neck, and more blood matted the ends of her red hair. Another scroll poked from rosebud lips.

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