Mist Gallows Cover Reveal by Beyond the Books With Sharon Rimmelzwaan
It’s Okay If You Don’t Write A Novel: A Short Form Fiction Writer’s Lament
I felt like I wasn’t a real author. It was bad enough to have to deal with the stigma of self-publishing (also a topic for another time), there was also the fact that anyone who’d look me up on Amazon and other retailers would not find a backlist. I had no readers of my own (except for my family and some friends) and I was merely riding the coattails of an established author. But to have a backlist, and to be taken seriously, especially in the fantasy genre, I needed a novel.
Did I write a novel? No. I couldn’t, remember?
Read the full post.
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Catching Up
Hi everyone! It’s been a while!
I’m relaunching my author newsletter now that I’m feeling better and ready to return to my creative writing journey. So if you’d like to get a free short story quarterly, dibs on promo offerings, leads to writing opportunities and resources, updates on my writing projects, reading recommendations, and a friend and supporter, please sign up at https://mariesinadjan.substack.com 
Surprises are also in store for newsletter subscribers with Hotel Fen Book 2 finally releasing this month! 
And if anyone’s still interested in an ARC for the first installment of our Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, please leave a comment below and I’ll get in touch with you soon 
Book Tour & Review: Valen and the Beasts by G.J. Kemp
Welcome to my stop for the book tour of Valen and the Beasts by G.J. Kemp, organized by Random Things Tours. This is a novella in The Acre Series, which is currently comprised of two novels: Juno and the Lady, and Miles and the Soldier, released just last June 14th. Valen ties up to book 1, and is marked as such. Having recently read a novella for another fantasy book, however, I decided to do a little experiment and read Valen first, though I likewise have the first book on hand, along with a couple of cute bookmarks for both books. (Thank you, GJ!)
Read the full review here.
Valen plucked the glass box off the shelf and gently placed it on his desk. Inside, a set of handcrafted metal circles linked to form the body of his new beast. He closed his eyes and dreamed of the Fairacre residents buying his latest creations.
A commotion outside Valen’s shop brings him back to the present. The Captain has caught the leader of the sewer rats and is parading her in front of Fairacre residents. Her fate will be determined by the townsfolk’s demands.
Valen steps in to defend the leader.
A story of discovery, hope and courage, Valen and the Beasts is a journey of an outsider risking everything to stand up for the people he loves. Will Valen save the leader of the sewer rats? Will he show everyone his secret? Or will he buckle under the pressures of the old conventions?
GENRE: Young Adult Fantasy Adventure
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon | Barnes and Noble
About the Author
A nomad at heart, GJ Kemp has lived in nine countries across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His career has included working as a Divemaster in The Red Sea, a zookeeper in Israel, and a proofreader in Sweden.
Born with cerebral palsy, GJ has spent a lifetime trying to tie his shoelaces while standing up in the hope of not falling over. It is a constant challenge, but sometimes he occasionally succeeds.
Finding the love for writing later in life, GJ spends most of his free time going for walks and dreaming of story ideas. He hopes to one day have a small place on the oceanfront where he can walk his dogs on the beach.
Got a book you’d like me to review or an author you’d like me to feature? Drop me a line! 💕 You can also subscribe to my newsletter for free short stories, special offers, and writing opportunities.
New Audio Short Story: The Audience Is the Enemy
Tuesday means it’s time for a new audio short! Today we debut The Audience Is the Enemy, where a musician laments on her strange “fan” situation. This was originally written as a monologue for a theatre series called Artist Horror Stories, though the show was never brought to fruition because of the pandemic.
Listen to the audiobook for free on YouTube.
Please feel free to subscribe to my (new) channel as we’ll be releasing these audio shorts weekly, and if you’d like us to read or produce an audio version of one of your works for free, just let me know! ❤️
Got a book you’d like me to review or an author you’d like me to feature? Drop me a line! 💕 You can also subscribe to my newsletter for free short stories, special offers, and writing opportunities.
New Vocal Post: Butterfly Kisses
(And because we’re friends here, you get the actual wedding photo 🤣)
My father didn’t cry at my wedding, and I was glad. I wouldn’t have known what to do or how to react if he did. In fact, I went to great lengths to ensure that he wouldn’t, because if he, someone I never saw cry, started crying, then I would start crying. That included abolishing the traditional father-daughter dance (though it wasn’t the only one my husband and I abolished), and thus saving myself from the heart-tugging, tear-jerking beauty of the song Butterfly Kisses. I’d already succumbed to that song once, in one of my classes at university, and I didn’t want to ever do so publicly again.
Read the full post on Vocal.
Got a book you’d like me to review or an author you’d like me to feature? Drop me a line! 💕 You can also subscribe to my newsletter for free short stories, special offers, and writing opportunities.
Book Tour & Free eBook: Pulse by B.A. Bellec
Welcome to my stop for the book tour of Pulse by B.A. Bellec! 🎧 Pulse is a plot-driven multi-POV dystopian sci-fi horror thriller set in 2040, centered around a corporation, a creature, and a music festival. Think Fyre Festival, Black Mirror, and X-Files combined.
Click here to get a copy of the ebook for free!
One of the things that makes Bellec’s projects unique is his inclusion of musicians in his novels – then he actually produces the songs as his book goes through the editing stages! You can find that music on his YouTube channel, along with the tracks to his debut novel Someone’s Story, a coming-of-age novel about teen mental health that won the Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Literary Award for Young Adult Book of the Year.
In the year 2040, a mysterious creature is unleashed at the world’s biggest music festival…
Pulse is a plot-driven multi-POV dystopian sci-fi horror thriller set in 2040, centered around a corporation, a creature, and a music festival. Think Fyre Festival, Black Mirror, and X-Files combined. The story deals with themes of capitalism, consumerism, business, politics, pandemics, climate change, activism, and technology while bouncing between a diverse group of characters sure to entertain almost anyone. The book is already being praised for its fantastic use of horror, engaging world-building, and genre-bending approach utilizing some screenplay-like formatting. This is the first entry in a new series with the sequel well underway.
GENRE: Dystopian Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller
PUBLICATION DATE: 1 December 2021
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
CONTENT WARNINGS: Drug and alcohol use, body horror, violence, car accidents, gun use, torture, miscarriage, animal harm/death, child harm/death
Wait, What Was That About Music?
A book about a music festival with an accompanying soundtrack, you say? Yes, that’s Pulse, you guys. And to further tease your senses, I’m going to link you to each of the tracks that have been released so far for the novel. Get ready! 🎼 (Note: The captions below are taken from the videos themselves, and are not mine.)
Now I Am Become Death | Remix of “The Radiance” by Linkin Park | Created by B.A. Bellec & Skrybe
“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Father of the Atomic Bomb
The infamous quote as the gravity of what he had created set in and a quote that has been haunting people for generations. Linkin’ Park sampled the quote in their song The Radiance off the album A Thousand Suns. This video here is a reimagining of that idea.
Perduto | Cinematic Operatic Electronic Music | B.A. Bellec, Skrybe, & Armenia Sarkissian
A grand and epic song inspired by the movie soundtracks Bellec grew up listening to and with lyrics pulled right from the pages of his new novel Pulse.
Read the companion story on Wattpad.
Requiem | Tribal Electronic Music | Horror Anime Music Video | AMV | B.A. Bellec & Ambrose Zaldua
This is the fourth song from the Pulse EP. LF is a fictitious DJ from the year 2040. Here is a short story about LF, which you can read for free on Wattpad.
Limitless | Electronic Music | Pixel Art | Dubstep | Chillstep | B.A. Bellec & Skrybe
DJ LF is back! In the year 2036, he is world-famous, coming off the height of being the musical sound of both the Olympics as well as the Pulse company marketing campaign. This music video is released 4 years after the events of the short story to build buzz for PulseFest, imagine if Fyre Festival actually happened… that is PulseFest.
Pulse | Epic Cinematic Electronic Music | B.A. Bellec & Skrybe
Monster | Alternative Rock | Indie | B.A. Bellec & Gus Reeves
This song was written by Bellec as a bridge between his two projects, Someone’s Story and Pulse. The Monster lyrics came to be as Bellec toiled away editing Pulse. This song is not part of the Pulse EP but rather a standalone that has more in common with the Somone’s Story EP. What makes this song unique is all the Someone’s Story songs were written from the POV of a character in the novel, but Monster is the author himself expressing the feelings he had wrapping his project.
Goodbye | Electronic Music | EDM | B.A. Bellec, Gus Reeves, & Ambrose Zaldua
About the Author
Bryan “B.A.” Bellec was born in Richmond, BC and raised in Langley, BC, before settling in Winnipeg, MB. His first adventure was a career in Finance, where he spent 15 years developing his business skills. A self-starter always interested in research, he taught himself many of the aspects of storytelling through reading books, screenplays, and material online. Whenever he found an inspirational piece of art, he quickly went to the source to find the story behind the artist who created the work. It took many years after attending film school for him to finally combine his creative skills with his life experience and tell these stories he had been holding back. Some of his favorite creative people: Lukas Rossi, Justin Furstenfeld, Peter Jackson, Stephen Chbosky, J.K. Rowling, and Stephen King.
His debut novel, Someone’s Story, won the Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Literary Award for 2021 Young Adult Book of the Year (and other honors) with its endearing, soulful take on teen mental health. Around the same time, he also was also awarded a Digital Originals grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to make music.
During COVID-19, Bellec started a YouTube channel and he pounded away on the keyboard to bring his second novel, Pulse, from his imagination to the page.
He is a proud sponsor for the Reader Views Award Program for Indie Authors, and also a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Manitoba Writers’ Guild. He is an advocate for art as a form of expression and supports artists through these various organizations and social media.
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Tour Schedule
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Book Tour & Author Interview: The Last Beekeeper by Rebecca L. Fearnley
Welcome to my stop for the book tour of The Last Beekeeper by Rebecca L. Fearnley, organized by Random Things Tours. I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with her about her life as an author and so many other fun trivia, including her karaoke song of choice and book recommendations!
What character archetype would you be if you were a character in a book, movie or TV series?
Probably the comic-relief side character. You know, the one most likely to die halfway through. I have very few special powers other than my ability to make snarky remarks at inappropriate moments.
🐝🐝🐝
If you were a character in a book, movie or TV series, what would be your catchphrase or famous line or popular expression?
It would probably be: “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I take after my father in that respect.”
Read the full Q&A and find out more about The Last Beekeeper here.
Got a book you’d like me to review or an author you’d like me to feature? Drop me a line! 💕 You can also subscribe to my newsletter for free short stories, special offers, and writing opportunities.
New Audio Short Story: Tactics
Tuesday means it’s time for a new audio short! This time we have Tactics, an office romance told in two perspectives.
Listen to the audiobook for free on YouTube.
Please feel free to subscribe to my (new) channel as we’ll be releasing these audio shorts weekly, and if you’d like us to read or produce an audio version of one of your works for free, just let me know! ❤️
Got a book you’d like me to review or an author you’d like me to feature? Drop me a line! 💕 You can also subscribe to my newsletter for free short stories, special offers, and writing opportunities.
Marie Sinadjan 