Hemanth Gorur's Blog, page 3

Book Review – by Kwadzana

Spine tingling paranormal thriller

Aymaran Shadow is a unique story told by a unique author. Author Hemanth Gorur is one of those rare authors who seems to just emanate chilling suspense. He manages to create and maintain a feeling of fear and suspense from the very first sentence to the book’s exciting conclusion. The storyline combined with Gorur’s writing style frequently sent chills up my spine while reading.

Gorur writes in a colorful style without ever getting lost in the visualization. To me that is one of the writing qualities that makes a great author; that plus character development. The main character Sanya is everything you would desire in a leading character. She is beautiful, intelligent, brave, but her courage is tested by mysterious and otherworldly characters . . .

Kwadzana

Reader and reviewer

Read the full review here: on Amazon.

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop

Sanya Rawat has never experienced death’s lust. Until it returns after 230 years. Read all about it. Participate in the Aymaran Shadow giveaway at The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop that runs 8th-12th February.

Aymaran Shadow, a past-life thriller, was a #12 Bestseller on Amazon in 2013. It is the story of a woman who is hunted across the centuries and violated by the soul of a rabid mercenary. It is a battle between one girl’s will and death’s lust.

The rules are simple. Just review the book (Kindle Edition now available for just $2.99). Or, take part in any of the other fun activities at Rafflecopter. Or, both! And, you stand to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card and a book giveaway of the Paperback Edition of Aymaran Shadow worth $11.95! That’s a $32 Giveaway Pot to be won!

You can enter the Aymaran Shadow giveaway by visiting the Aymaran Shadow Rafflecopter giveaway OR by clicking on the Giveaway tab on the book’s Facebook page.

Click on author Leeswammes’ blog to visit other participating blogs.

Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends … #9

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends . . . #10

This is the second of the Paranormal Legends countdown. The series is dedicated to readers of this blog. Also, do not forget to take the snap poll at the end of this blog. It’s an easy way to get your voice heard on this blog.

On to the post. #10 was about a man who refused to die by hanging. #9 is even creepier. Read on.

Precipitate interment

An elderly woman in the 1900s was suffering from a prolonged illness. Doctors came and doctors went, but none could cure her. Finally, after being in coma for quite some time, the woman passed away.

Her husband, the woman’s spouse of 50 years, was understandably distraught. He had lost a lover who was purportedly so close that they were rumored to have understood each other’s thoughts.

So much so that the husband refused to believe the doctor’s verdict that she was dead and did not allow anyone to touch her or bury her. Numerous kith and kin tried to reason with him but failed. He just wouldn’t budge.

When the time for burial approached, the man had to be literally pulled away so that his wife could be buried. He was sedated while the woman was placed in her coffin and laid to rest at the anointed burial place.

The same night, the man had a horrific dream of his wife trying to claw her way out of her coffin and screaming hysterically. He immediately called the doctor and asked him to exhume the body, which the doctor refused.

This continued for 7 days. Each night, the man experienced a frightening nightmare of his wife trying to get out and each night the doctor refused to exhume her.

Finally, the doctor relented and agreed to exhume the woman’s body. They went to the burial site along with the authorities, dug out the coffin and prised it open. To everyone’s horror and consternation, the woman’s fingers and fingernails were bent back! There were obvious marks of scratching on the coffin’s lid.

To this day, it is not clear whether the woman had actually been dead when she was buried and those scratch marks were happenstance, or she was really buried alive.

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

Take Our Poll

Tell Me When Blog Hop

Hate stalkers? Here’s a fun way to let the world know! Participate in the Aymaran Shadow giveaway which is part of the Tell Me When Blog Hop by author Stina Lindenblatt that runs 13th-17th January.

Aymaran Shadow, a past-life thriller, was a #12 Bestseller on Amazon in 2013. It is the story of a woman who is hunted across the centuries and violated by the soul of a mercenary. It is the battle between one girl’s will and death’s lust.

As part of the Aymaran Shadow giveaway, answer 3 simple riddle questions and review the book (Kindle Edition now available for just $0.99 for US customers as part of a limited period offer), and you stand to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card.

Wait, there’s more! Every participant of the Aymaran Shadow giveaway gets a Discount Code for 15% OFF on the Paperback Edition of Aymaran Shadow, so that you can join Sanya Rawat as she mounts a tense psychological war against two macabre stalkers from her past life!

You can enter the Aymaran Shadow giveaway by visiting the Aymaran Shadow Rafflecopter giveaway OR by clicking on the Giveaway tab on the book’s Facebook page.

Click on author Stina Lindenblatt’s blog to visit other participating authors’ blogs.

Aymaran Shadow: $2.99 Drops To $0.99

It’s a race against time in more ways than one. Two souls with sordid pasts race across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to claim their prey – an unsuspecting girl in India.

Aymaran Shadow. A tale of lust, horror and reprisal. And, a #12 Bestseller in 2013 with eleven 5-stars. The Kindle Edition is now available for US customers at a Countdown Deal price of just $0.99, down from its regular price of $2.99. This offer closes 16th Jan 2014. So, hurry if you want to beat the clock!

That’s not all. The International Paperback Edition is currently available at all leading retailers in the US, UK and Europe, including Amazon which is offering a 12% Customer Discount at the time of this post for customers in all geographies.

As part of a LIMITED PERIOD PROMOTIONAL OFFER, the Paperback Edition is also available at 15% OFF if bought at the CreateSpace e-store. Use Discount Code NECF2Q8V. Offer closes 16th Jan 2014.

Purchasers of the Paperback Edition are eligible to buy the Kindle Edition at the $0.99 price even after the Countdown Deal ends. It is also available for borrowing on Amazon’s KOLL, identifiable with an Amazon Prime badge as you search and browse for books on your Kindle device or on Amazon.com.

For more information about the book, please visit the THE BOOK section on this blog or the official Facebook page. For more information about the author, visit the official website or Twitter profile of Hemanth Gorur.

Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends … #10

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Cliches You Love To Hate In Paranormal Novels

This is my first post of 2014, so a warm welcome to the new year and hugs are in order. I thank all of you who have been supportive of this blog with your comments and readership. This post and the series is thus dedicated to you – reader and follower of this blog.

I believe in listening, so take part in a snap poll at the end of this post and let me know how it went in 2013. It’s your take on how this blog grabbed you. Or not. Tell me what rocked, what dragged, and what got your knickers in a twist. Or, what you want to read about in 2014. And I promise to get back with what you wanted!

So, let’s get on with the post. I decided to do one (in fact, an entire series) on paranormal legends and urban legends, as Aymaran Shadow itself revolves around a Bolivian urban legend. It’s a series of 10 posts – one more chilling than the next. Read on. And, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The man who could not be hanged

John “Babbacombe” Lee was a man who just refused to die. Accused of murdering his half-brother’s employer Emma Keyse, Lee (whose full name was john Henry George Lee) remained the key suspect in a killing where the victim was found with her throat slit, wound marks on her head and burn marks on her body.

Lee had a history. He was a navy dropout and an ex-convict. He had returned to work at “The Glen”, a place near the hamlet of Babbacombe near Devon where Keyse lived.

Immediately after the Keyse murder, Lee was held responsible for the crime since he was the only male member in the household and had a cut on his arm that he could not explain satisfactorily. Despite his numerous claims to innocence, Lee was sent to trial for murder and convicted by a court.

He was sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead on the 23rd of February, 1885 at Exeter Prison. Meawhile, Lee continued to proclaim his innocence and declared that the Lord, who knew the truth, would intervene to save him.

James Berry, the executioner, tested the trap door on the scaffold multiple times to ensure it was functioning just before the hanging. Rather oddly, on the day of the hanging, as Lee dangled by the noose around his neck, Berry tried thrice to open the trap door and failed thrice.

Confounded by this turn of events, the Home Secretary postponed the hanging and later commuted it to a life sentence, reasoning that the pangs of fear at the thought of imminent death are punishment enough for a man like Lee.

The postponement of the hanging was itself as rare an event as the failing of the trap door to open – an event that had never occurred before in the recollect-able past of the area. The trap door had failed despite the most stringent and diligent checks by the executioner.

After his release twenty-two years later, Lee was rumored to have moved to London, where he survived the blitz bombings and lived to tell the tale yet again. All that remains of him today is an unmarked grave near a workhouse in south west England.

The sense of awe, enigma and fear at this incomprehensible twist of fate in unmistakable. Lee’s is a mystery that refuses to die, not unlike the man himself.

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

Take Our Poll

Cliches You Love To Hate In Paranormal Novels

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Women Freak Out More Than Men?

I was reading a paranormal novel the other day when it struck me that the paranormal genre was afflicted by an odd paradox. Novels in this genre, by the very definition, deal with plots and characters that are anything but hackneyed and commonplace. Yet, if you look at paranormal novels as a whole, cliches abound, resulting in repetitive fare that can make you throw up faster than hydrogen sulphide.

The Corny Character cliche: So, the protagonist (or a subset of characters) is (are) endowed with qualities of mythical – yes, mythical – proportions. Not only does she (or they) suck the life blood out of hapless victims but she’s also capable of shifting shapes, going through walls and reading minds. Really? Granted that this is fiction we’re talking about, but since when did fiction degenerate into mindless fantasy? The human mind’s limits in accepting fiction as “plausible” can be stretched only so far, before it trashes the story as incredible bunkum.

The Blood Sucker cliche: I positively gag when the whole story’s about another vampire-ish clan or tribe (or whatever they call their brood) which sucks blood and the blood-sucking per se is a defining trait of the clan. How about they suck something else? Like brains? Or nails? Why do they do need to suck anything at all? I’ve seen some authors try a variant – like characters sucking the minds out of people’s heads, or the energy from someone’s body. Like that makes a fat lot of difference. Vampires have had their run. Everybody gets it, except the guys still writing tomes on them.

The Humans vs Them cliche: How many times have you wished that the book in your hand wasn’t another species versus species thingamajig? More specifically, not a global conspiracy to exterminate the human species? As romantic as that idea might be, it’s been done to death. Pun intended. I’ve had better luck with sour turnips when it came to exciting those grey cells.

The Institute cliche: A school for the specially abled seems to be the flavor of the season. Or, distaste, depending on how you look at it. You know how it works – the MC has special powers; he ends up in a school for people with paranormal abilities; consorts with others of his ilk; there’s peril to the school (or to them at the school), which the school’s inmates have to overcome using their special powers. Sh-eeesh! Haven’t these guys (the authors, not the characters) heard of “Resistance to Premature Closure”? Creative Thinking 101?

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

Aymaran Shadow now in Paperback (US, UK, Europe)

Who doesn’t love the crispy feel of a freshly minted novel? Aymaran Shadow is now out in print. Its International Paperback Edition is currently available at all leading retailers in the US, UK and Europe, including Amazon which is offering a 13% customer discount at the time of this post.

As part of a LIMITED PERIOD INAUGURAL OFFER, the book is available at 15% OFF if bought at the CreateSpace e-store. Use Discount Code QY6KHBCP. Offer closes 1st Jan 2014.

The Kindle Edition continues to be available at $2.99. However, purchasers of the Paperback Edition are eligible to buy the Kindle Edition at only $0.99 (66% OFF). It is also available for borrowing on Amazon’s KOLL, identifiable with an Amazon Prime badge as you search and browse for books on your Kindle device or on Amazon.com.

Christmas Paws Blog Hop

It’s the annual Christmas Paws Blog Hop (CPBH) from the BTS Book Reviews Magazine!! So, sing in the merry season by partying at this blog hop between 3rd-10th December.

WHAT YOU WIN

When you enter the Aymaran Shadow giveaway, and review the book, like, follow, comment, or tweet, you stand to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

And, that’s not all. Every participant of the Aymaran Shadow giveaway gets a FREE ebook copy of Aymaran Shadow, so that you can join Sanya Rawat as she mounts a tense psychological war against two macabre stalkers from her past life!

It’s double delight this yuletide! A $200 Amazon Gift Card awaits the grand prize winner from CPBH’s end.

HOW TO ENTER

You can enter the Aymaran Shadow giveaway by visiting the Aymaran Shadow Rafflecopter giveaway OR by clicking on the Giveaway tab on the book’s Facebook page.

Remember, you can increase your chances of winning that $10 Gift Card by completing multiple activities, or by repeating an activity (eg: tweeting every day).

VISIT OTHER BLOGS IN THE HOP

Click on the Linky link below to visit other participating authors’ blogs.

NOTE:

Recipients of free ebook copies of Aymaran Shadow through previous giveaways or review requests are eligible only for the $10 Gift Card, but can post reviews of the book if they already have not done so, and will be considered a valid entry.

Aymaran Shadow: Last 5 days at $0.99!!

Aymaran Shadow, a paranormal thriller and recently a #12 bestseller on Amazon in the Top 100 Free category of bestselling e-books, is going under the hammer! It will be available at the launch price of $0.99 only up to 9th Nov 2013 (IST).

So, grab your copy today while it is still at the lower $0.99 price and find out how a bored psychology student goes from ‘hunted’ to ‘hunter’ in 5 days, taking on an irrepressible evil from her past life.

Here is the book on Amazon, which has 10 5-stars! For more information about the book, please visit the THE BOOK section on this blog or the official Facebook page. For more information about the author, visit the official website of Hemanth Gorur.