Welcome to Gardner Browning & ‘Karma City’ #SciFi #PostApocalyptic @GoddessFish

On May 29, 2019May 20, 2019 By Casey's CornerIn Authors & Books, Book Tours7 Comments

Today we have author Gardner Browning visiting. Welcome!

What would you like to tell readers about yourself?

* Gardner Michael Browning is an award-winning author and professional wrestler. In addition to receiving a New Hampshire Literary Award, two of his novels were part of an international English literacy program for middle grade readers. Browning enjoys classic literature, fishing, playing guitar and spending time with his family.

Today Gardner Browning will be talking about the best and worst pieces of writing advice he’s ever received.
* The worst advice that I ever received was when I was a young man and fledgling writer, an English teacher told the class that the most important part of any story is the protagonist (hero). The students spent a lot of time drafting up cool heroes and layering in the “character flaws.” It made me cringe then and it makes me cringe now.
* The most important part of commercially competitive fiction is not the protagonist, but antagonist (villain). The bad guy drives the plot! Without a good bad guy, you can’t have a great good guy! The antagonist is the source of the primary conflict, the troubles in the world and most importantly, he/she is the reason the reader sympathizes with your protagonist. We care about our hero because we become a good villain will make us emotionally attached.
* Good stories are the ones that contain the great evils that give rise to legendary heroes. Simply put, without a well thought out, compelling, and powerful antagonist—one who has his/her own goals and views him/herself as the rightful hero — you don’t have a story at all.
* The best advice I ever received in writing was, “You gotta sex it up, man!”
* That’s right! Though, that doesn’t mean a writer needs to have his characters dive into the sheets every other chapter. Sometimes, there just isn’t time when the heroes are dodging bullets.
* I’m talking about a love tension. In Karma City, the reader finds Jameson and Luna each keeping feelings for one another but unable to come forward and voice them. The stakes rise. The love rises. The tension builds. The reader is turning pages now because he/she is emotionally connected. Finally, there comes a time when they can lock eyes and accept that they have a love that allows them to love themselves.
* So, my advice to any writer, if you want your story to pull the heart strings and get readers emotionally invested, build a love tension that feels organic, natural to your characters, and let it rise with the elevating stakes that drive up the plot.

A look into…

~ Blurb ~

* A microscopic parasite has crippled humanity with night terrors and paralyzing anxiety. In this world of increasing dystopia, hope yet remains in Karma City. But when mercenary drifter, Jameson Shoals, learns that a famous scientist has created a stronger parasite to kill the original, it isn’t until the bodies litter the streets that he realizes the horrifying truth: the new parasite is a killer with a mind of its own, and upon dominating Patient Zero, this killer acquires legs, hands, and eyes. It falls upon Shoals and his partner, a deadly female mercenary, to stop PZ and his mob before they can overcome and supplant humankind.

~ Excerpt ~

* Though the degradation in society perpetuated by the Malady parasite crippled advancements in industry and commerce, coal mining prevailed in the mountains and parts beyond Karma City, producing abundant fuel for steam engines and thermal power plants. As a result, the railroad had become the people’s last lifeline. Two 4-8-4 steam locomotives, antiquated yet reliable engines, wheeled along cardinal tracks transporting people, medicine and goods back and forth from Karma, Rime, Lobos and many other unnamed stops in the endless Void Lands. The masters of these locomotives were the rifle-bearing men and women sworn to a life on the tracks— the cold-hearted, Iron Tribe.

Buy Karma City here…
The book will be on sale for $0.99. Amazon – US

Find Gardner Browning here…
Amazon Author Page | Facebook Page

Thank you for joining us here today, Gardner Browning! It was a pleasure getting to know you and your story.

ANNOUNCEMENT! Gardner Browning will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour! So be sure to leave a comment AND use this RAFFLECOPTER LINK to enter the drawing. Also, visit the other tour stops for a greater chance of winning!

Welcome to Ann Crawford w/ ‘Fresh off the Starship’ @ann_crawford1 @GoddessFish #WomensFiction #SciFi #Humor

On May 21, 2019May 6, 2019 By Casey's CornerIn Authors & Books, Book Tours9 Comments

Today we have author Ann Crawford visiting. Welcome!

What would you like to tell readers about yourself?

* I’m a fun-loving, world-traveling, high-flying, deep-diving, and living-to-the-max author of eight books. When I’m not flying planes, scuba diving, climbing every mountain (on the back of my husband’s motorcycle) or riding the world’s fastest roller coasters, you can find me in my writing nest with a view of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains out the window. I’ve lived all over–from both oceans white with foam, to the prairie, and now to the mountain. Yes, a little backwards, but what the hey.
* My bestselling and award-winning novels go as high and deep as I do—they’re profound yet funny; playful although poignant; heart-opening and heart-lifting; thought-provoking and inspiring; and edgy while universal. I’m also a screenwriter and award-winning filmmaker and humanitarian.

Today Ann Crawford will be talking about the best and worst pieces of writing advice she’s ever received.
* Well, the worst advice is easy: someone once told me to “Grow up!” and get a real, “practical” job, and give up this being-a-writer dream. Ugh! If I was writing books and people were saying, “Have you considered bagging groceries at Safeway instead?” I might consider giving it up. Well, I take that back—I write because I love it and I have to…it’s just who I am and what I do. So even if my books didn’t appeal to anyone else, I’d still write. But I do get great accolades from readers, reviewers, and award-givers, so I’m delighted it’s all working out.
* That unsolicited advice was so crazy awful! And he was a person of influence in my life. If I hadn’t been so driven, come from a highly creative family where such “crazy” pursuits were the norm (although so was keeping the day job until the creative pursuit could pay the way), and been so stubborn by nature, he might have decimated that dream. I wrote him a long letter telling him how wrong he was and to never dash someone’s goals like that. He later said, “Well, I guess you’ll show me.” Check!
* The best advice is also easy: “Keep writing!” Included in that would be “the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair” at a prescheduled, uninterruptible time and preferably behind a closed door…a playlist for each book (actually, that’s mine—no one ever suggested that to me but it works really, really well; the music becomes Pavlovian after a while, automatically dropping me into the world of the book)…and, well, if that’s where the joy is, nothing’s going to stop it.

A look into…

~ Blurb ~

* Love to laugh? You’ll enjoy this feel-good tale.
* A starbeing skyrockets to Earth from the other side of forever with a specific assignment: to help steer humanity away from the collision course it’s on. But we all know how travel can get drastically diverted–instead of landing in Washington, D.C., where she could assist on a grand geopolitical scale, she ends up in…Kansas!
* Wrong place, right time? Join our shero on this whimsical journey as she pursues her purpose as well as discovers the beauty of life and love on Earth.

~ Excerpt ~

* She catches a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror and lets out a gasp of surprise. She looks down at her body and then back at her reflection. She turns to the right, then to the left, then even more to the right, and then even more to the left.
* She gazes at her long limbs and then at the gentle curves and soft swells with interesting shapes, patterns and varying colors. She’d seen the human form during her training, but it’s quite different seeing it in person, literally, as a person.
* This vehicle is amazingly beautiful!
* The morning starlight casts her in a golden glow. She turns and looks over her shoulder to see the back of her in the mirror. Her long, light-brown-colored hair falls down her back like a veil.
* It’s one thing to study human beings. It’s a whole other thing altogether to be encased in this gorgeous piece of Creation.
* She wanders down the hall to the bathroom. She examines the tub and the faucets, remembering coming across such objects in her Googling and Youtubing. She starts filling the tub, adjusting the temperature to something that feels good, and climbs in.
* Holy Heaven!
* Not only is the water pressing against her, head to toe, a sensory pleasure in itself, she also runs her hands over this luscious body thing of hers. Nothing in her eternal life had ever felt like this. “Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

Buy Fresh off the Starship here…
Amazon – US

Thank you for joining us here today, Ann Crawford! It was a pleasure getting to know you and your story.

ANNOUNCEMENT! Ann Crawford will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. So be sure to leave a comment AND use this RAFFLECOPTER LINK to enter the drawing. Also, visit the other tour stops for a greater chance of winning!

Welcome M. F. Sullivan w/ ‘The Hierophant’s Daughter’ #SciFi #Horror #LGBTQ #Trilogy @TheRealMFS @GoddessFish

On May 20, 2019March 23, 2019 By Casey's CornerIn Authors & Books, Book Tours6 Comments

Today we have author M. F. Sullivan visiting. Welcome!

What would you like to tell readers about yourself?

* M.F. Sullivan is the author of Delilah, My Woman, The Lightning Stenography Device, and a slew of plays in addition to the Trilogy. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her boyfriend and her cat, where she attends the local Shakespeare Festival and experiments with the occult. Find more information about her work (and plenty of free essays) below.

Today M. F. Sullivan will be talking about “Lessons I learned from my heroine.”
* My story’s protagonist, the General Dominia di Mephitoli, has by the beginning of The Disgraced Martyr Trilogy spent three hundred years as one of the most notorious martyrs on planet Earth. She’s accomplished this by winning 1000 battles in a series of outrageous shows of military might and intellectual cunning.
* So if she could do all that, why the hell was I overweight?
* It may sound silly, but by the time I finished the first draft of the trilogy, I was keenly aware of how out of shape I was. Yes, I’ve always been a bit pudgy, but as my significant other of three years is a former chef with a taste for fine dining, I’ve found it very difficult to, uh, keep food out of my round face, for lack of a more delicate phrasing. This has had a predictable impact on my weight, my looks, and my asthma, but I was able to ignore most of it. I wasn’t morbidly obese or anything, after all, just a little jigglier than normal.
* But there comes a point around the second draft of Book II where I was working with a period of time Dominia spends imprisoned. She was filling the time by doing sit-ups. And I was struck by this as I would have been were she a real woman I knew—if Dominia, as a starving prisoner kept in a dank cell, was able to find energy or frame of mind enough to maintain her body, what was my excuse? While living in Tucson I had made a good habit of walking every morning, but I’d let it lapse upon moving to Oregon—but my schedule of rousing at 4 am every morning stayed the same, so it seemed a reasonable move to slip a work-out into my early routine.
* Nine months later, I’m in far better shape, a pants size smaller, and grateful to the General—health of the body follows health of the mind, and one impacts the other. Writers learning from the lessons of their characters will inevitably be led to a healthy lifestyle. The gym is a great time to think about my work in progress, listen to my writing soundtrack, and plan for the day ahead. It’s safe to say few fictional characters have had such a constructive impact on my life—very generous, considering all the torment I put Dominia through as her author!

A look into…

~ Blurb ~

* By 4042 CE, the Hierophant and his Church have risen to political dominance with his cannibalistic army of genetically modified humans: martyrs. In an era when mankind’s intergenerational cold wars against their long-lived predators seem close to running hot, the Holy Family is poised on the verge of complete planetary control. It will take a miracle to save humanity from extinction.
* It will also take a miracle to resurrect the wife of 331-year-old General Dominia di Mephitoli, who defects during martyr year 1997 AL in search of Lazarus, the one man rumored to bring life to the dead. With the Hierophant’s Project Black Sun looming over her head, she has little choice but to believe this Lazarus is really all her new friends say he is–assuming he exists at all–and that these companions of hers are really able to help her. From the foulmouthed Japanese prostitute with a few secrets of her own to the outright sapient dog who seems to judge every move, they don’t inspire a lot of confidence, but the General has to take the help she can get.
* After all, Dominia is no ordinary martyr. She is THE HIEROPHANT’S DAUGHTER, and her Father won’t let her switch sides without a fight. Not when she still has so much to learn.
* The dystopic first entry of an epic cyberpunk trilogy, THE HIEROPHANT’S DAUGHTER is a horror/sci-fi adventure sure to delight and inspire adult readers of all stripes.

~ Excerpt ~

VIII
* Miki Soto
* What couldn’t a person access from the Japanese Internet? The question inspired Dominia to get out of the bathtub for another look at the card. There was no address, whether web or physical, as there hadn’t been an address on the ad floating across that billboard; instead, when she studied the lotus embossed upon the card, the DIOX-I highlighted it as though it were a link. How fascinating, this augmented reality! After fixing the device’s settings back to manual control, she “clicked” on the link with an unsteady wink, and her right field of vision was covered by the floating window of a browser. Had she cochlear implants, she would have heard some sort of music, or even a voice accompanying the woman’s writhing in and out of the browser’s dark: less a whole person, and more a disembodied assortment of lips, fingers, lower backs, and thighs. At last, the vision disappeared to present her with the crimson words, “WELCOME TO THE RED MARKET.”
* A button appeared: “Connect Your Halcyon for Age Verification.” The idea of giving the women of the international and highly loathed illegal organization any information might have stopped her in a simpler time, as it surely stopped 70 percent of potential Red Market customers—the ones able to access the site, anyway, inaccessible from Europa and the Front through traditional routes. That had been all the Hierophant could do to combat in any meaningful way the world’s oldest profession-cum-cult. Far trickier than hampering Internet access was controlling in-person transactions in gold or silver, or the off-brand cryptocurrency, Redcoin; and because there were almost no freelance prostitutes left in the world, catching a working girl was difficult.

Buy The Hierophant’s Daughter here…
Amazon – US | Barnes & Noble | NetGalley

Find M. F. Sullivan here…
Amazon Author Page | Blog | Goodreads | Twitter

Thank you for joining us here today, M. F. Sullivan! It was a pleasure getting to know you and your story.

ANNOUNCEMENT! M. F. Sullivan says, “One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card!” So be sure to leave a comment AND use this RAFFLECOPTER LINK to enter the drawing. Also, visit the other tour stops for a greater chance of winning!