Hank Garner's Blog, page 18

Author Stories Podcast Episode 709 | Brian Mansur Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Brian Mansur, author of Captive Embers: An Intergalactic Military Sci-Fi Adventure. At the beginning of the show I have a chat with Aethon Books co-founder Steve Beauleau and we talk for a few minutes about what Aethon is doing to bring quality sci-fi and fantasy to market while building a home for some of the best up and coming authors in the genre. Right before the interview we have a special audiobook clip from Captive Embers.

[image error]Humanity wages war across space. But a bigger game is at play.

The real enemy is out there. Watching. Waiting.

Mykonian fleet Operative Rafe Hastings has spent several tours around Belia trying to keep weapons traffickers from tearing the local space habitats apart. He’s eager to go home when an informant passes him dire news about an infamous cartel boss named Lilith. Not only has she acquired nuclear weapons, but she has somehow gained permission from the mysterious robotic overlords of inhabited space – the Wardens – to use them.

The battleship Tsunami is dispatched to investigate Rafe’s discovery and veteran operations Officer Sean Merrick soon finds himself caught in a conspiracy involving feuding Wardens. With allies dying all around him, his only hope for survival turns out to be a junior combat nurse named Sarah Riley who has scarcely fired a gun before.

As Rafe, Sean, and Sarah battle Lilith, they’ll be forced to rely on the unexpected to save the people they love. But with the Wardens constantly changing the rules, could it be that no matter who wins the war, everyone loses?

Grab this exciting debut military sci-fi novel from Brian Mansur, perfect for fans of Alastair Reynolds, Jack Campbell, and Ken Lozito.

Brian Mansur is a nerdy sci-fi geek who resides in the enchanted plains of Iowa with a beautiful Ecuadorian princess, their handsome son and assorted puppy dogs. When not living the glamorous life of a top-tier customer service agent, he enjoys plotting the destruction of America’s enemies as an Army National Guard officer.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 708 | Troy Osgood Takes Us To Sky Realms Online

Today’s author interview guest is Troy Osgood, author of the new LITRPG novel Sky Realms Online: Grayhold. At the beginning of the show I have a chat with Aethon Books co-founder Steve Beauleau and we talk for a few minutes about what Aethon is doing to bring quality sci-fi and fantasy to market while building a home for some of the best up and coming authors in the genre. Right before the interview we have a special audiobook clip from Sky Realms Online: Grayhold.

[image error]Trapped in the game. Forced back to level 1. What’s next, permadeath?

Sky Realms Online is the largest and most popular Virtual Reality MMORPG ever made. Set amongst the mystical, floating islands of Hankarth, it’s played and enjoyed by millions every hour. Until something goes wrong.

Unable to log out, players find themselves reduced to level one, and in the starting zones. They receive a cryptic message from the developers stating that for unknown reasons, they are trapped in the game and may have to live out their lives within the virtual world.

Hall is one of the those trapped in the game. He’s been playing Sky Realms Online as a spear-wielding Skirmisher ever since the beta. And instead of panicking as many do, he decides to make the most of it; to play the game and live his new life, all while quietly hoping the developers will find a fix.

It doesn’t take Hall long to find out that, while some aspects of the game are the same, the difficulty level is beyond anything he’s ever experienced.

Together, with a new party of trapped players and NPCs with canned answers, Hall will find out just how different Sky Realms Online has become, and how playing a game is different from living the game…

Experience the start of this unforgettable Fantasy LitRPG Adventure today! It’s perfect for fans of J.A. Hunter, Dakota Krout and Edward Brody.

Also available on Audible, performed by Pavi Proczko, narrator of Eden’s Gate and Continue Online.

About Troy Osgood

Born and raised in the granite state of New Hampshire, Troy is a lifelong and avid reader of comic books and novels (mostly in the fantasy, sci-fi and adventure/thriller genres). The ongoing serial storytelling methods of comic books and television has always fascinated him and provided inspiration for his writing. He’s always had a love of creating and world building and dreams of someday seeing his creations expressed across all media: books, comic books, movies, TV and even toys.

When not writing, Troy can be found outside hiking, kayaking or out back at the bonfire with beer in hand. Don’t expect to bother him during football season, especially when the Patriots are playing.

He still lives in New Hampshire.

Follow Troy on instagram (ossywrites), on twitter (@troynos) and visit his website: www.ossywrites.com

Author Stories Podcast Episode 707 | Patrick Coleman Brings Back California Noir With The Churchgoer

Today’s author interview guest is Patrick Coleman, author of The Churchgoer.

[image error]A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of Summer

A haunting debut literary noir about a former pastor’s search to find a missing woman in the toxic, contradictory underbelly of southern California.

“He was finished with church, with God, with all of it. But to find the girl, he has to go back.”

In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man—until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs. Now he’s marking time between sunny days surfing and dark nights working security at an industrial complex. His isolation is broken when Cindy, a charming twenty-two-year old drifter he sees hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway, hustles him for a breakfast and a place to crash—two cynical kindred spirits.

Then his co-worker is murdered in a robbery gone wrong and Cindy disappears on the same night. Haines knows he should let it go and return to his safe life of solitude. Instead, he’s driven to find out where Cindy went, under stranger and stranger circumstances. Soon Mark is chasing leads, each one taking him back into a world where his old life came crashing down—into the seedier side of southern California’s drug trade and ultimately into the secrets of an Evangelical megachurch where his past and his future are about to converge. What begins as an investigation becomes a haunting mystery and a psychological journey both for Mark, and for the elusive young stranger he won’t let get away.

Set in the early 2000s, The Churchgoer is a gripping noir, a quiet subversion of the genre, and a powerful meditation on belief, morality, and the nature of evil in contemporary life.

Patrick Coleman makes things from words, sounds, and occasional pictures. His first novel, The Churchgoer, was released by Harper Perennial on July 30, 2019. His debut collection of poems, Fire Season, was written after the birth of his first child by speaking aloud into a digital audio recorder on the long commute between the art museum where he worked and his home in a rural neighborhood that burned in the Witch Creek Fire of 2007. It won the 2015 Berkshire Prize and was released by Tupelo Press on December 1, 2018. His short-form prose has appeared in Hobart, ZYZZYVA, Zócalo Public Square, the Writer’s Chronicle, the Black Warrior Review, Juked, and the Utne Reader, among others. The Art of Music, an exhibition catalogue on the relationship between visual arts and music that he edited and contributed to, was co-published by Yale University Press and the San Diego Museum of Art. He earned an MFA from Indiana University and a BA from the University of California Irvine. He lives in Ramona, California, with his wife and two daughters, and is the Assistant Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 706 | Karin Slaughter Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Karin Slaughter, author of the new Will Trent thriller The Last Widow.

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New York Times  bestselling author Karin Slaughter brings back Will Trent and Sara Linton in this superb and timely thriller full of devious twists, disturbing secrets, and shocking surprises you won’t see coming

A mysterious kidnapping

On a hot summer night, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control is grabbed by unknown assailants in a shopping center parking lot. The authorities are desperate to save the doctor who’s been vanished into thin air.

A devastating explosion

One month later, the serenity of a sunny Sunday afternoon is shattered by the boom of a ground-shaking blast—followed by another seconds later. One of Atlanta’s busiest and most important neighborhoods has been bombed—the location of Emory University, two major hospitals, the FBI headquarters, and the CDC.

A diabolical enemy

Medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner Will Trent, an investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, rush to the scene—and into the heart of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy thousands of innocent lives. When the assailants abduct Sara, Will goes undercover to save her and prevent a massacre—putting his own life on the line for the woman and the country he loves.

Karin Slaughter is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed storytellers.

Published in 37 languages, with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her nineteen novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New York Times bestselling novels Pretty Girls and The Good Daughter. Her most recent novel, The Last Widow, features Sara Linton and Will Trent. A native of Georgia, Karin currently lives in Atlanta. Her novels Cop Town, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her are all in development for film and television.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 705 | C. J. Box Returns With Cassie Dewell’s New Thriller The Bitterroots

Today’s author interview guest is C. J. Box who returns to showcase his newest Cassie Dewell thriller The Bitterroot.

[image error]A riveting new novel from New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author C. J. Box.

The ties that bind can burn you.

Former sheriff’s investigator Cassie Dewell is trying to start her life over as in private practice. She’s her own boss and answers to no one, and that’s just the way she likes it after the past few tumultuous years. All that certainty changes when an old friend calls in a favor: she wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young woman from an influential family.

Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out by the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there’s always something more to the story. The Kleinsassers have ruled this part of Montana for decades, and the Iron Cross Ranch is their stronghold. They want to see Blake Kleinsasser, the black sheep of the family, put away forever for the assault. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against a family whose roots are tangled and deadly—as well as the ghosts of her own past that threaten to bring her down.

With The Bitterroots, master storyteller C. J. Box delivers another searing novel of loyalty, lies, and lethal retribution.

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-two novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award (twice), the Western Heritage Award for Literature, and 2017 Spur Award for Best Contemporary Western. The novels have been translated into 27 languages. Open Season, Blue Heaven, Nowhere To Run, and The Highway have been optioned for film and television. Millions of copies of his novels have been sold in the U.S. alone.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 704 | Anna Sherman Brings Us The Bells Of Old Tokyo

Please welcome Anna Sherman, author of The Bells Of Tokyo, to the show today for Episode 704 of Author Stories.

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From 1632 until 1854, Japan’s rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns’ city.

An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman’s journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers’ city: “A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness.”

The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer who presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people.

Anna Sherman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied Greek and Latin at Wellesley College and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Anna worked as an editor at Millennium Journal of International Studies, Financial Times Energy, and then, after moving to Asia in 2001, for Hong Kong University Press and other imprints in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The Bells of Old Tokyo is her first book.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 703 | T. Jefferson Parker Returns With The Last Good Guy

Today’s author interview guest is T. Jefferson Parker, author of the Roland Ford series and the new novel The Last Good Guy.

[image error] In this electrifying new thriller from three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestseller T. Jefferson Parker, Private Investigator Roland Ford hunts for a missing teenager and uncovers a dark conspiracy in his most personal case yet.

When hired by a beautiful and enigmatic woman to find her missing younger sister, private investigator Roland Ford immediately senses that the case is not what it seems. He is soon swept up in a web of lies and secrets as he searches for the teenager, and even his new client cannot be trusted. His investigation leads him to a secretive charter school, skinhead thugs, a cadre of American Nazis hidden in a desert compound, an arch-conservative celebrity evangelist–and, finally, to the girl herself. The Last Good Guy is Ford’s most challenging case to date, one that will leave him questioning everything he thought he knew about decency, honesty, and the battle between good and evil…if it doesn’t kill him first.

T. Jefferson Parker was born in Los Angeles and has lived all his life in Southern California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Irvine, in 1976 and began working as a cub reporter for a weekly newspaper in 1978. Parker’s first novel, Laguna Heat, was published to rave reviews in 1985 and made into an HBO movie starring Harry Hamlin, Jason Robards and Rip Torn just two years later. His subsequent novels—all dealing with crime, life and death against a sunny Southern California backdrop—have also elicited high acclaim and been noted bestsellers. His unique style of mystery writing has won him three Edgar Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 702 | Susan Richards Shreve Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Susan Richards Shreve, author of More News Tomorrow.

[image error] A thrilling and richly drawn family drama about a daughter’s quest to understand her mother’s mysterious death.

On the morning of her seventieth birthday, Georgianna Grove receives an unexpected letter that calls her back to Missing Lake, Wisconsin, where her mother was murdered sixty-six years earlier. Georgie’s father had confessed to the murder the next morning and was carted off to a state penitentiary. Haunted by the night that took both her parents away and determined to unearth the truth, Georgie takes her reluctant family on what will become a dangerous canoe trip up the swollen Bone River to return to Missing Lake.

Acclaimed novelist Susan Richards Shreve, celebrated for her “refined explorations of parent-child relationships” (Washington Post), captures the tenor of the times with clarity and elegance as she follows both Georgie and her parents on parallel trips up the Bone River, weaving together the hope of June 2008 with the injustices of June 1941. Georgie must untangle a web of bigotry, loss, and half-forgotten memories to finally understand her parents’ fate.

More News Tomorrow is a stirring and irresistible portrait of a family drawn together in search of truth.

Susan Shreve is the author of fifteen novels, most recently You Are the Love of My Life, a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood and twenty-nine books for children. She has edited or co-edited five anthologies and her essays have appeared in several collections as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post and several magazines.

She was co-founder and has been a Professor in the Master of Fine Arts Program at George Mason University for more than forty years. Susan has been a Jenny Moore Fellow at George Washington University, a visiting writer at Princeton University, for several years at the School of the Arts of Columbia University, Bennington College Summer Seminars and Goucher College.

In 1985, she co-founded the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and served for thirty years most recently as Chairman. PEN/Faulkner began as an award in Fiction but developed a Writers in Schools Program in which more than 200 writers discuss their books in all of the DC public and public charter schools. The writers work as well with incarcerated youth and pregnant high school students.

She has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, a grant in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grub Street Award in Non-Fiction, the Alumni Award at the Sidwell Friends School, and the Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers. She serves on the Advisory Board of Poets and Writers, the Advisory Board of 826DC and the board for The Cheuse International Center at George Mason University.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 701 | Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg. Jeanne returns to the show to talk about her new book The Nine.

[image error]Hannah Webber fears she will never be a mother, but her prayers are finally answered when she gives birth to a son. In an era of high-stakes parenting, nurturing Sam’s intellect becomes Hannah’s life purpose. She invests body and soul into his development, much to the detriment of her marriage. She convinces herself, however, that Sam’s acceptance at age fourteen to the most prestigious of New England boarding schools overseen by an illustrious headmaster, justifies her choices.

When he arrives at Dunning, Sam is glad to be out from under his mother’s close watch. And he enjoys his newfound freedom―until, late one night, he stumbles upon evidence of sexual misconduct at the school and is unable to shake the discovery.

Both a coming-of-age novel and a portrait of an evolving mother-son relationship, The Nine is the story of a young man who chooses to expose a corrupt world operating under its own set of rules―even if it means jeopardizing his mother’s hopes and dreams.

Jeanne Blasberg is the author of Eden, winner of the Beverly Hills Book Awards for Women’s Fiction and finalist for both the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. Edenwas released in May 2017 by She Writes Press.

After graduating from Smith College, Jeanne embarked on a career in finance. Even as she worked primarily with numbers, she always had an interest in writing. She made stops on Wall Street, Macy’s, and wrote case studies at Harvard Business School before turning seriously to fiction. She has kept a journal throughout her life, eventually taking inspiration from her childhood writings to pen her first novel, Eden.

Jeanne is the founder of the Westerly Memoir Project as well as a board member of the Boston Book Festival. She is a student and board member of Grub Street, one of the country’s pre-eminent creative writing centers where she wrote and revised her second novel, The Nine which will be released by She Writes Press in August 2019.

Jeanne and her husband split their time between Boston, MA and Westerly, RI. They love to travel, hike, ski, and spend time on the water. She caught the travel bug during a three-year stint in Europe. She’s found that her power of observation is the strongest on foreign soil, providing ample inspiration for her personal essays and travel writing.

Author Stories Podcast Episode 700 | Hank Phillippi Ryan Debuts The Murder List

Today is a special Episode 700 celebration with one of my favorite psychological thriller writers Hank Phillippi Ryan and we talk about her brand new release The Murder List as well as her history as an investigative reporter and her journey to becoming one of the most sought after thriller writers.

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[image error]“An exhilarating thrill ride that keeps you turning pages.. Ryan deftly delivers a denouement as shocking as it is satisfying.”–Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish and The Last Time I Saw You

Law student Rachel North will tell you, without hesitation, what she knows to be true. She’s smart, she’s a hard worker, she does the right thing, she’s successfully married to a faithful and devoted husband, a lion of Boston’s defense bar, and her internship with the Boston DA’s office is her ticket to a successful future.

Problem is–she’s wrong.

And in this cat and mouse game–the battle for justice becomes a battle for survival.

The Murder List is a new standalone suspense novel in the tradition of Lisa Scottoline and B. A. Paris from award-winning author and reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV. She’s won 36 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. The nationally bestselling author of 11 mysteries, Ryan’s also an award-winner in her second profession—with five Agathas, three Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and for THE OTHER WOMAN, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. Critics call her “a master of suspense” and “a superb and gifted storyteller” and she is the only author to have won the Agatha in four different categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction. Her novels have been named Library Journal’s Best of 2014, 2015 and 2016.  Her highly-acclaimed first standalone psychological suspense, TRUST ME, is an Agatha Nominee and was also named a Best Thriller by New York Post, BOOK BUB, Real Simple Magazine, CrimeReads and Criminal Element. Hank’s newest book is THE MURDER LIST. NYT bestseller Liv Constantine calls it “an exhilarating thrill ride,” A.J. Finn says, “exciting, explosive, relentless,” B.A. Paris says it’s “her best yet,” and Library Journal starred review says, “Masterly plotted—with a twisted ending—a riveting, character-driven story.”

Hank is a founder of MWA University and past president of National Sisters in Crime. Visit Hank online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @HankPRyan, on Instagram @hankpryan and on Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthor.