K.C. Sprayberry's Blog, page 162

Teaser Tuesday ~ A.B. Funkhauser ~ Heuer Lost and Found

Heuer Lost And FoundUnapologetic Lives Book 1A. B. Funkhauser
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Metaphysical, Paranormal, Dark Humor
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Date of Publication:  April 23, 2015
Number of pages:        237Word Count:                66,235
Formats available:       Electronic, Paper Back
Cover Artist: Michelle Crocker
ISBN/EAN13:  1625262043 / 9781625262042
ASIN:  B00V6KLAMA




Book Description:      
Unrepentant cooze hound lawyer Jürgen Heuer dies suddenly and unexpectedly in his litter-strewn home. Undiscovered, he rages against God, Nazis, deep fryers and analogous women who disappoint him.
At last found, he is delivered to Weibigand Brothers Funeral Home, a ramshackle establishment peopled with above average eccentrics, including boozy Enid, a former girl friend with serious denial issues. With her help and the help of a wise cracking spirit guide, Heuer will try to move on to the next plane. But before he can do this, he must endure an inept embalming, feral whispers, and Enid’s flawed recollections of their murky past.
Is it really worth it?


“Heuer” as in “lawyer”: Heuer the Lawyer





Short Excerpt:
Two Weeks Ago
The house, like the man who lived in it, was remarkable: a 1950s clapboard-brick number with a metal garage door that needed serious painting. Likewise, the windows, which had been replaced once in the Seventies under some home improvement program, then never again. They were wooden and they were cracked, allowing wasps and other insects inside.
This was of little consequence to him.
The neighbors, whom Heuer prodigiously ignored, would stare at the place. Greek, Italian, and house proud, they found the man’s disdain for his own home objectionable. He could see it on their faces when he looked out at them through dirty windows.
To hell with them.
If the neighbors disapproved of the moss green roof with its tar shingles that habitually blew off, then let them replace it. Money didn’t fall from the sky and if it did, he wouldn’t spend it on improvements to please strangers.
They were insects.
And yet there were times when Jürgen Heuer was forced to compromise. Money, he learned, could solve just about anything. But not where the willful and the pernicious were concerned. These, once singled out, required special attention.
Alfons Vermiglia, the Genovese neighbor next door, had taken great offense to his acacia tree, a towering twenty-five foot behemoth that had grown from a cutting given to him by a lodge brother. The acacia was esteemed in Masonic lore appearing often in ritual, rendering it so much more than just mere tree. In practical terms, it provided relief, offering shade on hot days to the little things beneath it. And it bloomed semi-annually, whimsically releasing a preponderance of white petals that carried on the wind mystical scent—the same found in sacred incense and parfums.
What horseshit.
It was a dirty son of a bitch of a tree that dropped its leaves continuously from spring to fall, shedding tiny branches from its diffident margins. These were covered in nasty little thorns that damaged vinyl pool liners and soft feet alike. They also did a pretty amazing job of clogging Alfons’ pool filter, turning his twenty-five hundred gallon toy pool green overnight.
This chemistry compromised the neighbor’s pleasure and it heightened his passions, blinding Alfons to the true nature of his enemy. He crossed over onto Heuer’s property and drove copper nails into the root system. It was an old trick, Byzantine in its treachery; the copper would kill the tree slowly over time leading no one to suspect foul play.
But Heuer was cagey and suspicious by nature, so when the tree displayed signs of failure, he knew where to look.
The acacia recovered and Alfons said nothing. Heuer planted aralia—the “Devil’s Walking Stick”—along the fence line and this served as an even thornier reminder that he knew. And if there was any doubt at all, he went further by coating his neighbor’s corkscrew hazel with a generous dose of Wipe Out.
Intrusive neighbors and their misplaced curiosities were, by turns, annoying and amusing and their interest, though unwanted, did not go unappreciated. The Greeks on the other side of him weren’t combative in the least and they offered gardening advice whenever they caught him out of doors. The man, Panos, talked politics and cars, and expressed interest in the vehicle that sat shrouded and silent on Heuer’s driveway. He spoke long and colorfully about the glory days of Detroit muscle cars and how it all got bungled and bargained away.
“They sacrificed an industry to please a bunch of big mouths in Hollywood,” Panos would rant in complete disregard for history: Al Gore and Global Warming didn’t kill the GTO; the OPEC oil crisis did. But there was no point in telling him that.
Panos was an armchair car guy and incurable conspiracy theorist. He also kept to his side of the fence, unlike his wife, Stavroula, who was driven by natural instinct. Not content to leave an unmarried man alone, she routinely crossed Heuer’s weedy lawn, banging on the door with offers of food and a good housecleaning.
Heuer had no trouble accepting her cooking. But he declined her brush and broom. Was it kindness, or was she trying to see inside? He suspected the latter.
No one was ever seen entering Heuer’s house and while this piqued public interest, he never gave in, not even to those who were kind to him. He liked Panos and Stavroula and he regretted poisoning their cat.
But not enough to let them in to his home.
Others on the street had less contact with him. Canvassers at election time would disturb him, in spite of the lawn sign warning the solicitous away. That this didn’t apply to neighbor kids brave enough to pedal cookies and magazine subscriptions in spite of the sign, was a testament, perhaps, to some residual soft spot in his heart that endured.
Even so, he knew that people talked about him and, frankly, he had trouble accounting for their fascination. Short, curt, bespectacled, he courted an ethos that favored enforced detachment. When people got close enough to hear him speak, they detected a trace of an accent. Now faded after years of U.S. residency, his speech still bore the unmistakable patterns of someone undeniably foreign. Elaborate, overwrought and heavy on the adverbs, he spoke very much like his neighbors. Yet the distance between them was incalculable…




About the Author:

A.B. Funkhauser is a funeral director, classic car nut and wildlife enthusiast living in Ontario, Canada. Like most funeral directors, she is governed by a strong sense of altruism fueled by the belief that life chooses us and we not it.
“Were it not for the calling, I would have just as likely remained an office assistant shuffling files around, and would have been happy doing so.”
Life had another plan. After a long day at the funeral home in the waning months of winter 2010, she looked down the long hall joining the director’s office to the back door leading three steps up and out into the parking lot. At that moment a thought occurred: What if a slightly life-challenged mortician tripped over her man shoes and landed squarely on her posterior, only to learn that someone she once knew and cared about had died, and that she was next on the staff roster to care for his remains?
Like funeral directing, the writing called, and four years and several drafts later, Heuer Lost and Found was born.
What’s a Heuer? Beyond a word rhyming with “lawyer,” Heuer the lawyer is a man conflicted. Complex, layered, and very dead, he counts on the ministrations of the funeral director to set him free. A labor of love and a quintessential muse, Heuer has gone on to inspire four other full length works and over a dozen short stories.
“To my husband John and my children Adam and Melina, I owe thanks for the encouragement, the support, and the belief that what I was doing was as important as anything I’ve tackled before at work or in art.”
Funkhauser is currently working on a new manuscript begun in November during NaNoWriMo 2014.





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Interview Part II 
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PRAISE
“The macabre black comedy Heuer Lost And Found, written by A.B. Funkhauser, is definitely a different sort of book!  You will enjoy this book with its mixture of horror and humour.”—Diana Harrison, Author ALWAYS AND FOREVER
“This beautifully written, quirky, sad, but also often humorous story of Heuer and Enid gives us a glimpse into the fascinating, closed world of the funeral director.”—Yvonne Hess, Charter Member, The Brooklin 7
“The book runs the gamut of emotions. One minute you want to cry for the characters, the next you are uncontrollably laughing out loud, and your husband is looking at you like you lost your mind, at least mine did.” http://teresanoel.blogspot.ca/2015/05/heuer-lost-and-found-unapologetic-lives
“The writing style is racy with no words wasted.”—David K. Bryant, Author TREAD CAREFULLY ON THE SEA

“For a story centered around death, it is full of life.”—Rocky Rochford, Author RISE OF ELOHIM CHRONICLES
“Like Breaking Bad’s Walter White, Heuer is not a likeable man, but I somehow found myself rooting for him. A strange, complicated character.”—Kasey Balko, Pickering, Ontario
Raw, clever, organic, intriguing and morbid at the same … breathing life and laughter into a world of death.
—Josie Montano, Author VEILED SECRETS

Dialogue Versus Narrative

An insidious disease has crept into the world of novel writers. One doesn’t notice it much at first, but as you concentrate on your newly purchased book, you suddenly discover you’re caught up in this problem and there is no way out.
Your eyes scan cleverly crafted words. The plot unfolds. Tension mounts…
No, there is no tension and you find yourself slowly getting frustrated at the same plodding pace of your new book. Your attention drifts. You begin thinking about how the kitchen floor needs scrubbing, there is dinner to plan, and the children could probably use some assistance cleaning their bedrooms. Your planned afternoon diversion—reading the latest novel everyone else claims is the best thing to arrive in forever—has become a boring task.
You feel cheated. The only emotion you feel is anger. With no reluctance at all, you set aside the book and find yourself taking care of housework, errands, or checking out social media. You’re seriously thinking about writing a review that will inform the world just how awful your experience with this book was, but decide it’s not worth the effort when you see the myriad of five star reviews given. It seems everyone but you is gushing over the brilliance of Author X, even though you know better.
What has this author done?
The author has committed the crime of not separating narrative and dialogue. Instead of shortening sentences to create tension. Ignoring the rules that say dialogue must be separated from narrative, and that paragraphs shouldn’t be so long as to lose reader attention, more and more authors are leaning on the “I don’t know when to break paragraphs, so I’m going to keep going until I decide to change the pace.”
The writing world has a lot of rules. Yes, authors are allowed to break those rules. Before you can do that, though, you have to follow the rules, learn when and where you can break them, and do so judiciously.
There are arguments against this statement. They seem to be very good arguments, until we explore the reasons for those rules.
Let’s explore the reasons and why you, the author, should start let go of them.
“This is my style. The readers will love it.”
Yes, every author has a particular style. Those using this excuse have fallen into the trap of thinking that they can do as they please once they build up a following and that their readers will stay with them no matter what they do.
“Rules? I don’t need no stinkin’ rules.”
Uh, yes you do. The rules are there for a reason. That reason is that your readers expect quality for their money, and you’re not giving them that.
“My book demands that I have endless paragraphs with multiple speaker within them.”
Really? Do you really think that excuse will fly? Not happening.
Why do these excuses and many others not work? Because they are a lame reason for an author to be lazy. Endless sentences connected with multiple conjunctions bring about a condition known as eye slide. The reader’s eye literally slides over the words while their brain refuses to commit the words to memory. They’re bored, tired, ready to quit at any second. You are about to lose a fan.
What can you do to remedy this situation? There are a few several ways to improve your writing and gain back old fans while developing new ones.
Use long paragraphs sparingly. Don’t dump information about a scene or describe the new person who just arrive in your story from birth to that second. Incorporate your description into the action, but please don’t use the hackneyed phrases such as “his blue eyes locked onto her face.” or “her wild blonde mane fluttered in a breeze.” Be original. Grab your reader’s interest and hold it throughout the book.
Never, ever, just plain don’t have multiple speakers in the same paragraph, split up with many different situations. Give your reader a break. Don’t make them lose the connection as to who is saying what to whom while they were doing what. Put your narrative into different paragraphs. Make certain the reader gets who is talking and who is doing what to whom.
Don’t bore your reader when they should be breathlessly parsing the action leading up to the defining moment. Ditch the commas, conjunctions, and semi-colons. Go for the short, simple sentences during a tense scene. Even single word sentences are allowed here. The page turning will improve. You will soon have a hooked reader and a devoted fan.
Remember the golden rule of writing: You are pounding out the story because it demands to be told. To tell the story right, you need to find readers who will stick with you.

Teaser Tuesday ~ Servant of The Blood ~ Mel Massey

Out of Control Characters welcomes Mel Massey, author of Servant of The Blood: Allatu. This paranormal book is Mel’s fifth book.
About the Author:
Mel Massey is a native Texan but has called California, Florida, Missouri, and Washington home. Mel went to college in California and studied Cultural Anthropology where her field of study had a huge impact on the creation of the Earth's Magick series. Mel is also politically active and a (sometimes loud) supporter for equal rights, non-GMO products,& animal rights.
Mel can be found tweeting nonsense or having hilarious discussions with readers on Facebook. Occasionally, she leaves those particular vices and writes about magick, witches, monsters and all the lovely dark things lurking in the shadows.




Blurb :
The Servant of the Blood, Allatu, will always come when called and has for generations. She will fulfill wishes - for a price. Set in Tunisia, an ancient creature is called to do her master's bidding but nothing comes without a price.



Teaser: Two covered figures, one bent with age and the other a child, quietly made their way from the main house into the night. The older of the two pulled the smaller one along in the dark by the hand as they walked further and further into the shadows.            This was the night of the new moon. It was the perfect chance to see the deed done. If what her son, Samir, told her was true, this would be the last chance she would have. She could not let her son and his family fall to ruin. She would not allow it. They thought her an old and feeble woman. True, the years have taken their toll on her body – but not her mind. Her mind was as keen as it ever was.            She remembered many things. Many lost and forgotten things handed down to her by her own grandmother. For many years, she had forgotten them all. Her marriage, her duties as a wife, and then motherhood whisked those tales away as if a hawk swooped down and carried them off. Only as she lay in her birthing bed, laboring to bring her sons into the world, did pieces of the tales return. They gave her strength. She was a wife, mother, and now a grandmother – but once she was Luja who knew the family’s secrets.             Now, after so many years had passed, she turned once again to those memories of her grandmother. The new moon was when one did this sort of thing, she remembered. Her granddaughter, Hala, was her ever-present shadow and she meant to share this thing with her. She pulled the sleepy child along in the dark, headed for the farthest corner of the gardens.            “I’m tired, Grandmother.” Hala whispered.            “Hush, child. We have things to do, you and I.” She looked once more over her shoulder and pushed on, past the unkempt and dying gardens to the farthest corner beside the stone wall. “I think this will do.”            She handed Hala a small bundle wrapped in cloth before kneeling on the ground. She felt around until she found a stick big enough to suit her needs.  With more force than she knew she still possessed, the old woman began to dig a hole beneath the olive tree. Her arthritic hands ached,but her spirit soared. She would see this thing done. It had to be done. No one else knew what she did. She would save her family.            Hala sat heavily on the ground, her head resting in her hands as she watched her grandmother dig. That was good. Let her see each step. Let her understand there are ways beyond those of the modern world to get what one needs. Tonight, she was herself again. She imagined herself the young and beautiful Luja who had a wild spirit and a quick temper.  In the morning, she would be Grandmother again… but not yet.             Satisfied with the size of the hole, Luja reached for the bundle in Hala’s arms. She snatched it from her and anxiously unwrapped the contents.  The girl’s curiosity roused her from her fatigue. She leaned forward to see the objects of the bundle laid out in the dirt. A precious bowl of honey and two figs sat beside another, longer item.            Luja carefully began unwrapping linen from around it. It was sacred to her family, her grandmother told her. It was only to be used in the direst of circumstances. How to use it was only taught to the daughters of the family, for men were not permitted to touch such things.            “What is that, Grandmother?” Hala whispered.            “Our salvation, sweet girl.” From the folds of aged linen, a statue emerged. It was carefully made. The age, Luja did not know. She knew it was delicate and priceless. It was made from clay but held together by a thin layer of gold. It was the image of a woman, naked but for carvings on the body. She did not know what they meant but she showed Hala the statue reverently. It was as shiny as the day Luja’s own grandmother showed it to her. She remembered her voice shook as she told Luja of the power in the statue and how it worked.  Luja asked her grandmother if she would ever use it. “I would not dare,” she told her. Well, Luja dared.            “Who is it? Why is she naked?”            “She is the one who will help our family.” Luja told her.            “How? Papa says we have no money and soon we’ll be living on the streets.  Are we going to sell this, Grandmother? Sell it to pay the money Papa owes?” Hala’s words drove a knife into her heart. No child should know of the woes of her parents. Samir was foolish and selfish to say such things where the children could hear. But his foolish and selfish ways were the reason they were in such dire straights. He gambled what they had and risked everything on dreams that never came true.            “No, my child. We will not sell her. She is priceless and too powerful to sell, but she can help us in other ways. Give me your hand,” Luja carefully placed the golden statue in the hole and reached for Hala. “It will only hurt for a moment.” Before the child could understand, Luja pulled a knife from the folds of her dress and made a small cut in the palm of her hand.            “Ouch, Grandmother!” Hala tried to pull her hand back but Luja kept it firmly grasped over the gold statue.            “She only requires a little blood, child.  When you come of age, you will bleed every month. Blood is nothing to women. Men like to think they know of blood and pain but we are the ones who truly know.  Now, you know the power of your blood. It is precious because you are a virgin, unspoiled by men. Mine would not do for this. There,” she released her grip on the girl’s hand and watched as the crimson droplets painted the gold surface. “That is enough.”            “Who is she?” Hala asked, holding her injured hand close to her chest.            “She is the servant of the blood. She is the giver of desires and the force of the Mother. I do not know her name. She is what she has always been to our family – our salvation and our curse.”            “What do we do now?”            “We bury her, Hala. Then leave the offerings. If they are pleasing, if we are pleasing, she will hear them and come to answer our prayers.”            “Is it right what we are doing, Grandmother? I’m not sure Papa will approve,” Hala said as she stood.            “Certainly, he wouldn’t. If he did, I should question my actions.”            “I don’t understand–”             “Never you mind, my dear. Come, help me cover her and set these offerings to right.”            “How will we know? How will we know if she will help us or not, Grandmother?” Hala asked as she scooped dirt back into the hole.            “I am not certain. We women must do what we can to save those we love. Here, hand me that bowl.” Luja placed the bowl of honey directly above the buried statue. “There, we have done what we can. It is out of our hands now.”             Luja and Hala covered their heads once again and silently made their way back through the garden toward the house. The girl still held her injured hand close to her chest and her grandmother pulled her along in the dark. It had been years since Luja felt so alive. She committed a great sin tonight. This sin was one she would not apologize for. She was a woman and women must do what they can in the shadows to see their families prosper in the light of day.
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The Balancing Act

As a multi-published author in addition to being an editor-in-chief, I have had to learn how to do a balancing act. That is, I have had to learn how to promote my books, do my job, and write new books. This isn’t something that I learned easily and often found myself forgoing writing in order to accomplish the other two jobs.
How do you, as an author, juggle the many hats we wear in the current publishing climate?
First, I learned to use auto-schedulers for my tweets. That’s not to say that I don’t spend time on Twitter daily, but I’ve reorganized how I spend my time there. Instead of stopping every hour or so to tweet about one of my books, I first used HootSuite, but later changed to Tweet Jukebox to set up my daily tweets. The reason for switch was that Tweet Jukebox offers me the opportunity to set up my tweets and allow them to decide on the time they are sent out every day. With HootSuite, I had to set up tweets for each day and what time they would go out. That often took several hours on one day of the month to get everything done.
With my Twitter promotion under control, and a spreadsheet set up so that I can easily change the tweets every month or so, I turned my attention to my Facebook fan page. That, too, could have been down through an auto posting system, but I continue to do this one each morning before I start working. Using that time to be creative allows my juices to flow. Yes, you must post to your fan page daily. And you shouldn’t always put up links and cry out, “Buy my book.” I’ve tried to pare down the buy links to twice or three times a week. In between, I use interesting pictures, cover art, and writing related memes. Other times, I’ll post about what project I’m working on, the progress being made, and give a ta-ta, back to writing farewell.
That’s not the end of boosting your fan page, as I recently discovered. You should like and then share the post you’ve just done. This will assist in boosting how many people see the post and you can eventually end up with new likes.
My blog is another thing that has had a makeover recently. Instead of concentrating solely on book releases, I am now doing Monday Blog posts about the writing world and Tuesday Teasers of other authors’ books. Plans are in the works to create a young adult #SundayBlogShare with other young adult authors. Wednesday through Saturday will be for book releases or guest posts.
Each of these things now consume far less of the little time I have for writing my books and I’ve discovered that this planning has given me what I’ve missed for so long—time to write and create new stories.
Look into what you’re doing to promote your books. If you only have one book out, this is the time to start streamlining your promotion work. If you are a multi-published author, you might find these tips very handy.

Pre-order Release ~ Ghosties Trouble to the Max!

About the Author:
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in Northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines. Three of her books (Softly Say Goodbye, Who Am I?, and Mama’s Advice) are Amazon bestsellers. Her other books are: Take Chances, Where U @, The Wrong One, Pony Dreams, Evil Eyes, Inits, Canoples Investigations Tackles Space Pirates, The Call Chronicles 1: The Griswold Gang, The Curse of Grungy Gulley, Paradox Lost: Their Path, Canoples Investigations Versus Spacers Rule and Starlight. Additionally, she has shorts available on Amazon: Grace, Secret From the Flames, Family Curse … Times Two, Right Wrong Nothing In Between, and The Ghost Catcher.



Blurb:
Ghosts are popping up all over Landry. The town is being overrun and no one knows why—least of all Hailey Hatmaker and her Ghosties crew. Only none of these ghosts are talking. They’re terrified of something that only Hailey and her team can figure out. Something which could prove disastrous for them all.




Excerpt:
It felt so good to discover ghostly action in Landry once again. The Ghosties had just finished a dry spell like no other we had ever seen. We’d just gone through five months with nary a ghost to bother us. No goo oozing out of heating vents, or papers flying out of hands to plaster against the ceiling.
The call this morning had me, the fantastic, fabulous Hailey Hatmaker, gathering my group together lickety-split. We met up on the run, and raced all the way over to Bank of Landry. Once there, we had almost danced with glee at what greeted us. That was an hour ago. This particular ghost was proving far more difficult to exterminate than we had anticipated.
We could have got harsh long ago. I grinned. I sure don’t want this to end any time soon. I’m having fun again.
“You won’t stick around. No ghost has ever ignored me.”
I planted my pink and white beret more firmly on my head and darted forward. When I put on white jeans and a peppermint pink t-shirt this morning, I never expected an emergency call.Nope, I wasn’t a cop, a firefighter, or even a paramedic. I had my thirteenth birthday just before Halloween and started dealing with ghosts nine years ago. Me and my fellow Ghosties had helped Landry, Georgia deal with weird hauntings, and this one proved we had a lot more ghostbusting to do in the future.
“Banks don’t give out free samples,” I yelled. “Tell me who you are, and what you want.”That should have worked, except for one little thing. The wispy man behind the counter wearing a baggy black coat, vest, and pants with a white shirt ignored me. With a frantic expression and a bobble of his checkered bow tie as he swallowed, he tossed more money in the air. It was the worst thing to do when the Ghosties carried weapons that brought instant obedience from the other ghosts we had encountered.
I signaled the other Ghosties over. They gathered in a circle, two on each side of me.
“Did you get the dirt?” I asked.
“The manager said he worked here in 1912,” Annie Knott said. “He went bonkers after the Titanic sank.”
She tucked one side of her chin length, light red hair behind an ear after delivering the current info in a clipped voice. Her green eyes darted from side to side when the ghost cackled.
“Did he do this when it happened?” Freddie Conders asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure that he won’t quit because we asked nice. Lemon juice and salt?”
“No other way to handle it.” I pulled out a spritzer from a fanny pack. “Sly, Freddie, take the left. Annie, you’re in the middle. Tink and I will handle the right. Don’t miss.”
Sylvia ‘Sly’ Cherboom broke into giggles while Tinker ‘Tink’ Kacklin groaned. None of the others ever lost a chance to remind him about the day he doused one of our sworn enemies. He still claimed that it was an accident.
Like the rest of us wouldn’t have loved to cover Suzie in lemon juice and salt. Tink really needs to explain that better than he has.
“Places,” I said.
Tink held up a salt sprayer, a baby bottle with the tip of the nipple sliced off. I stood beside him with a spritzer filled to the brim with lemon juice. Annie faced our target. She had a weapon in each hand since she was such a great shot. Sly and Freddie hauled out their containers and skidded to their position.
“One last chance,” I said to the spook. “Leave. Don’t come back.”
The ghost tossed a bundle of hundreds into the air. The Ghosties fired. Our target sizzled and howled before vanishing.


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Solstice Publishing Scavenger Hunt!

Answer this question on the Solstice Publishing website and go to the next blog. Good luck!

Spotlight on Kay LaLone ~ Family Secret

Out of Control Characters welcomes our friend, Kay LaLone, and her new book, Family Secret. Kay has been with us in the past and we are very happy to host her again, with this new, interesting YA book.
About the Author
I’m Kay LaLone author of Ghostly Clues, my first MG novel. Family Secret is my first YA novel. Both published by MuseItUp. I live in Michigan with my husband and teenage son (two older sons and a daughter-in-law and my first grandbaby live nearby) and two dogs. I love to get up every morning and write about ghosts, the paranormal, and things that go bump in the night. I write PB, MG and YA novels. No matter the books I write, I want my readers to feel like they have met a new friend. I’m an avid reader of just about any type of book (mystery, paranormal, and ghost stories are my favorites). I do reviews and post them on my website and blog. I love to collect old books, antiques, and collectibles. You can find many of my antiques and collectibles selling on ebay and at fleamarkets.





Tag lineSixteen-year-old Thomas Patrick Henry is thrown into a web of secrets and demons after his mother’s murder.
Blurb
On the road to solving his mother’s murder, sixteen-year-old Thomas Patrick Henry discovers a secret his father has kept from him for years. Tom thought Dad’s secret put him in danger, Mom’s secret is far worse. Magic. Witches. Ancient Book of Spells. Magical Amulet. Ghosts. Demons. Tom never thought these things existed until he is face to face with them. There is nothing else to do but destroy the demons before someone else Tom love dies. He already lost his mom and a close friend because this secret was kept from him. No one else will die. No one else will be possessed. Tom faces his demons. A mother’s love gives Tom the strength to slay his demons.




Excerpt
“Ow.” Tom yanked the chain and dragged the burning amulet from under his shirt. Even the chain was warm, but there was no way he was going to take the stupid thing off. He let it drop to his chest and rest warmly on the top of his shirt as he stared at the demon.
“It’s not your grandfather,” Tom whispered. Anger rolled around inside him because of what this thing did to Sarah.
The dark figure stepped out of the shadows causing the boys to take two steps back. The demon looked like a man dressed in thunderous storm-like clouds from head to toe. Even his face was black and the eyes a dimly puke-yellow that churned Tom’s stomach. He felt Rob’s heavy breathing just inches behind him, but it didn’t stop a chill from shimmering up his spine like fingernails on a chalkboard.
“I know who you are.” Tom tried to sound confident even though his voice shook with fear. He swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
The demon raised a shadowy arm and then his stormy cloud-like body started to swirl like a mini tornado. In a gust of black smoke, the demon shot up into the air and zipped right over Tom and Rob’s heads. The boys ducked and laid flat on the wet grass, afraid the demon would consume them.
Tom turned his head to see the black smoke head toward Mr. Watson’s house. Tom got to his feet while Rob remained on the ground. The black smoke swarmed over the house and then drifted back down. It slithered around the house like a snake looking for a place to sneak in, circling several times before seeping through the crack in the window and disappearing inside.
Rob scrambled to his feet. “That thing is inside my grandfather’s house.” His voice was high-pitched in fear. “My…” He glanced toward the empty driveway. Then he sighed. “Mom must still be at the hospital.”
Tom touched Rob’s arm to prevent him from doing something crazy. He didn’t want another one of his friends to get hurt by this thing.
“We need to do something, but I don’t know what.” Tom glanced over to the tents in Granddad’s backyard, hoping Matt or Granddad would come running to save the day. But there was no movement over there.
Inside the house, Jake growled and then started to bark wildly. Before Tom could stop him, Rob dashed upon the back porch and flung the backdoor open. Jake continued his wild barking as if protecting Rob and the house. If only the dog could save the day, but Tom feared nothing would save them.
A cracking noise caught Tom’s attention, and he turned his head toward what he assumed was Mr. Watson’s bedroom window. The glass appeared pitch black at first, and then a face appeared. The same puke-yellow eyes stared at Tom and gave him an evil grin.
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Teaser Tuesday ~ Kalki Evian ~ Malay A. Upadhyay

Out of Control Characters welcomes Malay A. Upadhyay. We’ll be talking about his book, Kalki Evian and letting you take a peek into this time travel romance novel.  


About the Author:  Malay A. Upadhyay grew up in the Eastern provinces of paradoxical India. Life in the industrial town of Jamshedpur was a quiet affair dotted with crossing social stereotypes at every step. It was perhaps why a part of him changed forever when fate transpired to take him on a week-long Himalayan excursion, introducing him to the simple idea that there were things bigger than any of us, things much more worthy of our time.
After school, he shifted to Southern India to pursue Engineering, following which he joined Accenture. That was pretty much a preset career route of the generation but it was in that small window of transition from school to work that he embarked on a semi-pan India trip that would lead him to pen his first novel. Meanwhile, as the urge to diversify gradually festered, he eventually shifted to Italy to pursue his Masters.
The time at Bocconi University was a period of change. While the academic commitments remained on course, the passion for intense observations, exploration and their expression began to take shape. He was one of 25 individuals selected from around the globe to envisage the future of textile industry for the Board of Directors of Marzotto SpA. A brief stint with a consultancy followed in Dubai before he returned to Milan to finish graduation. Balancing a frantic episode of multitasking routine that virtually turned him to a robot in the winter of 2012-13, he developed his dissertation as if in a race to finish it even before some in the batch before his did. The decision to extend it as fiction was an inevitable fallout.
Malay returned to India and joined his uncle in their entrepreneurial venture in hospitality and began to follow his authorial inclination. By the end of the second year, his book – Kalki Evian: The Ring of Khaoriphea - was ready to come out.
The story of Kalki Evian is inspired as much by legend and characters in real life as the places Malay has travelled to over the years. All three, in his opinion, hold a mystery - a story - worthy of narration. Malay blogs at www.kalkievian.com as a Fly - a concept of humility that aims at the elusively effervescent, ephemeral connection among beings across space and time. That is after all, a belief that underlies every piece of literature ever written.




Blurb:
Every choice we make leads to its own unique consequence. To change the consequence, therefore, one must travel back in time to change the choice. But what if such change, instead of altering our future, simply created another - one that came to exist simultaneously with our world?
This is a story of how one such moment of love led to two parallel futures; a story of how your choices have an impact far beyond the world you know; a phenomenon that we had sensed, and wished for, all along. Set in Italy, while one timeline scales a city of the future where not just people but also things like money evolve, the other cradles itself in an amalgamation of contemporary Europe with ingredients of a new age. Step by step, the story embarks on a journey in a parallel world that we all live in but rarely see.




Excerpt:
The room was as dark as darkness could allow without losing out on charm. There were just two distinct divisions in its ambience, physically divided midway through its height. The roof and the upper half of the walls seemed stretched out into an infinite space, showcasing a starry night, populated with little sparkles beyond count but not without meaning. There lay clear patterns of constellations and distant hints of planets and moving asteroids as if the room had lifted itself up into Earth’s exosphere. And yet, it could not possibly be as the lower half of the room was submerged in soft waves of water, lit up underneath with careful streaks of turquoise light. The projection lay complete with a glimpse of the waterbed superimposed on the floor while their bed lay risen inches above the surface, in between like a hammock.
The three-dimensional theme had come alive with slight sounds of water hitting against the surfaces around even as they moved in little waves. As Friuli stepped in, ripples began to radiate out from her legs. It was all very magical and yet, all very real.Friuli stood in a trance, unmoving. She then turned towards Qin, her lips still parted but with eyes far more at ease than they had been. He took her hand in his as he led her to the bed. He moved along to the northern end of the room while she lay down. Both her legs bent backwards and her head rested on her palm which in turn rested on the pillow. She looked at the sky, wordlessly staring at the stars – static and shooting across – while the sounds of the water filled her senses. She then murmured as if to avoid disturbing the ambience that prevailed in the room, “Thank you.”
Qin looked at her and smiled. He followed it up with an equivalent counter, “Something happened to you back there.” Friuli looked at him and turned back towards the stars. She did not really wish to talk much but then, he deserved to be answered.
“What you said about the past was absurd,” she joked, “but unfortunately, it carried traces of an inconvenient reality. The group of companies that came to nearly monopolize all digital space, through acquisitions and a very smart play of marketing that spanned many years, were led by a similarly ruthless drive of ambitions that marked perhaps the only emotion left in its bearer. Her name was Hope Leosword.”
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Spelling and Grammar

I’ve run into this more and more lately. Authors will fine tune their book until it’s perfect. They’ll spell and grammar check every page. Then they ask others to look the novel over, to see if there are any problems. After all, who wants to send a book that isn’t perfect to a publisher?
That’s really wonderful. It’s quite disconcerting to read a book for submission and discover the author spells every other word incorrectly or has no clue how to use proper grammar. As far as I’m concerned, you might have a potential best seller in that book, but I won’t offer you a contract for it. Nor will many others in the publishing world.
These same authors often never bother to use those same stringent methods on their emails and social media posts. Imagine receiving an email where half the words are misspelled so badly that you have to read a single sentence several times just to understand what the person is trying to tell you. Or having mixed up homophones in a tweet.
Surely this doesn’t happen, you say.
You wouldn’t believe how often this happens. And it’s getting worse. It’s not just authors either. More and more, people are mixing up the use of you’re and your. They misspell words while attempting to use the small keyboards on smart phones and never notice that word is a letter or two wrong from what they wanted to say. Or their smart phone or word processing program auto-corrects the word they meant to use to another word.
Now imagine how everyone reads those posts and tweets after you’ve hit that send button. Not many will actually notice the difference, unless you are with a lot of people who make a living in the word industry. Then you can actually hear the gritting teeth, imagine the grammar police racing toward you with a lecture, or see the eye rolls.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to be as perfect as possible in your posts if you are an author. A slip or two occasionally is fine. We all make mistakes. Consistent bad grammar or poor spelling skills will have people judging your book by your posts. And those people will think your book isn’t worth purchasing if it’s going to be full of errors.
But… but… but, you stutter. My book has been edited. It’s been proofread, and copy edited. There are no mistakes, or very few, in it.
Yes, I say, but how does your potential reader know that? They’re thinking about spending money buying your book. The only way they have to judge what the book is like beyond the cover is you and your posts. If your posts are grammatically incorrect or poorly spelled, you have just lost a lot of potential customers.
Instead of hitting the post or tweet button immediately, take a minute to proofread your post. Think about every word, how it’s used, how it’s spelled, and question if you have done everything right. Treat your posts like you would your book as you were writing it.
Once you’ve done this, you have taken a step in putting your best foot forward, and possibly attracted some new readers.

Teaser Tuesday ~ And Alex Still Has Acne ~ Margaret Egrot

About the Author
Margaret lives in Coventry, in the West Midlands, England. She worked in Wales for nearly 15 years before moving to the Midlands and still has hopes of retiring one day to a little cottage on the Welsh coast. She is married to Rick, a French – Welshman, and has one son, Rob, who lives and works in Thailand with his Thai wife.
Margaret has been writing fiction for the past 5 years. And Alex Still Has Acne, a novel for young adults, is her first full length novel to be published and it draws on her work with teenagers and her Midland surroundings. She has also had a number of short stories published in England and America and several plays performed, or delivered as rehearsed readings, in England and Wales. 




BlurbAnd Alex Still Has Acne is about three teenagers who, on the face of it, have ordinary, comfortable lives.
Life for fourteen year old Alex is OK most of the time. He enjoys school, has a best friend Sam, and a pretty and only mildly irritating younger sister, Nicky. But then Sam starts acting strangely, and so does Nicky – and both insist on sharing secrets with him and making him promise not to tell anyone. Then Nicky goes missing and only Alex feels he knows where to find her. But is Sam anywhere around to help?



Excerpt
       The school bell rang to mark the end of the first lesson of the afternoon. Without showing a trace of sarcasm Miss Smith, the French teacher, thanked the class for being such an attentive bunch and, with a sigh of relief, gathered up her books and retreated for the staff room. A pity, she thought, that smoking was banned everywhere on school grounds – she could really do with a cigarette now. Year 10 were always hard work, especially first thing on a Friday afternoon.       Several students let out a whoop of delight as she left. In her rush to get out of the classroom, Old Smithers (she must have been at least 50) had forgotten to set them homework again. No doubt they would each get an email telling them to revise French verbs or something in time for the lesson on Monday, but they could always deny opening the email on the grounds they never switched on their computers at the weekend. As if!       Sam Rainsworth was slower than the others to collect his books and pens and stuff them into his school bag. He had hardly registered the start of the lesson, let alone the end. And Miss Smith, glad to have a quiet pupil not causing any trouble, had been happy to let him sit dreamily at the back of the class. He got up thoughtfully and left the classroom without speaking to anyone. At the corner of the corridor he found his friend, Alex, waiting for him.       “You OK? Thought you’d gone to sleep in Old Smithers’s class just then.” Alex loomed over him. A year ago both boys had been the same height, Sam just a little thicker set. But Alex had been going through a growing spurt and was now almost a head taller. He hadn’t grown out sideways though and looked chronically under-nourished despite an enormous appetite. ‘Legs like knotted string,’ his mother often said about him, much to his embarrassment.Sam looked up at his friend. “Yep, I’m fine. I was just thinking, that’s all.” Sam carried on down the corridor instead of turning left towards the labs.       “Hey, where are you going?”       “Dunno, home I s’pect.”       “It’s not home time yet, we’ve got double physics, remember?”Sam gave a mirthless smile. “It’s an infringement of my human rights to have double physics last thing on a Friday. Besides I haven’t done the homework.”       “I have...”       “Smart-arse.”       “No, I mean you can copy mine during the lesson and hand it in at the end – Parky never takes the books in till the end.”       Sam paused for a moment, as if thinking about it. He leant down and pulled at one of his socks, then the other. Then he ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it up even more than usual. Finally he looked up at his friend and shook his head.       “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not in the mood.”       He turned from his friend and set off back down the corridor. He wasn’t surprised though to hear lolloping footsteps behind him and to feel a hand on his shoulder. He knew who it was without turning round.       “So, you can resist the lure of physics too then?”       “I like physics, believe it or not,” Alex said. “But you don’t look right – I’m coming with you.”       “Suit yourself.”       Sam shrugged and continued walking in silence out of the school building, across the yard and down the short drive to the main road.  Alex walked along beside him, hunched into his parka hood and whistling softly under his breath.       “I wish you’d cut that.”       “Sorry?”       “That stupid whistling.”       “Sorry, nervous tic. I was worried someone might spot us and haul us back.”       “Well, you’re safe now so you can shut up. You need more practice.”       “Someone’s going to catch up with you soon and write to your parents and then you’ll be for it.”       “As if they’ll care ...”       “So your dad’s really gone then? For good?”       “None of your business.”       “Sorry, only my dad says ...”       “None of his business either.”       “Sorry.”       The pair walked on in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Sam felt inside his parka and drew out a couple of cigarettes and a lighter.       “Want one?”       “Where’d you get those from?”       “Mum. She’s started smoking again since Dad’s gone.”       “Won’t she notice two missing?”       “Nah. I took them from different packets earlier in the week. She couldn’t tell.  She’s too pissed to notice much by bedtime these days.”       “You mean she’s drinking? I never thought your mum would do anything like that. She seems so...”       “Refined? Me neither.Never saw her drink anything more than a small glass of wine with a meal before. She’s different now – sort of lost.”       The boys continued for a while again in silence. Alex couldn’t help noticing that his friend too had a lost look about him. But he had no idea what to do about it. Perhaps just sticking with him for the rest of the afternoon would be a start. After a few long minutes he said: “Well, what are we going to do? No point going into town – I’m skint.”        “Me too, almost. Could we go over to your place?”       “Nah. Dad’s home. He’d slaughter me if I came home from school too early. He’s into school in a big way at the moment. Wants me to do well in GCSEs and so on and go to university. It’d be like his world had fallen in if he found out I’d bunked a lesson. What about your place?”       “Nah, not yet. Too empty when Mum’s not there; too gloomy when she is. Later perhaps – let’s go out on the town first. I’ve probably got enough for a burger and Coke at McDonald’s.”       “That’s settled then. I’m starving.”       “Why am I not surprised?” Alex’s appetite was legendary.       They turned their feet in the direction of the golden arch, a new sense of purpose quickening their step. McDonald’s was pretty full, plenty of people their own age, though their grammar school uniforms, badly concealed under their parkas, marked them out from the other customers. But, after chasing the last crumbs out from the burger wrappers and draining their cans, both boys felt better. Sam even smiled.       Alex belched as he finished his last drop of Coke.        “Oops, pardon – could do with another one of those,” he waved his empty Coke tin in Sam’s direction.       “Sorry, no can do,” he put all his money on the counter between them and counted it. “Only got 60p to my name until I see Dad.”        Suddenly his mobile rang – “Speak of the devil,” he said to no-one in particular and answered the phone. “Hello Dad.”       Alex leant back so as not to eavesdrop, and attentively brushed a mass of crumbs off his chest onto the floor. He watched as his friend grunted and nodded his head to the faint mumbling he could hear coming from the phone.        “Yeah, great,” Sam said eventually, without any visible sign of enthusiasm. “See you same time and place on Sunday.”He switched off and turned back to his friend. Alex could see from Sam’s face that he didn’t want to discuss the call further. He straightened up in his seat as Sam concentrated on gathering up all their food wrappers and depositing them in the waste bin. He looked with mock horror at the ring of crumbs around Alex’s seat.       “God Alex, you’re a messy eater! Well what’ll we do now?”Alex shrugged. “Dunno. It’s still too early to go home.”       “You can come back to my place for tea if you like. It’s not so bad really, and I’m still hungry.”      “Me too. What you got to eat at home?”       “Nothing, unless Mum’s stocked the fridge since breakfast this morning, which, I think not. We’ll have to get something on the way home.”       “But you haven’t got any money.”       “So?”       “So?”       “So, what?”       “Sam, you’re not going to nick stuff are you?”       “All property is theft. Weren’t you paying attention in history last week? At least that’s what I think that Marx bloke said. I need to eat to live and if Mum is too drunk to shop, I’ve got to find other ways of feeding us.”       “Does your dad know?”       “Of course not! Do you think I’m going to shop her to him? Or myself for that matter.”       “I see. But surely he could do something about it, if he knew?”       “Mind your own business, will you? This is my problem and I’ll sort it in my own time. Now, are you coming back to my place for more food or not?”       Alex sat silently for several minutes. He had never knowingly broken the law before, apart from cycling on the pavement - but then his mother preferred him to do that than run risks on the road. He didn’t like the idea at all. But Sam was his friend, and he didn’t like to abandon him either. Moreover, despite himself, he felt a tingling of excitement at what Sam was proposing. Anyway, he could never knowingly give up an opportunity for more food these days.       “Where?” Sam knew his friend was not enquiring where his house was, and felt a glow of pleasure that Alex was in on this with him. He too felt a tingle of excitement, plus a mixture of guilt and fear - but not enough of either to stop him.       “The One-Stop. It’s big enough to have blind corners and small enough to not have any security.”       “You’ve done this before.” It was a statement rather than a question.Sam nodded. “A couple of times. Tried Waitrose first ‘cos that’s where I knew from Mum shopping there – but security follows you round like you are a criminal or something, so I got out of there quick and tried the One-Stop. Easy-peasy there.”
       And it was. At least for Sam it was. Alex was amazed at how smoothly Sam sauntered into the shop. Alex felt hot and sweaty as soon as they got inside and started to take his parka off, knocking into the column of trolleys as he did so. Sam and the shop assistant turned to see what the noise was. He felt his face go bright red, which he knew was not a pretty sight against his ginger hair, and shrunk his neck down into his shirt collar as he pushed the trolleys back into a straight line.       “Idiot,” hissed Sam. “Where are you going to put the stuff if you’ve taken your coat off?”        “Sorry,” Alex whispered back, pulling his coat back over his shoulders, shrinking down further into his collar, and picking up a basket as nonchalantly as he could. He couldn’t help feeling furtive as he looked around him, and he took a sharp intake of breath as his eye caught the poster by the baskets:‘NO SHOPLIFTING – WE ALWAYS PROSECUTE!’He stopped in his tracks, the basket dangling loosely on his arm.       “Idiot,” Sam hissed again, and made to take the basket off him. Then he re-considered. “No. Keep the basket; I’ve got a better idea for you. Take this money ...” – Sam handed over the 60p left from the McDonald’s bill – “... and go round the shop to see if you can buy anything with it, then meet me outside.”        Alex nodded. He could see he was going to be a liability if he stuck with his friend. He was also relieved that he was no longer involved, so couldn’t be prosecuted. That he was now acting as a decoy to distract the sole sales assistant’s attention, so in effect aiding and abetting the commission of a crime, didn’t occur to him.       They met up again just round the corner from the shop. Alex held out a packet of chewing gum and 2p. Sam opened his parka and revealed a packet of bacon, a twin pack of sausage rolls, two jelly trifles and a bag of satsumas. Alex gaped.        “How the heck did you manage all that?”       “Not too bad today. I just grabbed stuff out of the chilled section whilst the assistant was watching you didn’t nick anything in the sweets section, and picked the fruit up by the door on the way out. She just assumed I was with you – even gave me a smile!”       “Well ...” Alex was speechless for a minute. “I still don’t think it’s right.”       “No? Well you try going hungry for a couple of days and see how it feels. I used to feel like you – still do most of the time – but things are a bit different now. Anyway I only nick what I need to eat; only this time I’ve nicked stuff for you too. So you’re going to have to come home with me now.”Alex knew there was some faulty logic in this, but he was partly too impressed, partly too loyal, to say any more. He just followed his friend meekly down the road and back to his house.
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And Alex Still Has Acne