Kory M. Shrum's Blog, page 6

#TBT: Need a Break? Try this #humor #webcomics

Most writers work tirelessly at their desk, at all hours, with or without compensation, for what? 

FOR WHAT?!

If you find yourself asking this very question while trying to trudge through your latest WIP, why not take a break! For this very pupose I have made a list of   webcomics for your enjoyment.  They are in no particular order.
NimonaSo much sassy! For those who love the sass! Smart, feminist, science. Monster girls. And the actual book-book was good too. A lovely friend got it for me for Christmas. So if web isn't your thing, you can get a holdable copy.
Questionable ContentDon't start this if you're a complete-ist. So much (questionable) content. So little time.
xkcdA comic for nerdy nerds. Enjoy the deadpan.

The Devil's Panties
Not as pervy as it sounds. Just a girl being adorable.

Teahouse
Way more pervy than it sounds. Beware if you are uncomfortable with yaoi, fancy whores, and men-loving men.

The Oatmeal
Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably heard of this one. Intelligent, informative, and fun.

Cyanide and Happiness
Not for the faint of heart so read at your own risk. Hit or miss and sometimes downright repulsive.

Ava's Demon
So pretty! As the name implies, to be enjoyed by SFF fans.

Battlepug
Battle. Pug. Need I say more?

If you have favorites to share, please do so below. Otherwise, have fun! :)

#Tuesdaybookblog: My TBR Pile #amreading

A little accountability goes a long way. Here are the books that I hope to finish by August 30!

The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking
Friday Night Bites by Chloe Neill
Twice Bitten by Chloe Neill
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Night Shift by Stephen King
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman
Cause for Alarm by Erica Spindler
The Girl of Fire and Thornes by Rae Carson
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

and then whatever book club picks! :D

Have you read any of these? Further recommendations? Your own TBR pile to share?

#Freebiefriday #instaFreebie: Dying for a Living

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Jesse Sullivan: meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally.  As a Necronite, she is one of the population's rare 2% who can serve as a death replacement agent, dying so others don't have to. Although each death is different, the result is the same: a life is saved, and Jesse resurrects days later with sore muscles, new scars, and another hole in her memory.

But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself--or die trying.
Called "addictive" by New York Times Bestseller Darynda Jones, those interested in diverse voices, snark, and dark humor will take a shine to the reluctant anti-hero of the series.
You can sign up for my newsletter and claim your free ebook on instafreebie now. 

Not interested in the newsletter? Then go straight to Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, Nook for your free copy.

#Fridayreads: Love's Philosophy #poetry

Love’s PhilosophyRelated Poem Content DetailsBY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYThe fountains mingle with the river    And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever    With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single;    All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle.    Why not I with thine?— 
See the mountains kiss high heaven    And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven    If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth    And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What is all this sweet work worth    If thou kiss not me?

#Tuesdaybookblog: A #Kindle Fire and $100 #giveaway

What?

You thought after last month's giveaway I was done with you? Muhahah! Silly rabbit. Naw, I've got one more trick up my sleeve.

From now until my birthday next month, I want to give away a brand new Kindle Fire and a $100 giftcard (of your choice, most vendors available) to two lucky winners (one of you get will get the Fire, the other the $100 giftcard).

And while the entries are well-suited for new Jesse fans, I don't want to put long time Jesse fans at a disadvantage. That is why I left the entries options "open" so that any old 'likes' and reviews that you may have posted in the last two years could be used for this giveaway too.

It's pretty easy to verify names and double-check entries once it's time to give away the prizes, so I'd rather be inclusive than exclusive! So enter now! Enter all the things! 

A note about the review entries:
-the reviews do not have to be long at all (they can be as short as one word)
-they should absolutely be honest. Ass-kissery doesn't improve your chances of winning
-the review entry can be done every day. So for those of you who want to do all five books, and the boxset, hit up Amazon (or another retailer like Barnes and Noble or iTunes), and then Goodreads, etc...you can spread it out a day at a time.  

Copy/Paste, baby.

No purchase is necessary to participate. Tweeting, Bookbub following (free to join) and Amazon  following can all be done without a purchase. And it costs nothing to have a Goodreads account or sign up for the newsletter. 

Amazon doesn't technically require that you buy the book either, in order to post a review for a product, but I would prefer that people only leave reviews if they've actually read a book!


And if you're BRAND NEW to Jesse and the gang, here's a free one on me. I'll get you started with the first book in the series, Dying for a Living.

It's always free on Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, Nook and more. And it has over 200 5-star reviews. Hope you love it.

The giveaway ends August 9 at 11:59PM EST

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#Fridayreads: A Poem by Billy Collins #poetry

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
Related Poem Content DetailsBY BILLY COLLINSI have never been fishing on the Susquehannaor on any river for that matterto be perfectly honest.
Not in July or any monthhave I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—of fishing on the Susquehanna.
I am more likely to be foundin a quiet room like this one—a painting of a woman on the wall,
a bowl of tangerines on the table—trying to manufacture the sensationof fishing on the Susquehanna.
There is little doubtthat others have been fishingon the Susquehanna,
rowing upstream in a wooden boat,sliding the oars under the waterthen raising them to drip in the light.
But the nearest I have ever come tofishing on the Susquehannawas one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia
when I balanced a little egg of timein front of a paintingin which that river curled around a bend
under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,dense trees along the banks,and a fellow with a red bandanna
sitting in a small, greenflat-bottom boatholding the thin whip of a pole.
That is something I am unlikelyever to do, I remembersaying to myself and the person next to me.
Then I blinked and moved onto other American scenesof haystacks, water whitening over rocks,
even one of a brown harewho seemed so wired with alertnessI imagined him springing right out of the frame.

#Fridayreads #Flashsale for all the #Urbanfantasy Fans

The entire Dying for a Living series is on sale for $.99. This weekend only.
Maybe you're just finishing up Dying for a Living, or you're well into Dying Light.  Wherever you are on your adventure with Jesse and the gang, this sale is for you.  Through Sunday (July 10), you can download any (or all) of the Jesse Sullivan novels for just $.99.

Or if you're into Audible audiobooks, downloading the ebook automatically adjusts the price of the audiobook down to $ 1.99, saving you more than $20 in most cases. HINT: Download the boxset and then receive THREE audiobooks for just $1.99.

Get your books here.

So whether you treat yourself, or  all your book-loving friends with summer birthdays, I hope this perks up your weekend.

Until next time,

Kory

Happy 4th of July and Five Free Reads #kindle

What better way to celebrate your FREEdom than with some FREE reads?

Here are five books that are free (at time of this posting) for you to enjoy:

Hanover House by Brenda Novak

Welcome to Hanover House…. 

Psychiatrist Evelyn Talbot has dedicated her life to solving the mysteries of the antisocial mind. Why do psychopaths act as they do? How do they come to be? Why don’t they feel any remorse for the suffering they cause? And are there better ways of spotting and stopping them? 

After having been kidnapped, tortured and left for dead when she was just a teenager—by her high school boyfriend—she’s determined to understand how someone she trusted so much could turn on her. So she’s established a revolutionary new medical health center in the remote town of Hilltop, Alaska, where she studies the worst of the worst. 

But not everyone in Hilltop is excited to have Hanover House and its many serial killers in the area. Alaskan State Trooper, Sergeant Amarok, is one of them. And yet he can’t help feeling bad about what Evelyn has been through. He’s even attracted to her. Which is partly why he worries. 

He knows what could happen if only one little thing goes wrong... 

255 5-star reviews. Get it on kindle now.

Ghostly Interests (A Harper Harlow Mystery Book 1)

Harper Harlow lives in a world of ghosts. 
She sees them. She talks to them. She investigates them. She sends them on their merry way. 
She’s not embarrassed by her abilities, and she’s not afraid to be who she is. She’s also not looking for a relationship. 
Enter Jared Monroe, a smooth-talking police detective who sees things in black and white and ignores any shades of gray. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and while he’s intrigued by the feisty blonde ghost detective, he’s not interested in the paranormal. 
When twenty-one-year-old Annie Dresden’s body washes up on the beach of Whisper Cove, Harper and Jared collide. Sparks may be flying, but so is confusion and mistrust. 
Harper calls on her loyal band of ghost hunters to solve the crime, and Jared relies on his training to tackle the same problem. It doesn’t matter what approach they take because all paths are destined to intersect. 
Can Harper and Jared learn to work together? And, more importantly, can new ghosts let go of the past and give in to an obscure future? It’s anyone’s guess when big personalities go to war and find they might have more in common than they think.

74 5-star reviews. Get yours on kindle.

Burned by Magic: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Baine Chronicles Book 1
In the city of Solantha, mages rule absolute, with shifters considered second-class citizens and humans something in between. No one outside the mage families are allowed to have magic, and anyone born with it must agree to have it stripped from them to avoid execution. 
Sunaya Baine, a shifter-mage hybrid, has managed to keep her unruly magic under wraps for the last twenty-four years. But while chasing down a shifter-hunting serial killer, she loses control of her magic in front of witnesses, drawing the attention of the dangerous and enigmatic Chief Mage. 

Locked up in the Chief Mage’s castle and reduced to little more than a lab rat, Sunaya resists his attempts to analyze and control her at every turn. But she soon realizes that to regain her freedom and catch the killer, she must overcome her hatred of mages and win the most powerful mage in the city to her side. 
119 5-star reviews. Get your kindle copy here.
Graveyard Shift (Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. Book 1)

The Inferno has Evolved… Lana Harvey is a reaper, and a lousy one at that. She resides in Limbo City, the modern capital of the collective afterlives, where she likes to stick it to the man (the legendary Grim Reaper himself) by harvesting the bare minimum of souls required of her. She’d much rather be hanging out with Gabriel, her favorite archangel, at Purgatory Lounge. But when a shocking promotion falls in her lap, Lana learns something that could unravel the very fabric of Eternity. If the job isn’t completed, there could be some real hell to pay.
With over 780 5-star reviews, it's got to be good! Get yours here.

Frey by Melissa Wright
Unaware she's been bound from using magic, Frey leads a small, miserable life in the village where she's sent after the death of her mother. But a tiny spark starts a fury of changes and she finds herself running from everything she's ever known. 
Hunted by council for practicing dark magic, she is certain she's been wrongfully accused. She flees, and is forced to rely on strangers for protection. But the farther she strays from home, the more her magic and forgotten memories return and she begins to suspect all is not as it seems.

180 5-star reviews. Get yours here.

Bonus! My novel Dying for a Living has over 200 five-star reviews and can also be found for free on kindle.

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Jesse Sullivan: meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally. 
 As a Necronite, she is one of the population's rare 2% who can serve as a death replacement agent, dying so others don't have to. Although each death is different, the result is the same: a life is saved, and Jesse resurrects days later with sore muscles, new scars, and another hole in her memory.

But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself--or die trying.
Called "addictive" by New York Times Bestseller Darynda Jones, those interested in diverse voices, snark, and dark humor will take a shine to the reluctant anti-hero of the series.  

#Fridayreads: A Poem by Dorianne Laux

Fourth of JulyRelated Poem Content DetailsBY DORIANNE LAUXThe neighborhood cringes behind windowswashed in magnesium light, streamers fizzlingabove the shingled rooftop of the apartmentsacross the street where teenaged boyswith mannish arms throw cherry bombs,bottle rockets, wings and spinners, snappers,chasers, fiery cryolite wheels onto the avenue.Paint flakes off the flammable housesand onto brave square plots of white grass.Rain-deprived vines sucker the shutters.Backyard dogs tear at the dirt, catsrun flat out, their tails straight up.What's liberty to the checkout girlselling smokes and nuts, greenbacksturning her fingers to grease? The boysinsist on pursuing happiness, their birthright:a box of matches, crackers on strings,sparklers, fountains, missiles, repeating shells,Roman candles, Brazilian barrages.We peek through blind slats to where they standaround a manhole cover, the gold foamof Corona bottles breaking at their feet,young up-turned faces lit by large calibermulti-shot aerials. We suffer each concussion,the sulfer rush that smells like fear, each dizzy,orgiastic display that says we love this country,democracy, the right to a speedy trial. We're afraidto complain, to cross the spent red casingsmelted on asphalt in the morning's stunnedaftermath, to knock hard on any door, and find themdraped like dead men over the couches, the floor,hands clasped behind their heads prison style,shoulders tattooed, dreaming the dreams of free menin summer, shirts off, holes in their jeans.

#TBT: Kory Talks #interview #Thursdaythoughts

TBT of an interview that ran in June of last year:


When did you know that you were really a writer?In college I kept changing my major: theater, biology, psychology, English, and so on. Throughout all of that, my minor stayed the same—creative writing. It took me a while to figure out that the reason the writing part hadn’t changed was because I loved it most—it was the core of me. So after I realized that, I committed to it.
What would it take for you to quit writing?A billion dollars—and even then I’d likely do it in secret when no one was looking…
Favorite music for writing?NIN, Florence and the Machine, Lana del Ray
Favorite music for working out or waking up or partying (whichever of those three you do the most)? Of the three, I suppose I “wake up” the most, considering I have so far, in the last 30+ years done so every day, often more than once a day. And I don’t listen to music when I wake up unless you count my ringtone, which is usually some kind of somber classical music. Like Satie’s gnossienne no 1.
What things in life make you feel most alive?
Walks in the rain. Kissing. Exploring foreign cities/travel.
What is the deepest relationship you’ve had with a fictional character (yours or another author’s)? The deepest relationship I have with fictional characters are my own. I get to know them and love them and sympathize with them as I tell their stories. Telling their stories is incredibly intimate.
Whose fiction did you enjoy the most growing up? Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. Though my first love was Madeleine L'Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet—both serving as my introduction to science/survivalist fiction.
What new author (first published in the past 5 years) do you admire the most, and why?Uhhh. A brand-new author that hasn’t been published before 2010? I’m struggling here. I honestly can’t think of an amazing writer who hasn’t been doing their thing for more than five years.
If you could gather a dream team for life or business, what kind of people would you surround yourself with? People who say “how do we do make this happen?” Rather than “this can’t be done.”
What do you secretly wish would happen to you someday?If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?
Tell us about a tender moment with a family member.
When I was younger I lived with my mother and we were moderately poor. She never finished school (dropped out in 8th grade to sell drugs for her father) and so the best job she was qualified for was factory work, when it was available. As you can imagine, it didn’t pay well. By fifteen or so, I was already well into my own addiction problems—books. And my favorite author at that time was Anne Rice. I was desperate for her latest vampire chronicle, The Vampire Armand I believe, but our little library in Coffee County didn’t have it and wouldn’t for a while. I fully expected that I would have to wait a long time to read it or at best, scrape up the coins for the paperback by the time the mass market edition was released.
Imagine my utter surprise when one night—late because my mother always worked late—I heard a soft knock on my bedroom door. It’s my mother, telling me she had a surprise for me. The surprise was the hardback copy of my heart’s desire, which I knew for a fact having drooled over it at the racks of the local bookstore, was nearly $30. $30 was a helluva expense for us. After all, do you know how many boxes of macaroni and hamburger helper could be bought for $30? (About 30 because we shopped at the dollar store).
I turned the book over in my hands, loving it with my fingers: the smell of it, the cool feel of the dust jacket, the unforgiving stiffness of its spine. I was really touched. Really touched because when my mom made a joke about just read your book when you start to get hungry—I was old enough to hear the truth behind her smile.