Thea Atkinson's Blog, page 8

It’s coming… and I have E-ARCs up for grabs

Yup. I’ve been neglecting my blog. But I have a very good excuse. Well a couple of them. One is too personal to speak of in detail (RIP, big brother) and the other is because I’ve been writing.

This last year I completed two novels, a few short stories, and a novella. I’ve also begun the third novel in the Elemental Magic series: Bone Witch.

If you’ve been following the series at all, you know I’m working on a shorter, parallel series that takes peripheral characters and follows their stories. These offer backstory to Alaysha’s tale, and I’m having tons of fun with them. And the novella Theron’s Tale is very nearly ready.

But first I’d like to offer a few electronic ARCs to a few readers who might be inclined to either review or blog the book for me.

Any takers?

No?

Not sure?

Yes, maybe?

How about a small taste to help you decide, and when you do, just shoot me a comment with your email and the format you require.

Meantime…enjoy

Theron’s Tale: a novella

“The first conqueror came the day I received my first tattau. My skin at the lowest rib stung like it had been scraped raw and doused with fermented balsam gum, and I suppose it had when you come to think about it. I knew the outline of the first symbol meant clay – our word for the dirt beneath our feet and the soil we’d been formed from, the earth that sustained us. It was the most important symbol of the magic that would be created over the seasons and I knew the outline was as crimson at the edges as the ashes that filled it in had been black.”

Theron looked down at his feet, imagining again the henna on his toenails, pretending the veins that stood out so blue against his skin were trails of decorative woad tracing his instep in preparation for a sacred ceremony. He closed his eyes and tried desperately to imagine the woman those things had been done for. The nights they spent together. The seasons they lived with each other.

The sting of leather seared against his back and he sagged forward. He had forgotten for a moment, one blessed moment, that his hands were bound above him, that the trickling of water against the stone here inside his own sacred mountain was not there to quench his thirst as it normally would. It was good that his memories could still be as vivid, could still take him away. He needed that. Hanging like venison ready to be stripped of its skin, he knew he would need the memories before this was all over.

He did his best to lift his gaze to the arrogant youth in front of him and managed to just hold his head aloft for a few seconds before it fell and his glance went once again to his toes. “You wanted the whole story,” he said to Yuri. “I’m trying to give it to you.”

There was a shuffling sound, one that Theron imagined was Yuri easing closer. He heard the unmistakable gravel of Yuri’s voice even before he felt the man’s fingers in his hair, yanking his head upward so that he had to stare straight into the ice colored eyes of the savage.

“Your idea of the whole story and mine are different, old man.”

Theron gave him a tremoring smile. “Nevertheless, it’s my story you asked for.”

He could smell the cactus wine on Yuri’s breath. The onions he’d had for supper. So the pup hadn’t come as far from the bitch’s lair as he thought– he kept some of those familiar things cloaked about him like old bits of flax thread. Theron couldn’t help a short chuckle.

“What do you find so humorous, old man?”

Theron’s scalp hurt, his skin was on fire, the ribs beneath his tattaus made breathing difficult. They were broken, no doubt.

“You denounce your mother, and yet you carry all of her habits into your new land.”

“What does my mother have to do with any of this?”

Theron tried to shrug but the burning in his armpits kept his muscles from moving. “Without your mother, there would be no tale to tell.”

Yuri grunted. His nod to the shadow and the hulking form that cast it from some place behind Theron meant Yuri’s handler had stepped away. He would be okay for a few moments, then. As long as he kept talking, the pain wouldn’t get worse. Maybe it wouldn’t even come again for a while.

“That first tattau only heightened my already blossoming pride,” Theron murmured. His feet twitched, a cramp taking the middle of his sole and he grimaced, trying to stretch it out, to feel the muscles lengthen. When they wouldn’t he decided the best focus was distraction. He made himself concentrate on the story, the thoughts coming in a rush at first as the cramps pulled at his fibers, then slower as it eased.

He made himself think again of that day, how even in the shadow of the great beasts, those women who straddled them, so large, their legs hung down past their mounts bellies, he’d spit at them all, thinking his contempt could make them go away.

“My pride,” he said aloud. “Always my undoing. I collected all the water I could in my mouth and let fly at the largest, the one in front. The one with pale skin and obsidian hair.”

Yuri spoke and startled him. “I know who you mean.”

Theron nodded. “Indeed you do. Your mother. She was huge, so huge that even the beast she rode looked too small to carry her as she spurred it forward to look down at me. I could see nothing but contempt in her face for my arrogance.

“Even still, I could feel the power of my mark beginning to swell within me, the power given me by my temptress, and I lunged forward to kick the tender ankles of the mountain until I felt myself being lifted from my feet, still kicking–but at the air now– until I landed across that gargantuan lap with my bottom perfectly poised for a spanking.”

He thought he heard Yuri chuckle, and that was good. He didn’t mind a little mockery. It didn’t hurt quite so much as the things the handler did. He was encouraged.

“A man doesn’t receive a punitive spanking from a woman, and at ten seasons, with the initial symbol that bound me inexorably to my temptress, I was most assuredly a man even if my size and my number of seasons begged a girl to believe otherwise.

Theron thought back to the moment. He could see again the massiveness of the woman, the feel of her skin against his. His sense of rage as he twisted and snaked about her grasp, how she chuckled at first then roared straight out at his impotence. He felt again his face burning with rage, how his voice box choked off the words in a fury so volatile he could’ve chewed leather to ragged skin.

It wasn’t a pleasant memory. But those things couldn’t be changed now. He sighed.

“She slapped me cold,” he said and was surprised to hear thoughtfulness in his voice. “Pain rose to my throat and forced any words stuck there to come out in an anguished cry.”

Yuri nodded. “She has large hands,” he mused.

“Yes.”

“Still. What is coming of this, old man?”

“To take you this far back, even though you think it’s extraneous, is still not far back enough. I’m assuming you know of our history, my tribe. To begin the tale at the time of the first conqueror and not explain how crucial this moment was to our culture is to expect you to understand what that culture is. You couldn’t know it. You only know what you saw little by little over the few years you came. But it’s important to see, because that message means I’ve jumped to the parts that concern me, being the vain man that I am, even in this my doddering season.”

Yuri’s voice took on an accusing tone, one that Theron thought he’d have to quickly placate. “You might want me to think your doddering, old man. But I know better.”

Theron tried to shrug again, to make the claim seem insignificant. Pain sliced down his back. Yes. Definitely a few broken ribs. “Our tribe is one of four clans that eons ago went to war and had to be physically separated from each other in order to keep ourselves intact at all. That was as much as I knew then, and it was part of the ritual that tapped the ashes into my mark so that I could be closer to my temptress than any other being. More, I learned later as each symbol became part of my skin, but on that day, I knew that my temptress, the temptress of clay as we called her, had been granted the full story of the war as part of her symbols and tattaus. She was one of four, descended from a great temptress who split the very earth we roamed in order to keep the clans apart – and to keep us from killing each other.”

“I know the power,” Yuri said.

“Indeed you do,” Theron said. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s the least of the tale, although you think it the most important.”

“Her mother was a temptress, and her mother before her, all first born women granted power to use the soil so long as it was also protected by her. My temptress–witch–in your language–was five years older than I, and I, just that day, had vowed to be her Arm in all she did and needed. I grit my teeth as the bone needle bit into my skin over and over, taking short breaths each time she dipped her marker into the ink made with the ashes of her grandmother’s bones. I took her flesh into my own and became her tool to protect her if needed. More than that I wasn’t to know on that day, but I knew that she had chosen me above the many much more physically suited.”

“You loved her for that,” Yuri guessed, and Theron heard a note of scorn in the man’s tone. It didn’t surprise him; men such as Yuri, young as he was, invincible as he was, could never imagine embracing the vulnerability love can bring.

“So now you know the importance of that in my mind, and how it had been sullied by the appearance of the largest of women I’d ever seen, of the massive mounts they rode, who pitched their beasts side by each at our border and declared our land their own. As I lay across the leader’s lap, willing the tears to retreat, I made myself stare at the ancestral mountain we kept and I prayed to its sacredness that this truth, that we could be a conquered people, must not come to pass.”

“So much for your prayers, old man. This mountain is mine now. This mountain, this land, everything in it.”

Theron nodded. “Indeed, it is yours.” It hurt, but he forced a laugh anyway. He expected Yuri to lose his patience, to press further. He didn’t expect to feel a searing pain beneath his ear lobe. Yuri’s handler and his hot iron again. Thankfully, the trickle of water, the smell of damp earth, and the hot pain in his neck eased away and all went black, blessedly black.

 

Look for the full story on Amazon soon.

Filed under: Thea bits

Oh my! Romance, crime fiction, and vampires all on GonzoInk with Debra Martin

I love offering guest spots to other authors, especially ones I enjoy, who I find throughout their social media presence, they are generous, positive, and supportive. Debra Martin is definitely one of those. I do hope you enjoy the character interview she has put together for GonzoInk. Her blog is a wonderful source of fiction, fun, and fantastic stuff. Go visit.

Blog: http://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Debra.L.Martin.Author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dlmartin6

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Debra-L-Martin/e/B003Q1WLXY/

Buy on Amazon

Character Interview with Detective Lacey Gardner

The Silver Cross by Debra L Martin & David W Small

Q: What made you become a police officer?

A: Police work is in my family. Both my grandfather and father were Boston cops. I spent as much time down at the precinct with my dad as I did at our home growing up.

 Q: Isn’t being a homicide detective stressful?

A: Yes, it can be, but my goal is to solve the crime as quickly as I can. Someone needs to speak for the dead and bring some closure for the families. That’s the hardest part—watching the families suffer, but it only makes me more determined to solve the case.

Q: You’re officially listed as a detective, but you’re really a vampire hunter. How did that come about?

A: It came about by accident. My sister was attacked by a vampire, and like most people, I didn’t realize that vampires even existed. I thought they were just stuff of legends. When Captain Jack McMahan offered me a position with the Fringe Division, the division that hunted these beasts, I jumped at the chance.

 Q: You work with two male detectives. How is that?

A: Cole Henderson and Jackson Stout are two great guys. Cole is ex-military and Jackson is a former football player. If I had a choice for brothers, they would be perfect.

 Q: Do you hang out with Cole and Jackson when you’re off-duty?

A: Yes, we’re all great friends as well as working together. As a side note, I am constantly beating those guys at a game of pool and it sets up a good rivalry. It’s also a great stress reliever and we all need that after a vampire nest take-down.

 Q: You recently met Damon Harte at his bar. What did you think of him?

A: Ahh, how much time do you have? Damon is one tall, dark and handsome guy with a dangerous edge, just my type. I’m looking forward to spending some time with him and getting to know him better.

Q: Could Damon be the one?

A: That statement may be a bit premature, but I can tell you that Damon is an excellent kisser.

 Q: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Detective.

A: It’s been my pleasure, but I’ve got to get back out on the streets again. You know, keeping them safe for the citizens of Boston.

Buy links -

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Cross-Vampire-Nightlife-ebook/dp/B009BW6PUW

BN: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-silver-cross-debra-l-martin/1112922521

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Filed under: guest blogging

Touching the taboos: Vivienne Tuffnell guests

Touching the taboos ~ an essential part of novel development or jumping on the bandwagon?

by Vivienne Tuffnell

Buy on Amazon

At first glance at the literary and creative world it might seem as though there are no taboos left. The recent explosion of literary erotica seems to show that there are few inhibitions left among both writers and readers. Yet it doesn’t seem long ago when the freedom to write about taboo subjects was threatened by certain financial institutions who will remain nameless. That battle was won; literary freedom was maintained.

So what then is a taboo? A quick trawl of the internet will give you a little to go on: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definit...

“a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing: many taboos have developed around physical exposure the use of violence must remain a taboo in our society [mass noun]: Freud applies his notion of taboo in three ways

a practice that is prohibited or restricted in this way: speaking about sex is a taboo in his country”

It’s very clear that taboos are a kind of moveable feast, something that shifts and changes according to time and place. Until quite recently in the UK, talking about sex was very much frowned upon, and it’s this that gave us Brits our reputation for being uptight and repressed. This week I sat on a train and listened to a businesswoman on the phone to a chum, talking in some detail about the sex lives of mutual acquaintances. There’s change for you. I squirmed. It wasn’t so much the vague, salacious details that bothered me but the fact that she was sharing them on such a public forum as a very busy train!

The taboos of a country are not fixed and immutable but are slowly fluid. As we change, so do they. Death is possibly one of the most fixed of them in my culture; people seem to feel talking about it will bring the attention of the Grim reaper before their time.

Bookshops often have a whole section of books that are referred rather scathingly as Misery Memoirs, or Mis-Mems, row upon row of heartbreaking covers with emotive titles, each someone’s harrowing tale of abuse. These are big sellers, and I hope that greater awareness of the issues they highlight might be the result of their publication.

When I launched my new novel The Bet  a week or two back, a friend on Twitter commented about the timing. That week there had been a case of a school girl running away to France with her teacher. Now one of the central plot themes of The

Bet was an incident where a teacher made the moves on a teenage pupil. I wrote the novel some years ago, and I’d set the launch date months before the teacher-pupil affair became headline news. My timing for the release was pure coincidence. My Twitter chum saw it as good timing, in that the subject was topical and powerful.

But the novel was not written with that taboo in mind. I did not think one day, “let’s write a novel about….”. The process was far more nebulous, unplanned, and touching taboos deliberately was the furthest thing from my mind. Put simply, it was how the story revealed itself to me. It’s also not the scenario that you might choose if you were bandwagon-jumping to try to be topical. This was a female teacher making the moves on a vulnerable boy who has somehow caught her eye and piqued her vanity because he’s not interested in her.

It’s far from the only taboo in the book. Death, birth, child abuse, domestic tyranny and violence, suicide and severe mental illness all emerge as the story unfolds. They’re needed by the story itself. They’re not there because I decided to put them there, like ingredients for a cupcake mix. I don’t even cook by recipes; I make it up as I go along, letting myself be inspired by what comes to mind.

When it comes to reading matter, people generally find that stories where the challenges faced by the characters are mundane, everyday ones, the effect is one of blandness. They’re unchallenging. They don’t engage you with any emotional tugs, that frantic willing-on for the main character. Books like that tend to be rather meh! But a book that dares to touch on certain taboos risks being branded as sensationalist, of jumping on a bandwagon to gain more visibility.

Shortly after my book came out, there has also be a very high profile scandal about a now deceased celebrity, accused posthumously of a series of serious sexual crimes against young girls. If someone had used this premise as a plot for a novel, BEFORE this hit the headlines, I suspect it would have been treated as unbelievable, while the truth that unfolds day by day proves horribly believable and sickening. Accounts of this will be appearing for months, if not years, after the initial reports emerged, but to be honest, if a writer later chooses to use this terrible story as a basis for a novel, then to me that would be a blatant attempt to cash in on the misery of others.

My thoughts are simply that if a novel demands that you explore taboos, then don your pith helmet and get on with it. But if it’s done to fit in with a Zeitgeist or a movement or a fixation with celebrity misdemeanours, or because it may make the novel saleable, then I believe the effects may be other than expected. A novel that delves into psychologically dark areas can be very different depending on how it developed. One that has deliberately used those dark things as devices will perhaps seem far less real and powerful than one where the dark has bloomed of it’s own volition. And I

know which I prefer to read…

 

Filed under: guest blogging

Larry Enright guests on GonzoInk: new book release

I have a guest today: a wonderful writer who is launching a new book. I had to share it with you. I truly enjoyed the first novel: Four Years from Home and this is the sequel. I’m running right out to grab it up.

A Cape May Diamond

New release: A Cape May Diamond

Genre: Literary fiction/mystery

Appropriate for: Age 18+

 

Sequel to the best seller, Four Years from Home, A Cape May Diamond picks up the Tom Ryan story two years after its tragic ending in the discovery of the fate of Tom’s youngest brother, Harry. It is not required that you first read Four Years from Home before A Cape May Diamond, since it is recapped in brief in the first chapter of the sequel.

 

The result of a chance encounter, A Cape May Diamond can best be described as a story of life, love, and a journey of a thousand years. Here is the narrator’s perspective on it:

It was Monday, May 19th, 1975. I’ll never forget that day. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon that April, and the world was mired in one of its worst recessions ever. Unemployment in the United States was nearly nine percent, inflation even higher, and leadership lacking. The Watergate scandal had cast a smear across American politics, resulting in Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 to avoid impeachment, and his successor’s immediately pardoning him to close the book on an unhappy chapter in U.S. history.

It was not a good time for anyone and a particularly hard time for the old Victorian town of Cape May. The crown jewel of the New Jersey shore had fallen into neglect and disrepair and was dying a slow death. Once the elegant summer home to presidents and kings, it had become the last refuge of the deposed.

That’s where I met Tom Ryan. Tom was a king, or so he would have you believe, but unlike Richard Nixon, when Tom was dethroned, he wasn’t sent home with a slap on the wrist. He was sent to prison. He was a convicted draft dodger, but one of the lucky ones released early by President Ford as part of his mass clemency after Nixon’s pardon. The problem was, Tom had nowhere to go when he got out, so he took the money his dad mailed to him and spent it on a bus ticket to get as far away as possible to a place where nobody cared who he was or what he had done, a place where nobody cared about anything. That place was Cape May.

As hard a time as it was for everyone, it was harder for me because that was the day I met Tom Ryan. I should have turned and walked away. I knew it when he first looked at me, but I didn’t, not my first mistake, but one that would make Monday, May 19th, 1975 the hardest day of my life.

This is the story of how Tom Ryan and I met and how things never quite work out the way you think. You might find a love story in here somewhere. You might not. You might find a message hidden in one of the nickel pop bottles collected by the beachcombers from some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. You might even find a little mystery, but life is a mystery, isn’t it?

 

About the author:

Larry Enright was born to Irish Catholic first-generation immigrants and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His works include: the best seller Four Years from Home (2010), A King in a Court of Fools (2011), Buffalo Nickel Christmas (2011), 12|21|12 (2012), and A Cape May Diamond.

 

 

Filed under: guest blogging

It’s Alive and there’s goodies

It’s Alive!

Get it now from Amazon

I feel like Dr. Frankenstein on the night the lightning struck his creation and gave it life. Why is this you might ask?

Blood Witch is live! So far, it’s showing on Amazon and Kobo and will soon be up at BN, Sony, and Itunes! Over the last few months, I’ve pieced together as much information as I can for the series into this second book without giving away too much. Book three is already sizzling like a hotdog on a roasting stick. (OK, so the analogy sucks, but I think it’s fun because I just came home from a wonderful camping trip in the backwoods.)

If you’ve been waiting for it, the wait it over. If you’ve not read the first book in the series: Water Witch, then what are you waiting for? It’s FREE on Amazon Sept 17, 2012, (regularly priced at $2.99) There’s also a prequel story that comes free as often as I can make it, but it’s typically 99cents. Seeds of the Soul, so if you’re reading this post after Sept 17 and aren’t sure you want to try me on for 2.99, why not grab the cheapie short story?

Anywho, I’d love to hear from you as you read book 2. Please feel free to comment or leave a review. In fact, the more reviews I can get, the happier Amazon seems to be and starts to treat me less like a captive in the depths of their jungle. Reviews are good m’k?

Plus: Join the squirrel army newsletter and get news of Book three as it moves along, chances to have your say in the evolution of the book as I write it, and a few lovely little freebies along the way.

AND:

Just because I love a good party, I’m offering a bunch of freebies from Amazon on launch day (Sept 17) So go grab a few while the going’s good.

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Filed under: Thea bits

neat lil indie author blog

As you can see, I’ve mostly been on hiatus from social media for the month of August, but I did find a neat lil blog that is full of info, and so I had to share it. No big post today, just a comment that this blog is growing and is filling with really cool info.

If you’re like me and devour as much info as you can on this indie publishing realm, then you HAVE to stop at Indie Author Anonymous.

You’ll be glad you did.

Filed under: Uncategorized

8 award winning books for 99cents

Readers! Eight award winners in the 2012 eFestival of Words “Best of the Independent eBook Awards” have grouped together to offer you an amazing opportunity. They’ve reduced the prices of their award-winning novels to 99 cents for August 27 and 28th!

Whether you like to read mysteries, romance, horror, young adult, women’s fiction, or fantasy, this group has it. Are you a writer yourself? Do you want to learn all about digitally publishing your next masterpiece? They’ve got you covered there too.

Get all eight award-winning ebooks for the price of one single paperback!

Award Winners

Best Mystery/Suspense: Dead is the New Black by Christine DeMaio-Rice

Best Non-Fiction: DIY/Self-Help: Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran

Best Horror: 61 A.D. by David McAfee

Best Romance: Deadly Obsession by Kristine Cayne

Best Young Adult: The Book of Lost Souls by Michelle Muto

Best Fantasy/Urban Fantasy and Best Novel: The Black God’s War by Moses Siregar III

Best Chick Lit/Women’s Lit: Carpe Bead’em by Tonya Kappes

Award for Best Twist (“I’ve Been Shyamalaned”): The Survival of Thomas Ford by John A.A. Logan

Here’s a one-stop shopping link for your convenience: http://amzn.to/MO7qBY

Happy reading!

Filed under: guest blogging

Water Witch is Indie Book of the Day

I’m humbled and shocked to receive notice that Water Witch was reader nominated for Indie Book of the Day. I’m seriously over the moon. i even got a stellar looking badge. Wanna See? Huh? Wanna?

The entry is here at Indie Book of the Day Home

permalink here: at Indie Book of the Day Winner

Filed under: Thea bits

FREE today

FREE today: Sometimes to save a world, you have to destroy it. SEEDS OF THE SOUL: Grab it and share.

http://www.amazon.com/fantasy-connect...

Writing Backwards to go Forwards

Or: it’s Water Witch Wednesday

by Thea Atkinson

I know some of you are looking forward to the release, and some of you are ambivalent, but I’m pretty stoked. I’m so close to the end, it’s ca-razy.

Elemental Magic is growing, and that means if I’m to plot out 4 novels, I really had to know where I was going. The backstory of the world I was creating, the motivations of certain characters, all had to make sense. I found myself having to write backstory for the series and those backstories took (and are taking) a life of their own. I imagine I’ll have two parallel series on the go at the same time: One a series of shorts, and one a series of midlength novels.

So for those who actually are looking forward to the release of book 2, I thought I’d whet your appetite as well as give you some meat to digest.

Exclusive to Amazon

I’m offering the first of the back stories (Seeds of the Soul) for free on Aug 2, 2012. I’m posting today, mostly because the book is live, but it’s not free, and it often takes a while for folks to check their mails, blogs, and such. I thought I’d give you plenty of notice.

Besides, it’s Water Witch Wednesday, and while I can’t offer you the freebie today (Amazon won’t let me), I can at least give you the news.

Blurb:

Sometimes to save a world, you must destroy it.

The witches of Etlantium are charged with keeping the children of Liliah safe, but when an oracle accuses the ruler of seeking to destroy his own city through civil war, there is only one witch brave enough to do what must be done.

Readers of Water Witch will find this background story jammed full of historical intrigue, enchantment, and old world mythology and legends with just a dose of reincarnation theory thrown in. Seeds of the Soul is the beginning of an epic fantasy series for all ages but is recommended for those readers over 16.

So have you ever found yourself back pedalling and having to write the story that happened before your story? Do tell!

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If you liked this post, please do share.

 

Thea is the author of several novels that she considers left of mainstream. You can find her on Smashwords, BN, Kobo, Sony, Apple

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Filed under: writerwednesday exercises