Morgan Bell's Blog, page 2
November 10, 2017
Last 24 hours of Laissez Faire FREE promo
We are in the last 24 hours of five days of FREE!
To celebrate the launch of Morgan Bell's second collection of very short stories Kindle is having a $0.00 promotion 8-12 November 2017.
Ends midnight USA time (PST) | Ends 7pm Mon 13 Nov in AUS
If you are a book blogger or lit-fic reviewer and considering reviewing this title in future, now is your chance to snap it up (verified) for no cost.
The first and only free days this year.
The follow up to Sniggerless Boundulations, this collection of fifteen stories continues the journey into short weird fiction. With all the markers of contemporary Australia - beer, cigarettes, footy on TV - and some more exotic locations, a world of excruciating awkwardness and overthinking comes alive. A stranger in the dark; A dating ritual with goldfish and kumquats; A tramp on the outskirts of the eco-dales; The plague of Yellow Death; A fantastic machine in the junk room of a hospital; Squids, pelicans, knives, and scars, make up these deliciously surreal flashes of gritty speculation.
Contains the stories:
1.Sit Down
2.No Small Thing
3.The Glass of Water
4.Sharpening The Knives
5.Saxon Vance
6.Don’t Pay The Ferryman
7.The Gamekeeper
8.The Chaperone
9.Juniper Bean
10.The Permanence of Ceramics
11.Dark Field Illumination
12.Cassilda Ambrose
13.The Switch
14.A Deer In The Shunting Yard
15.The Lost Art of Transportation
Bonus track - Yawning Bill of Fare
Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Laissez-Faire-...
All honest reviews sincerely appreciated!
All welcome to join the celebration event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/17102...
To celebrate the launch of Morgan Bell's second collection of very short stories Kindle is having a $0.00 promotion 8-12 November 2017.
Ends midnight USA time (PST) | Ends 7pm Mon 13 Nov in AUS
If you are a book blogger or lit-fic reviewer and considering reviewing this title in future, now is your chance to snap it up (verified) for no cost.
The first and only free days this year.
The follow up to Sniggerless Boundulations, this collection of fifteen stories continues the journey into short weird fiction. With all the markers of contemporary Australia - beer, cigarettes, footy on TV - and some more exotic locations, a world of excruciating awkwardness and overthinking comes alive. A stranger in the dark; A dating ritual with goldfish and kumquats; A tramp on the outskirts of the eco-dales; The plague of Yellow Death; A fantastic machine in the junk room of a hospital; Squids, pelicans, knives, and scars, make up these deliciously surreal flashes of gritty speculation.
Contains the stories:
1.Sit Down
2.No Small Thing
3.The Glass of Water
4.Sharpening The Knives
5.Saxon Vance
6.Don’t Pay The Ferryman
7.The Gamekeeper
8.The Chaperone
9.Juniper Bean
10.The Permanence of Ceramics
11.Dark Field Illumination
12.Cassilda Ambrose
13.The Switch
14.A Deer In The Shunting Yard
15.The Lost Art of Transportation
Bonus track - Yawning Bill of Fare
Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Laissez-Faire-...
All honest reviews sincerely appreciated!
All welcome to join the celebration event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/17102...
October 23, 2017
Join me and Snakeweed for NaNoWriMo 2017
Now adding buddies for the 2017 NaNoWriMo.
My username is queenboxi and my project is Snakeweed.
I love new buddies, so be sure to add me.
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/queenboxi
My stationery supplies on Instagram: paper and pens
My username is queenboxi and my project is Snakeweed.
I love new buddies, so be sure to add me.
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/queenboxi
My stationery supplies on Instagram: paper and pens
September 13, 2017
New Release: Laissez Faire
We have a new addition to the book family!
Tiny, adorable, three years in the making, and now available on Amazon Kindle.
Review copies available on request. Email morganleighbell@gmail.com.
Tiny, adorable, three years in the making, and now available on Amazon Kindle.
Review copies available on request. Email morganleighbell@gmail.com.
September 7, 2017
My Life In Books - The Stories That Inspired Me
This is a list of the books that inspired me and left a lasting impression in my life. What would your life in books look like?
1.
I'm sure most kids know the story of the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But did you know there was a prequel? I was given a box set of this series when I was 8 years old and living in Ballina NSW. I read them all, but Book One became my favourite. The pools of water in the woods between the worlds is an image firmly etched into my mind. From then on I was always a sucker for an origin-story.
2.
This is the first adult novel I read as a child. I was 11 years old and living in Culburra NSW. I remember marvelling at how King could make tedious activities over long periods of time completely riveting. The tension building of fashioning a rope from a daily thread of a napkin was so meticulously executed it has stayed with me for life. There is beauty and life in the tiniest of details.
3.
When I was 18 years old I moved out of home (Newcastle) to a rented bed-sitter in Killara (Sydney) to attend uni at UTS in the city. So began a decade long voyage of train travel. I bought this queer classic from a book-stand at Central Station and loved it to pieces. It was the smartest thing I had ever read. It was an author with a strong and outlandish voice and a cynical point of view about relationships, art, and appearances.
4.
Down and out at 24, I was living in a series of terrible sharehouses, and socialising primarily with alcoholics and druggies. I read this before Oprah's fraud controversy and thought Frey absolutely nailed it with the grittiness of addiction. It was one of the first depictions of substance-abuse I'd read that acknowledged the psychological component to needing to be wasted. He named the emotional turmoil The Fury, but it rings true of any mental illness. To answer Frey's critics: All addicts are unreliable narrators, and all alcoholics exaggerate and forget.
5.
During my first major bout of depression, I was unemployed for three years (age 26-28) and holed up at my parents' retirement house in Tasmania. I was separated by distance from everyone I had a bond with in the queer community. My dad has an extensive library of first-edition hard-backs that he collects. This is the first novel I was able to complete during that time. Depression makes it difficult to concentrate. I loved the movie and was pleasantly surprised by how much more explicit the queer relationships were in the book.
6.
This is the story of a middle-aged alcoholic woman. I read it when I was 33 and coming to terms with the health effects of my own alcoholism, and transitioning to sobriety. Alcohol is such a different story for women, and it is rarely addressed with any nuance. This book cemented by love for the unreliable narrator and the shifting divergence between truth and facts.
7.
The perks of being a book reviewer for Salty Popcorn: at 35 I discovered my all-time favourite short story collection as a random selection from a local publishers catalogue. And it was by an Australian author not so different from me. This collection is set in the uncanny valley of parallel worlds, so many markers of our current pop-culture but with something a little askew. This book marked by decision to only buy paperbacks that are short story collections - which I mostly stick to - and to collect novels on my Kindle e-reader. Such is the minimalism of a nomadic life. And it let me know that being having a short attention span is OK. That speculative fiction is a delicate art. And that being a short story author is something to aspire to.
1.
I'm sure most kids know the story of the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But did you know there was a prequel? I was given a box set of this series when I was 8 years old and living in Ballina NSW. I read them all, but Book One became my favourite. The pools of water in the woods between the worlds is an image firmly etched into my mind. From then on I was always a sucker for an origin-story.
2.
This is the first adult novel I read as a child. I was 11 years old and living in Culburra NSW. I remember marvelling at how King could make tedious activities over long periods of time completely riveting. The tension building of fashioning a rope from a daily thread of a napkin was so meticulously executed it has stayed with me for life. There is beauty and life in the tiniest of details.
3.
When I was 18 years old I moved out of home (Newcastle) to a rented bed-sitter in Killara (Sydney) to attend uni at UTS in the city. So began a decade long voyage of train travel. I bought this queer classic from a book-stand at Central Station and loved it to pieces. It was the smartest thing I had ever read. It was an author with a strong and outlandish voice and a cynical point of view about relationships, art, and appearances.
4.
Down and out at 24, I was living in a series of terrible sharehouses, and socialising primarily with alcoholics and druggies. I read this before Oprah's fraud controversy and thought Frey absolutely nailed it with the grittiness of addiction. It was one of the first depictions of substance-abuse I'd read that acknowledged the psychological component to needing to be wasted. He named the emotional turmoil The Fury, but it rings true of any mental illness. To answer Frey's critics: All addicts are unreliable narrators, and all alcoholics exaggerate and forget.
5.
During my first major bout of depression, I was unemployed for three years (age 26-28) and holed up at my parents' retirement house in Tasmania. I was separated by distance from everyone I had a bond with in the queer community. My dad has an extensive library of first-edition hard-backs that he collects. This is the first novel I was able to complete during that time. Depression makes it difficult to concentrate. I loved the movie and was pleasantly surprised by how much more explicit the queer relationships were in the book.
6.
This is the story of a middle-aged alcoholic woman. I read it when I was 33 and coming to terms with the health effects of my own alcoholism, and transitioning to sobriety. Alcohol is such a different story for women, and it is rarely addressed with any nuance. This book cemented by love for the unreliable narrator and the shifting divergence between truth and facts.
7.
The perks of being a book reviewer for Salty Popcorn: at 35 I discovered my all-time favourite short story collection as a random selection from a local publishers catalogue. And it was by an Australian author not so different from me. This collection is set in the uncanny valley of parallel worlds, so many markers of our current pop-culture but with something a little askew. This book marked by decision to only buy paperbacks that are short story collections - which I mostly stick to - and to collect novels on my Kindle e-reader. Such is the minimalism of a nomadic life. And it let me know that being having a short attention span is OK. That speculative fiction is a delicate art. And that being a short story author is something to aspire to.
March 8, 2016
Goodreads Giveaway: Sproutlings
Dear friends,
Just a quick heads up so you don't miss it - a Goodreads Giveaway for a paperback of my new anthology Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions is currently live.
To enter go to:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The Goodreads Giveaway will run between 8 March and 16 March 2015.
A Hunter Anthologies publishing project on the theme of: VENGEFUL VEGETATION
Morgan Bell’s Sproutlings is a mesmerising collection of exquisite peculiarities. Welsh and Cornish mythology. Australian campfire tales. Astral and fantastic. The pertinency of forty-three modern authors is punctuated by bites of botanical fiction from Poe, Lawson, Orwell, Lawrence, Wells, Alcott, and Wilde in this tour de force of tiny stories.
Just a quick heads up so you don't miss it - a Goodreads Giveaway for a paperback of my new anthology Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions is currently live.
To enter go to:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The Goodreads Giveaway will run between 8 March and 16 March 2015.
A Hunter Anthologies publishing project on the theme of: VENGEFUL VEGETATION
Morgan Bell’s Sproutlings is a mesmerising collection of exquisite peculiarities. Welsh and Cornish mythology. Australian campfire tales. Astral and fantastic. The pertinency of forty-three modern authors is punctuated by bites of botanical fiction from Poe, Lawson, Orwell, Lawrence, Wells, Alcott, and Wilde in this tour de force of tiny stories.
January 3, 2016
Top 15 Books Read In 2015
Morgan Bell's Top 15 books read in 2015
Slade House by David Mitchell
Tinder by Sally Gardner
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler>
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Good House by Ann Leary
An Astronaut's Life by Sonja Dechian
Bream Gives Me Hiccups by Jesse Eisenberg
Masks by Dean M Drinkel
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
July 14, 2014
Gift card giveaways: $50 Amazon + $50 Etsy
There are two current exciting promotions for Sniggerless Boundulations:
1. Paperback of Sniggerless Boundulations or $50 Amazon gift card
(ends 14 November 2014)
Link | mobile friendly link | Lovely Reads link
Open all ages and locations, unlimited entries
Promotion run through Rafflecopter
2. $50 Etsy gift card
(ends 27 September 2014)
Link | mobile friendly link
Open all ages and locations, must have a Twitter account to enter
Promotion run through Giveaway Tab (Facebook)
How to enter?
Visit the Morgan Bell (author) Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/morganleighbell and click on the tabs [Amazon prize] and [Etsy prize] to enter into the raffle prize draws for these giveaways.
A Twitter account is a requirement of the Etsy draw, and can earn extra entries in the Amazon draw, so get tweeting, and may the odds ever be in your favour.
Links not working?
If you are viewing from a mobile device try these mobile friendly links: [Amazon prize] | [Etsy prize]
Sniggerless Boundulations
Morgan Bell
1. Paperback of Sniggerless Boundulations or $50 Amazon gift card
(ends 14 November 2014)
Link | mobile friendly link | Lovely Reads link
Open all ages and locations, unlimited entries
Promotion run through Rafflecopter
2. $50 Etsy gift card
(ends 27 September 2014)
Link | mobile friendly link
Open all ages and locations, must have a Twitter account to enter
Promotion run through Giveaway Tab (Facebook)
How to enter?
Visit the Morgan Bell (author) Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/morganleighbell and click on the tabs [Amazon prize] and [Etsy prize] to enter into the raffle prize draws for these giveaways.
A Twitter account is a requirement of the Etsy draw, and can earn extra entries in the Amazon draw, so get tweeting, and may the odds ever be in your favour.
Links not working?
If you are viewing from a mobile device try these mobile friendly links: [Amazon prize] | [Etsy prize]
Sniggerless Boundulations
Morgan Bell
