Stephen Morris's Blog, page 36

Events This Week — Hope to See You There!

LIVE ONLINE Q&A WITH READERS #VampBooks4Blood on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7

I will be answering readers questions and responding to comments live online at 1 p.m. NYC time on Friday, October 7. The event will be hosted by Books and Everything on Facebook; join the conversation here. Buy a copy of Come Hell or High Water during October and support the American Red Cross!

INDIE AUTHOR DAY on SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8

There will be a celebration of Indie Author Day on Saturday, October 8 in libraries across the United States. I will be participating in the events that afternoon at the Bronx Library Center (318 East Kingsbridge Road). See more details here. Copies of STORM WOLF will be available as well.

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#VampireBooks4Blood

Come Hell or High Water, Part 2: RISING, which features Elizabeth the darg-due, is participating in the 3rd annual VampireBooks4Blood program. More than 40 authors are participating in the #VampBooks4Blood program and pledge that we will each donate certain % of royalties per book to either the American Red Cross or the Canadian Blood Services (depending on where each of us live).

Scott Burtness, who organizes the VampireBooks4Blood program, says that he created VB4B to support the American Red Cross for a few reasons:

*It’s a great organization whose work is vital to people and communities in need.

*It’s a blood services organization with a giant cross as it’s symbol. What better organization to support with a vampire-themed event? It’s a perfect fit.

*I think it’s important to give back. The world is what we make it, after all.

 

In 2015, he expanded the event to also support Canadian Blood Services.

Many of the #VampBooks4Blood authors will be participating in live online Q&A sessions with readers via the Books and Everything page on Facebook. (I will be answering readers questions on Friday, October 7 at 1 p.m. NYC time. Click here to join the conversation!)

You can get a paperback or Kindle version of Come Hell or High Water, Part 2: Rising on Amazon. You can also find the entire trilogy here; buy the trilogy and support #VampBooks4Blood three times at once! Please also look at the other wonderful #VampBooks4Blood books from a variety of genres that all feature vampires here. HAPPY VAMPIRE READING!

You can also connect with VampireBooks4Blood on Twitter.

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Why Estonia?

The historic old town of Estonia’s capital Tallinn is included in Unesco’s World Heritage List. (Photo from the BBC.)

Estonia? Where is it? Who has even heard of it?! Why set a story there, of all the places that you might possibly set a story?

It just so happens that Estonia, although little known to non-Estonians, has a fascinating although difficult-to-trace heritage of folklore and legends that set it apart from not only its Baltic neighbors (Latvia, Lithuania, Russia) but from almost everywhere else; traditional beliefs and practices survived in Estonia for much longer than in other regions of Europe. These traditional Estonian legends and folklore were primarily handed down via oral tradition until very recently; there were occasional references to Estonian beliefs and stories but no systematic attempt to write collect these and write them down until the 19th century. (The Brothers Grimm made their collection of stories, etc. almost 100 years before that.)

I picked up a book one day about folklore as I was researching another project and found a brief reference to the Estonian version of werewolf folklore: in Estonia, werewolves could fly and would drive away the storms that would otherwise devastate the farms and destroy the crops, resulting in starvation when winter came. They killed storm clouds and ate weather devils, not their neighbors. Because of this, werewolves were heroes, not monsters. I was shocked: Werewolves were the Good Guys?!

Because they were heroes, everyone in a village or district knew who the local werewolf was. It was an honored position. (The only other place that had an even slightly similar version of werewolf folklore is a small Italian region northeast of Venice where the werewolves are called “good walkers” and drive away witches that attempt to destroy the crops.) Estonian werewolves were so unlike their more commonly known cousins in other parts of Europe that it almost seems a shame to characterize them all with the same moniker as “werewolves.”

This distinctly Estonian version of flying heroic werewolf folklore set off fireworks in my imagination! Werewolves as heroes? In a traditional pre-modern, non-ironic culture?! This was too good an opportunity to pass by! I grabbed it and Alexei, my werewolf in 1880s Estonia, was born.

Read more about Alexei’s adventures as a werewolf in Estonia in Storm Wolf.

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Photos from the Brooklyn Book Festival

“Alexei” and I as the Brooklyn Book Fair is about to open (September 2016)

It was humid–but the rain held off! The Brooklyn Book Festival 2016 is now one for the history books! “Alexei” met me at Booth #242 and then proceeded to wander the festival grounds, bringing new readers to share his adventures in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia.

Missed the festival? You can still get your copy of Storm Wolf — AND read some great new readers’ reviews here!

“Alexei” and I taking a break during the Brooklyn Book Festival (September 2016)

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Brooklyn Book Festival

I will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 18! Drop by Booth #242 and get your autographed copy of Storm Wolf! What have readers been sayng so far? See for yourself:

NEW REVIEWS FOR STORM WOLF:

“Morris’ werewolf isn’t a fur-coated romantic, but a refreshingly murky protagonist who’s both flawed and sympathetic; he kills innocents, but never intentionally. There are quite a few werewolf onslaughts, which the author unflinchingly portrays as bloody and brutal…. A dark supernatural outing, featuring indelible characters as sharp as wolves’ teeth.” — Kirkus Reviews

“…a unique weaving together and retelling of central and eastern European werewolf folk tales. Set in 1890, when such tales were still being told, Storm Wolf stands apart from contemporary myth and legend retellings… The magic–Alexei’s battles with storm creatures, the conjuring of a snake demon from pipe smoke, a witch’s talisman of skin stripped from a sailor–is extraordinarily well imagined and described here. Dollops of regional history and glimpses of customs and legends are fascinating.” — Blue Ink Review

“…the beginning of the book also serves to give us a thorough grounding in the setting, which is impressively fleshed out by Morris, and provide an unusual as well as detailed folkloric background for the tale. Morris has done extensive research about the folklore, customs, daily lives, and language of the people of 19th-century Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and it shows. Morris’s initial premise—that of a man who becomes a werewolf willingly to protect others—also puts a welcome and unusual spin on things.

Alexei is also a highly sympathetic, realistically flawed character who the author is clearly invested in, and this enthusiasm is infectious. Trouble seems to hound Alexei (forgive the pun), both as a result of his inner wolf and some seriously bad luck, and it’s easy to root for him to find peace with himself and the world. Morris also takes care to give us enough information about secondary characters for readers to care about what happens to them, sometimes—perhaps especially—when they are in danger of meeting bad ends.

Filled with details that make for a sincerely rendered world, peopled with characters who breathe; STORM WOLF is a thoughtfully constructed fantasy tale filled with emotion and action.” – Indie Reader

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Werewolf in the sky? Storm clouds, beware!

NOW AVAILABLE!

It’s out! Storm Wolf is now available in both paperback and Kindle editions! Order your copy TODAY!

Reviews:

“Morris’ werewolf isn’t a fur-coated romantic, but a refreshingly murky protagonist who’s both flawed and sympathetic; he kills innocents, but never intentionally. There are quite a few werewolf onslaughts, which the author unflinchingly portrays as bloody and brutal…. A dark supernatural outing, featuring indelible characters as sharp as wolves’ teeth.” — Kirkus Reviews 

“…a unique weaving together and retelling of central and eastern European werewolf folk tales. Set in 1890, when such tales were still being told, Storm Wolf stands apart from contemporary myth and legend retellings… The magic–Alexei’s battles with storm creatures, the conjuring of a snake demon from pipesmoke, a witch’s talisman of skin stripped from a sailor–is extraordinarily well imagined and described here. Dollops of regional history and glimpses of customs and legends are fascinating.” — Blue Ink Review

I will also be at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 18. Look for me in Booth #242! Come get your AUTOGRAPHED copies then!

OR enter here for a chance to win a free paperback copy!

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An Excerpt From Storm Wolf

Have you seen the early reviews for Storm Wolf? It will be released on September 1 — Preorder your copy for only $2.99 today!

“A dark supernatural outing, featuring indelible characters as sharp as wolves’ teeth.” — Kirkus Reviews

“…a unique weaving together and retelling of central and eastern European werewolf folk tales. Set in 1890, when such tales were still being told, Storm Wolf stands apart from contemporary myth and legend retellings… The magic–Alexei’s battles with storm creatures, the conjuring of a snake demon from pipesmoke, a witch’s talisman of skin stripped from a sailor– is extraordinarily well imagined and described here. Dollops of regional history and glimpses of customs and legends are fascinating.” — Blue Ink Review

In this excerpt, Alexei has put on the magical wolf pelt and gone up into the sky for the first time to battle a storm that threatens to devastate the village harvest, leading to starvation when winter arrives:

Alexei threw himself at the giant and locked his jaws around the giant’s leg. He pulled and tugged, trying to pull the giant over, but the giant just picked up his leg and shook it, attempting to dislodge Alexei. They hung there, wolf and giant, Alexei grinding his teeth into the giant’s leg and feeling the giant’s leg bone resisting him deep within the giant’s leg. Finally the giant reached down, shouting something at Alexei in words that he could not understand, and wrenched Alexei’s jaws from his shin. He picked Alexei up and tossed him like a ball in a game of ninepins. Alexei tumbled head-over-heels through the clouds, striking the haunches of one of the still stampeding cows. He fell to the clouds at the cow’s feet, nearly trampled by the last of the herd running alongside. Then the cattle were gone and Alexei lay there, bruised and bloody and panting.

He felt the clouds beneath him rumble with the ongoing thunder of both the stampeding cattle and the drunkard stumbling about below. He could see flashes of lightning through the folds of the clouds beside and above him.

“How can I go on? Is there no end to this storm? How can I ever defeat it?” Alexei asked himself, struggling to his four wolf feet. He gasped and choked, trying to keep breathing even as his aching ribs demanded that he stop trying. “How did Grandfather survive this?”

Another thunderclap exploded above him. Lightning shot past him towards the earth, and in the brief tear it made in the clouds he could see the fields of his village far, far below. The wheat was being pummeled into the mud. He could easily imagine the starvation that would come in the wake of the ruined harvest. He gasped again, his ribs heaving.

“I cannot let my neighbors starve!” he told himself. “I cannot let my family starve!” He pulled himself back onto his haunches and jumped into the storm above him again.

Be sure to pre-order your copy of Storm Wolf today for $2.99 and enjoy it as soon as it is released on September 1st!

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Why I Write?

The Writer’s Treasure Chest is a wonderful blog by Aurora Jean Alexander. She hosts author interviews and is an author herself (of a paranormal romance). She posts poetry, articles about writing, and frequently spotlights authors of a wide range of work.

She featured YOURS TRULY as a “Spotlight Author” this week — thank you, Aurora Jean! The interview is especially interested in “Why do you write?” and “How do you deal with dry spells and writers’ block?” Please take a moment to read the spotlight interview here and leave a comment. If you have time, take a look at some of her previous posts as well.

She invited me to participate as a “Spotlight Author” because of the upcoming release of STORM WOLF on September 1. You can preorder the Kindle edition now; both the paperback and Kindle edition will be released on September 1 and I will have copies available to autograph at the Brooklyn Book Fair on September 18.

Kirkus Reviews recently announced that Storm Wolf is “A dark supernatural outing, featuring indelible characters as sharp as wolves’ teeth.” Read the whole review here.

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The Harvest of Death

Stephen Morris, author.

STORM WOLF now available as pre-order

Available on pre-order NOW thru September 1!

“Libahunt!” Alexei breaks the terms of the wolf-magic he inherited from his grandfather and loses the ability to control the shapeshifting, becoming a killer and slaughtering his neighbors, his friends — even his family. His grandfather’s magical wolf-pelt was meant to protect their rural village in 1880s Estonia by fighting the terrible storms in the sky that could devastate the farms and fields but instead it drives Alexei to kill with impunity. Heartbroken at what he has become, Alexei flees his home and wanders through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia. He encounters the Master of Wolves who controls all the wolves and werewolves, a monster who steals children to turn them into killer-wolves, and the legendary Frau Bertha with her belt of sailor-skin to trap those who anger her in animal form. Dare he hope to ever find an enchanter who can free him from the curse?

Click here and then FOLLOW my Amazon Author page to keep in touch on other upcoming releases!

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