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Saturday, December 21, 2013
Eel River - Electronic Edition at Morrigan Books : Specialists in Dark Fiction
Eel River - Electronic Edition at Morrigan Books : Specialists in Dark Fiction
Eel River, by Shannon Page
Eel River brings an original, hippie commune angle to horror, furthering our commitment to offering the best in innovative dark fiction.
Eel River, by Shannon Page
Eel River brings an original, hippie commune angle to horror, furthering our commitment to offering the best in innovative dark fiction.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
At Home, Writing: New Home
At Home, Writing: New Home: Please join me at my new home over here . Readers who subscribed to the blog feed will now have to hit the Subscribe button on the right h...
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
The Sound of . . . Sound in Novels | Live Write Thrive
read the rest at The Sound of . . . Sound in Novels | Live Write Thrive
Monday, December 16, 2013
Book News
Book News
Year of the Demon
Find this book in our catalog.
Jacket Notes:
" A MASK OF DESTRUCTION Detective Sergeant Mariko Oshiro has been promoted to Japan's elite Narcotics unit-and with this promotion comes a new partner, a new case, and new danger. The underboss of a powerful yakuza crime syndicate has put a price on her head, and he'll lift the bounty only if she retrieves an ancient iron demon mask that was stolen from him in a daring raid. However, Mariko has no idea of the tumultuous past carried within the mask-or of its deadly link with the famed Inazuma blade she wields. The secret of this mask originated hundreds of years before Mariko was born, and over time the mask's power has evolved to bend its owner toward destruction, stopping at nothing to obtain Inazuma steel. Mariko's fallen sensei knew much of the mask's hypnotic power and of its mysterious link to a murderous cult. Now Mariko must use his notes to find the mask before the cult can bring Tokyo to its knees-and before the underboss decides her time is up..."--
Publishers Weekly 08/05/2013
In this gripping follow-up to 2012's Daughter of the Sword, Tokyo police officer Oshiro Mariko is now working in the Narcotics division. In the aftermath of a raid, an ancient mask is stolen, and its Yakuza owner demands that Mariko retrieve it. Her search for the mask leads her to a cult with a deadly agenda and a centuries-old mystery connected to the legendary sword she now possesses. Extensive flashbacks to the lives of two historical characters Daigoru, a 16th-century lord who wielded Mariko's sword, and Kaida, a 15th-century one-armed pearl diver forced to contend with ruthless mercenaries further expand the story, essentially making it three books in one. Bein combines the best parts of police procedurals, buddy-cop films, historical fantasy, and intrigue-laden adventure, enhancing them with painstaking research and attention to atmosphere. Despite all the action, this middle volume feels incomplete, but all three stories promise to wrap up in gripping style. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Oct.) Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.
Year of the Demon
Find this book in our catalog.
Jacket Notes:
" A MASK OF DESTRUCTION Detective Sergeant Mariko Oshiro has been promoted to Japan's elite Narcotics unit-and with this promotion comes a new partner, a new case, and new danger. The underboss of a powerful yakuza crime syndicate has put a price on her head, and he'll lift the bounty only if she retrieves an ancient iron demon mask that was stolen from him in a daring raid. However, Mariko has no idea of the tumultuous past carried within the mask-or of its deadly link with the famed Inazuma blade she wields. The secret of this mask originated hundreds of years before Mariko was born, and over time the mask's power has evolved to bend its owner toward destruction, stopping at nothing to obtain Inazuma steel. Mariko's fallen sensei knew much of the mask's hypnotic power and of its mysterious link to a murderous cult. Now Mariko must use his notes to find the mask before the cult can bring Tokyo to its knees-and before the underboss decides her time is up..."--
Publishers Weekly 08/05/2013
In this gripping follow-up to 2012's Daughter of the Sword, Tokyo police officer Oshiro Mariko is now working in the Narcotics division. In the aftermath of a raid, an ancient mask is stolen, and its Yakuza owner demands that Mariko retrieve it. Her search for the mask leads her to a cult with a deadly agenda and a centuries-old mystery connected to the legendary sword she now possesses. Extensive flashbacks to the lives of two historical characters Daigoru, a 16th-century lord who wielded Mariko's sword, and Kaida, a 15th-century one-armed pearl diver forced to contend with ruthless mercenaries further expand the story, essentially making it three books in one. Bein combines the best parts of police procedurals, buddy-cop films, historical fantasy, and intrigue-laden adventure, enhancing them with painstaking research and attention to atmosphere. Despite all the action, this middle volume feels incomplete, but all three stories promise to wrap up in gripping style. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Oct.) Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
The troubles with KDP Select | Cussedness Corner
The troubles with KDP Select | Cussedness Corner
The value of using KDP Select has become questionable in many cases. Jennifer Malone has an excellent article on it. Be sure to read the comments.
Daverana’s own experience with it has been that it does not work well. We have offered three different books by three different authors and not seen a bump in sales as a result of it.
A year ago, Carolyn McCray wrote an excellent article on the ways to decide whether KDP Select would work for you or not. And from reading the article, I see that she’s saying you already have to have fabulous sales numbers to get any benefit from it. She could be right there. If you don’t already have substantial visibility, KDP Select is not going to give it to you. . . .
read the rest at Cussedness Corner
The troubles with KDP Select
The value of using KDP Select has become questionable in many cases. Jennifer Malone has an excellent article on it. Be sure to read the comments.
Daverana’s own experience with it has been that it does not work well. We have offered three different books by three different authors and not seen a bump in sales as a result of it.
A year ago, Carolyn McCray wrote an excellent article on the ways to decide whether KDP Select would work for you or not. And from reading the article, I see that she’s saying you already have to have fabulous sales numbers to get any benefit from it. She could be right there. If you don’t already have substantial visibility, KDP Select is not going to give it to you. . . .
read the rest at Cussedness Corner
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Award Scams | Cussedness Corner Steven Beeho guests
Award Scams | Cussedness Corner
Guest post by Steven Beeho. Coming next week a deeper digging from another angle by another Steven, Steven Saus.)
Here’s to my wealth of Stevens. Mr. Beeho is the author of Big Bad Man and other tales.
STEVEN BEEHO:
Congratulations. For reading this article, I hereby declare you the winner of this decade’s Article Reader of the Internet. This award is newly created by me and without any merit whatsoever, but feel free to brag about something you didn’t get fairly or honestly. Because that works, right?
Wrong.
There’s no merit to it. Nothing to show you earned this. No indication that you have been judged by your peers and found worthy of notice. This is what people crave. Awards have meaning only due to the weight behind them placed there by those bestowing it or those who have won it before you. You hope that serious thought has gone into the giving of such a thing, and that those who thought about it knew what the hell they were doing.
But people still want that recognition, and others know it. So you can dangle that shiny trinket and lure them in. Hey, want an award? Want something to show off? Wait, you don’t care about what it means or who decided to give it to you? You just want something to make you feel worthy? . . ."
read the rest at Cussedness Corner
Guest post by Steven Beeho. Coming next week a deeper digging from another angle by another Steven, Steven Saus.)
Here’s to my wealth of Stevens. Mr. Beeho is the author of Big Bad Man and other tales.
STEVEN BEEHO:
Congratulations. For reading this article, I hereby declare you the winner of this decade’s Article Reader of the Internet. This award is newly created by me and without any merit whatsoever, but feel free to brag about something you didn’t get fairly or honestly. Because that works, right?
Wrong.
There’s no merit to it. Nothing to show you earned this. No indication that you have been judged by your peers and found worthy of notice. This is what people crave. Awards have meaning only due to the weight behind them placed there by those bestowing it or those who have won it before you. You hope that serious thought has gone into the giving of such a thing, and that those who thought about it knew what the hell they were doing.
But people still want that recognition, and others know it. So you can dangle that shiny trinket and lure them in. Hey, want an award? Want something to show off? Wait, you don’t care about what it means or who decided to give it to you? You just want something to make you feel worthy? . . ."
read the rest at Cussedness Corner
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
The Pool Boy’s Beatitude
DJ Swykert is a former 911 operator.
His work has appeared in The Tampa Review, Detroit News, Monarch
Review, Lunch Ticket, Zodiac Review, Barbaric Yawp and Bull. His
books include Children of the Enemy, Alpha Wolves, Maggie Elizabeth
Harrington and The Death of Anyone. You can find him at:
www.magicmasterminds.com/djswykert .He is a wolf expert.
"Like my character, Jack, I have always
been attracted to the great mysteries of life. While Quantum
Mechanics continues to search for a Theory of Everything, so have I.
And I can write with authority about addiction, rehabilitation and
jail. If you add the desire for a real and loving relationship into
the equation you come up with the story of The Pool Boy’s
Beatitude. Though it is fiction, it’s perhaps the most cathartic
piece of writing I have ever produced. Not only does Jack discover
anomalies to the large physical world we exist in, but also poignant
truths about his own personal little universe.
"In his search for the God particle Jack
Joseph has lost control of the most important particle of existence,
himself. Jack’s intellect may have expanded at the speed of light,
but his emotional development is mired in the darkness of addiction.
Without change Jack is accelerating towards a personal collision that
would render his interest in the cosmic one irrelevant.
"Jack is a drop-out physicist cleaning
swimming pools to support a lifestyle of addiction and detachment. He
has a wife divorcing him, a wealthy woman seducing him and the
justice system convicting him. Jack’s personal cosmos is spiraling
out of control. When he met Sarah his universe further expanded. The
Gravitational Constant he studied at university lacked the velocity
with which their galaxies rushed toward one another. It was a life
changing Big Bang. A new and brighter Jack was created and he found
his supreme happiness. But there was a lot of space junk in the form
of addiction and legal consequences standing in the way of his pool
boy quest toward bliss."
This is a brief excerpt from the book:
I believe God thinks in numbers. Most of what I know best can be
described with an equation, numbers predicting an outcome, relating
the position, velocity, acceleration and various forces acting on a
body of mass, and state this relationship as a function of time. And
isn’t that what we are, what everything is: accelerated particles
in space time.
And this velocity of motion is what creates gravity and holds
everything together. But what creates the motion? I think about this
shit all the time. Until I feel like I only know one thing: nothing.
 |
I sat out on the grass and opened a bottle of Mad Dog 20-20. Drank it
to the bottom, sucked it in like a black hole swallowing light.
Alcohol goes through the brain in stages, first the cerebral cortex,
the thinking brain. A friendlier, more daring person emerges, and
becomes ever more creative, imaginative, as the drug continues deeper
into the brain. Last to go is the limbic brain. That’s when you go
numb.
I got ultimate this night, left the past, present, and flew into my
future. It was brilliant, until in the morning, when I stared into
the eyes of a cop. I realized I had evolved, I was homeless. Passed
out on the lawn I had merged my present into my future and lost the
past. I had become what I refused to change. There are no corners in
a round expanding infinite universe. But I had turned one.
The Pool Boy’s Beatitude can be
ordered at bookstores or purchased direct at:
You can read more about this author and his work at
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