Lance Morcan's Blog, page 11
December 13, 2024
Attn. historical fiction lovers! ‘New Zealand: A Novel’ is FREE on Kindle all weekend
Kindle link: https://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Novel-Lance-Morcan-ebook/dp/B0DPTJTDCQ/
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December 12, 2024
‘New Zealand: A Novel’ is FREE on Kindle this weekend Dec. 14 & 15 PST
To celebrate the launch of my epic historical adventure New Zealand: A Novel, it’s free to download on Kindle on Saturday and Sunday December 14 and 15 PST.
New Zealand: A Novel spans almost 500 years and covers the respective discoveries of New Zealand by Pacific Islanders and Europeans. From the outset the two stories are interposed. It starts in the 1300’s with the departure of Islanders from Hawaiki in search of land far to the south.
The hardy, brown-skinned people who arrive here first call themselves Maori and they call their new home Aotearoa – land of the long, white cloud. The fascinating, eventful and sometimes violent lives of descendants of those first arrivals are traced through the centuries until the arrival of Europeans aboard Captain James Cook’s bark the Endeavour. Cook names the new land New Zealand.
Maoris call the white intruders pakeha. Their arrival heralds a clash of two vastly different ideologies as European civilization collides head on with indigenous culture.
The misunderstandings, tension and bloodshed that follow are relayed as seen through the eyes of one of the Endeavour’s youngest and most engaging crewmembers, Surgeon’s Assistant Nicholas Young, as the vessel embarks on its historic circumnavigation of the country.
Amidst the life-threatening challenges Nicholas faces at sea and on land, the young man finds true love when he meets Anika, a beautiful Maori princess who steals his heart.
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This novel is also available via Amazon as a paperback and will soon be available as a hardcover and audiobook.
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December 11, 2024
New release book the ideal Christmas gift for lovers of historical novels
Image courtesy of book blogger extraordinaire Mary Ann Bernal @BritonandDane
Readers and bookworms, for all your historical, science fiction, adventure, short story and novella reading needs, do yourself a favor and visit Mary Ann Bernal’s fabulous online bookstore at: https://maryannbernal.blogspot.com/
And while you’re there, check out Mary’s generous promotion of my new release historical adventure New Zealand: A Novel at: https://maryannbernal.blogspot.com/2024/12/new-release-new-zealand-novel-by-lance.html
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So, you’re into romance novels, huh? Check out RNG… It has romance novel giveaways galore!
Romance Novel Giveaways has a myriad of giveways, gift cards and competitions on its addictive site! Pay it a visit and be prepared to be blown away!
https://www.romancenovelgiveaways.com
And meet Lauren, the special lady behind RNG >>>
“A former Bankruptcy paralegal enduring Stargardt Disease, I am now a proud Wal-Mart Associate with a passion for cheering on my Cleveland Browns (hey, there’s always next year), binge-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and, of course, reading!
“Launched in August of 2013, Romance Novel Giveaways has been providing quality promotional blog posts for authors in the adult-romance novel genre ever since.
“Each and every blog post contains either a free eBook or a giveaway aimed at the adult-romance novel audience.”
Last but not least, the new release historical adventure-romance New Zealand: A Novel, by Lance Morcan (that’s me!) features as a giveaway in RNG. Be in to win a Kindle-gifted copy of this epic. The competition closes soon.
Pre-Release Sneak Peek and EXCLUSIVE eBook Giveaway This blog post contains affiliate links. Click Here for details.
“Coming soon!
NEW ZEALAND: A NOVEL – For lovers of historical fiction, historical romance, lust and adventure”
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December 9, 2024
Historical adventure-romance ‘New Zealand: A Novel’ FREE on Kindle December 14 & 15
To mark this week’s launch of my historical adventure-romance New Zealand: A Novel, the Kindle version will be free to download on the weekend of December 14 & 15 PST.
The Kindle link is: https://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Novel-Lance-Morcan-ebook/dp/B0DPTJTDCQ
This novel is also available now as a paperback and in early 2025 will be available as a hardcover and audiobook.
The paperback link is: https://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Novel-Lance-Morcan/dp/0473728524/
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Attn. historical fiction lovers! ‘New Zealand: A Novel’ is FREE on Kindle December 10
To mark this week’s launch of my historical adventure-romance New Zealand: A Novel, the Kindle version is free to download on December 10 and again on the weekend of December 14 & 15 PST.
The Kindle link is: https://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Novel-Lance-Morcan-ebook/dp/B0DPTJTDCQ
This novel is also available now as a paperback and in early 2025 will be available as a hardcover and audiobook.
The paperback link is: https://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Novel-Lance-Morcan/dp/0473728524/
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December 7, 2024
Historical adventure ‘New Zealand: A Novel’ launched on Amazon
New Zealand: A Novel, by Kiwi author Lance Morcan, has been launched as a Kindle ebook and publication of the paperback version is imminent. Both versions are exclusive to Amazon.
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPTJTDCQ/
Morcan says New Zealand: A Novel was literally half a century in the making. “It has been a labour of love for 50 years now. I recall, back in 1975, writing a logline for a novel about the discovery of New Zealand first by Maori and then by Europeans. I’ve chipped away at it ever since.”
For Morcan, this is his first solo-authored novel. He usually writes in collaboration with his son James, and together they’ve co-authored about 35 published books both fiction and non-fiction. Several have been regular visitors to Amazon’s bestseller lists over the years. These include their historical novels White Spirit, Fiji: A Novel and Into the Americas, their international thriller The Ninth Orphan and their non-fiction books Genius Intelligence and The Catcher in the Rye Enigma.
Synopsis for New Zealand: A Novel follows:
It’s 1768. A chance meeting at London’s dockyards sees medical student Nicholas Young recruited as Surgeon’s Boy to serve under Captain James Cook aboard a bark called the Endeavour. Ahead of the handsome 17-year-old is a voyage that will test his mettle and take him via Tahiti to uncharted places at the bottom of the world. One of those places being a land Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovered the previous century when he encountered its western shoreline. The land was occupied by tattooed, brown-skinned, warlike people. Tasman called it Nieuw Zeeland.
Nearly five centuries earlier, in 1301 AD, huge, twin-hulled canoes depart the South Pacific Island nation of Hawaiki. Aboard each craft are 80 villagers hand-picked by their rangatira, the mighty Hotu. Raids by enemies from neighbouring islands prompted the decision to flee their homeland. Their destination is a land far to the south. Many weeks later, the survivors aboard Hotu’s canoe sight the eastern shoreline of a rugged land covered by cloud. They call it Aotearoa – land of the long, white cloud.
In 1769, eight months after departing England, Nicholas Young and his crewmates arrive in Tahiti aboard the Endeavour. The Surgeon’s Boy is quickly becoming a man; the journey out was a baptism of fire for him with mid-Atlantic storms resulting in injury and death. In Tahiti, Captain Cook puts his men to work, building an observation post from which he can observe the transit of Venus. Nicholas is excused from shore duties after a local priest, Tupaia, informs Cook that Tahiti’s beautiful queen, Obadia, has invited his Surgeon’s Boy to stay in the village as her guest. Tupaia didn’t mention he convinced the childless queen that Nicholas had been sent to her by the spirits of her ancestors and that he would give her a son. The beautiful queen seduces a surprised but delighted Nicholas, and in the weeks that follow they enjoy long days and nights of lovemaking.
It’s 1501 AD and for the first time the hills of Aotearoa echo to the sounds of war. As the competition for food and land increases, so too does inter-tribal fighting between tribes of the brown-skinned people who now call themselves Maori. Apera, chief of the Te Arawa tribe, leads a war party down the east coast, attacking settlements along the way. Defeated warriors are either enslaved or eaten for cannibalism is widely practised.
October 1769. It’s springtime in Aotearoa. Aboard the Endeavour, Nicholas serves as lookout in the bark’s crow’s nest. Many long weeks have passed since leaving Tahiti. He spies land and shouts, “Land ahoy!” He’s looking at a headland that extends far out into the blue Pacific. So delighted is Cook by the sighting, he names the landmark Young Nick’s Head after his keen-eyed lookout. The captain suspects it’s part of the eastern shoreline of the land Abel Tasman called Nieuw Zeeland. Translating the Dutch to English, Cook renames it New Zealand.
At the same time, a young Maori sits alone on a sandy beach, looking out across a sparkling bay. On his right is the same headland Nicholas spied moments earlier. Moki is the oldest son of the chief of the Ngati Porou tribe and is a proud descendant of Hotu whose battered canoe arrived on this same beach centuries earlier. Moki suddenly jumps to his feet when he sees a tall ship far out to sea. Mistaking its billowing sails for the wings of a giant seabird, he flees inland to his nearby pa, or fortified village, to alert the villagers to the approaching danger.
After anchoring in the bay, Cook dispatches a contingent of his marines ashore. Nicholas and his crewmates look on as the marines are greeted by an impassioned haka, or war dance, performed by Ngati Porou warriors armed with clubs, spears and other Stone Age weapons. The chief’s brother is killed and several warriors wounded in the inevitable violence that follows. So disillusioned is Cook by the conflict, and by the region’s scarcity of wild game, he later names it Poverty Bay.
This first bloody encounter with New Zealand’s indigenous people is a sobering harbinger for what follows.
The Endeavour’s subsequent circumnavigation of the new land is an experience that breaks some men. Amidst the life-threatening challenges they face at sea and on land, Nicholas finds true love when he meets Anika, a beautiful Maori wahine who steals his heart.
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Publication of the hardcover and audiobook versions of New Zealand: A Novel will follow in early 2025.
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December 5, 2024
Final days before launch of my historical adventure epic ‘New Zealand: A Novel’ on Amazon!
Shrouded in cloud at the bottom of the world, this was the land that time forgot: the last sizeable piece of undiscovered land on Earth. Two hundred million years after breaking away from the vast southern continent of Gondwana, Man had yet to leave his footprints on this prehistoric place.
Mythology would have it the land was fished up out of the ocean. In fact, earthquakes and volcanic activity forced it to literally erupt from the seabed. This violent birth left it with a majestic ruggedness that would always reflect its former turbulence.
Over time, its features softened. Scenes of beauty emerged out of the mists. There was a haunting stillness about the land. It was a place of mystery – of magical forests and sparkling lakes and rivers. And the sea surrounded it like some huge tidal moat.
Its isolation ensured it wouldn’t be until well into the First Millennium AD that Man would step foot on these shores. The hardy, brown-skinned people who arrived here called themselves Maori and they called their new home Aotearoa – land of the long, white cloud.
Not until its rediscovery centuries later by European explorers would the land receive the name by which it is known today: New Zealand. Their arrival would herald a clash of two vastly different ideologies as European civilization collided with indigenous culture.
It was a time of conflict, lust and adventure.
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You’ve been reading the blurb for New Zealand: A Novel. It’s a tale of treachery, lust and conflict. It spans almost 500 years and covers the respective discoveries of New Zealand by Pacific Islanders and Europeans. From the outset the two stories are interposed. It starts in the 1300’s with the departure of Islanders from Hawaiki in search of land far to the south.
Coming soon!
View the novel on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221413728-new-zealand
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Book review: ‘Louis Pasteur Condemns Big Pharma: Vaccines, Drugs, and Healthcare in the United States’
This new release book, by American author Stephen Heartland, should be compulsory reading – especially for parents of young children!
In this new age of pandemic predictions, vaccine mandates and mass medication, Louis Pasteur Condemns Big Pharma is extremely timely.
As co-writer of a book that was published pre-COVID-19 and which questions whether childhood immunizations are as safe as claimed, I was drawn to Stephen Heartland’s book because of its timeliness and its enigmatic title. Prospective readers should be aware the title’s clever wording soon becomes clear as present-day health practices are compared to those of bygone days.
The book’s message reflects the growing awareness of the wider public that the major players in the Medical Industrial Complex – Big Pharma in particular – are more interested in treating people with illnesses than in curing people. Clearly, there’s no profit to be had if everyone’s healthy.
While Heartland condemns the evil profits-before-cures approach to medicine, he refreshingly provides solutions, or potential solutions at least, for many shortcomings that dog America’s medical and pharmaceutical sectors.
For those sceptics who still believe the likes of the WHO, government health agencies, politicians, vaccine manufacturers, vaccine distributors and other players in the public health sector can be trusted, they need to read this book! Quickly! Before the next pandemic comes along…as it surely will!
Five stars!
★★★★★
-Lance Morcan
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Louis Pasteur Condemns Big Pharma: Vaccines, Drugs, and Healthcare in the United States is available now via Amazon as a paperback and Kindle ebook. https://www.amazon.com/LOUIS-PASTEUR-CONDEMNS-BIG-PHARMA-ebook/dp/B0DD11313Y/
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217442735-louis-pasteur-condemns-big-pharma
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November 29, 2024
Chief’s son stalked by warriors of enemy tribe in this excerpt from my upcoming epic ‘New Zealand: A Novel’
Moki’s way of hunting was as simple as it was unique. Unique to the Ngati Porou iwi [tribe] at least. It entailed throwing the spear over the head of a kereru [bush pigeon] or any bird for that matter. Tied to the spear was an ordinary fishing net, which, when thrown, trailed behind, entangling the startled bird before it could fly off. His grandfather had taught him the method as a boy, and now he rarely missed snaring a bird when the opportunity presented itself. Once snared, the bird would be decapitated and bled dry in preparation for cooking.
He sighted another kereru. It was perched upon one of the lower branches of a stately rimu tree and seemed oblivious to the approaching danger.
So focused was Moki on stalking the pigeon, he didn’t realise he himself was being stalked. He’d unknowingly crossed paths with five hunters of another iwi. They were members of the Ngati Kahungunu tribe who were long-time enemies of the Ngati Porou. They’d debated amongst themselves whether to kill Moki. Two of them had deemed it too risky as they were trespassing and wished to keep their presence secret, but the other three considered the lone hunter too tempting a target – and so the decision was made: to kill.
As Moki prepared to throw his spear at the kereru, he caught a movement in his peripheral vision. Some instinct prompted him to throw himself to one side. That saved his life, but the spear intended for his chest tore through the flesh in his thigh, its serrated tip lodging in the trunk of the very tree the kereru was perched upon. Grunting in pain, he leapt to his feet as the five hunters emerged from the undergrowth. He identified them immediately: their distinctive dreadlocks and tattoos along with their threadbare sealskin shawls made them unmistakably Ngati Kahungunu. All five looked young, lean and dangerous, and all had the bloodlust in their eyes as they closed in on their prey.
Moki thanked his guardian spirits he still had his spear. If his attackers had waited a moment longer he’d have thrown it at the kereru. That misjudgement cost the nearest hunter – the youngest of the five – his life. Moki thrust his spear’s tip into the hunter’s chest, impaling him. With his free hand, he grabbed the net tied to the spear, swung it about and snared another hunter in its mesh. The entangled hunter, who appeared to be the leader, desperately tried to disentangle himself. Tugging hard on the net, Moki pulled him to the ground and killed him with a savage blow from the club he now wielded. He turned too late to avoid another hunter, the biggest of the five, who crashed into him, knocking him over. They rolled over and over, holding each other tight and each trying to deliver an incapacitating blow with his club.
Fighting for his life, Moki was oblivious to the pain caused by the wound in his thigh or by other wounds he’d sustained. Blood flowed from a nasty scalp wound, causing him to blink rapidly in order to clear his vision. He was vaguely aware of the other two hunters who were awaiting their chance to skewer him with their spears. For the moment they couldn’t use their weapons for risk of accidentally killing their fellow hunter. Moki’s opponent held his club hand in a vice-like grip. Using his free hand, Moki grabbed his enemy by the testicles and squeezed tight. The big hunter screamed in agony and released his grip on his opponent’s wrist. Moki crushed the hunter’s skull with one thunderous swing of his club then leapt to his feet to face the remaining hunters.
The loss of three of their number in what seemed the blink of an eye gave the other two hunters pause for thought. They looked at each other as if to decide on their next course of action.
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The paperback and Kindle ebook versions of New Zealand: A Novel will be launched before Christmas; the hardcover and audiobook versions will be published early 2025.
Watch this space!
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