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!)
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?
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.
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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.
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! ❤️
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Because June is the month for weddings, and fathers too. (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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.”
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.
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.
Welcome to my stop for the book tour of The Heron Kings’ Flight by Eric Lewis, organized by Random Things Tours. This is the sequel to The Heron Kings, taking place a hundred years after the first book, although it can be read as a standalone.
I will have a full review later this week as I insisted on reading the books in order and one right after the other, and they’re both lengthy works, though fast-paced and enjoyable. Similar to the first book, The Heron Kings’ Flight speaks of war and its horrors and doesn’t hold back. It also has an ensemble of memorable characters who, like the prequel, are more of the people caught in the middle rather than royalty and nobility.
Even if I’m not yet done, I already recommend this book (and the prequel) if you’re a fan of epic fantasy and character-driven stories! In the meantime, here’s some more information and cool stuff you can check out, including a map and an excerpt.
The Heron Kings have been betrayed. A century after their formation from a gang of desperate peasant insurgents, the shadowy band of forest rangers suffers a rare defeat when a skirmish turns into a bloody ambush. Their shaky truce with the crown is tested as young members Linet and Aerrus work to track down their enemies. When reluctant peacetime soldier Eyvind reveals a conspiracy to welcome the charismatic invader Phynagoras, the trio must convince a weak king and pitifully few allies to stand against the storm.
Their only hope lies in the forgotten tactics of their own guerrilla past, and a terrifying new alchemical weapon the likes of which the world had never imagined. The only question is which side will be destroyed by it first…
GENRE: Epic Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: May 2022 PUBLISHER: Flame Tree Press
Map
I love maps on books! I know they’re not as needed in other genres compared to epic fantasy, but I think they’re really cool. It also allows me appreciate the flow of the story as I can see the characters’ journey through the different places, and likewise helps me commit the names to memory 😉
Excerpt
Linet strode through the twilit halls of the Lodge of the Heron Kings, gathering bits of gear, moving from one chamber to the next and through the long-remembered routines of lacing her leather jerkin, hooking a quiver of arrows to her belt and stringing her bow. There was some small comfort in these familiar acts, but she knew they were only a distraction from the worry gnawing at the back of her mind.
Where are they? she thought.
It was just a routine skirmish, another Marchman tribal incursion meant to test Lord Osbren’s resolve, no more. What had begun a century ago with a desperate band of peasant guerrillas lived on in the deadly rangers, a forest refuge for those born with no place in the civilized world and who exchanged freedom from it for service from the shadows. The task of the Heron Kings had been to block the woodland paths while Osbren’s men did the dirty work of driving the barbarians back into the mountains. But the twenty sent to do the job were late in returning. They were proficient fighters in any setting of course, but they were most dangerous among the rocks and trees in the dead of night. Tactics that availed one little on an open field.
Linet was late herself, should already have been out on her nightly patrol around the perimeter of the Lodge. But she itched to steal a horse and ride out into the night to make sure nothing had gone wrong. She came to the entrance hall just as the last drops of sunlight fell into shadow, casting a dimness over the valley and leaving the opening to the underground complex, difficult to find even in the noonday sun, as good as invisible. It was almost empty tonight, with everyone of fighting age out on patrol and only a staff of fledglings and elders remaining.
The hall was the only open space in the Lodge, with ornate double doors opening to a concealed access tunnel. A domed ceiling curved down to corridors connecting the system of subterranean chambers that were part natural cave, part carved from the rock. It was a minor marvel of engineering that could house a hundred in perfect secrecy, situated beneath both a natural hot spring and waterfall and suffused with pipes and ventilation shafts. Years of improvements had given the underground fortress a little home-like quality at least, including a stone hearth at one end of the entrance hall. Two high-backed chairs sat side by side before it like faithful old hounds, padded and upholstered and worn deep in the seats with much use. Passing by on her way to the exit, Linet cast a glance in their direction, a last look at a piece of civilization before the wildness of the night forest, and then screamed.
Or rather, she screamed as much as her lifelong training would allow. A short, shrill yelp of surprise before she recovered into a fighting stance, her short recurved sword halfway out of its scabbard and eyes trained on the odd figure sitting in one of the chairs. It was covered in dirt and leaves, its wild and tousled hair prickly with twigs.
“Identify yourself!” Linet demanded. The figure started, rose and turned toward her. A face flickered in the low hearthlight. Linet breathed a sigh of relief as she dropped her blade back into its scabbard. “Aerrus! You ass, you frightened m—”
“Lin,” the young man croaked hoarsely, running forward and clapping dirty hands hard on her shoulders. “Has anyone else made it back yet? Tell me they have!”
“Made it back? No, not yet. What do you mean, what’s happened?”
Aerrus’s brow wavered. “No. So I’m the only one. Lin, it was a trap. Somehow the Marchmen, they knew we were gonna be there. They ambushed us with torches, set fire to the whole godsdamned forest it seemed. Went up like a thatch barn in autumn. We never had a chance. They…they cut us to pieces.”
Linet’s voice caught in her throat, her knees suddenly weak. “What? But…how?”
“Someone betrayed us,” Aerrus growled, looking like some forest wight out of legend, filthy as he was. “Told ’em right where we were going to be. Someone who in the near future is going to become a corpse. Very. Slowly.” Fury boiled in his eyes. “And I know just where to start. Is anyone else about?”
“No, everyone’s either out on patrol or…with you.”
“It’ll have to be just us two then,” he said urgently. “We can do it, they’re only six. Come on!”
By day Eric Lewis is a PhD research scientist weathering the constant rounds of mergers and layoffs, and trying to remember how to be a person again long after surviving grad school. In addition to subjecting his writing to one rejection after another, he can be found gathering to himself as many different sharp and pointies as possible — you can never have too many, as a certain someone often says — and searching for the perfect hiking trail or archery range.
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.
We’re still halfway through June so it’s not yet too late to join in the celebration of Audiobook Month! And for that my brother and I decided to create audio versions of my short stories and flash fiction pieces, starting with my Philippine mythology short Firestarter. 🥳
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.
Since moving to England two months ago, I’ve not really had a ‘food problem.’ Rice, a staple in the Philippines, is readily available here – I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised to see an aisle label for it in Tesco. There are Asian stores for condiments, and for the rest, well, I’m not particularly endeared to most of them. As blasphemous as it might sound to other Filipinos, I’m not really a fan of binignit, sinigang or lechon.
Now that we’re rolling into summer, however, I’ve realized the one thing that’s missing: actual warm weather!
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Hullo, fam! 🥳 I hope June has been nice and warm for you so far! (Or as warm as it could get for those south of the Equator, or those feeling the British weather. 😬)
If you’re free later today, I’d like to invite you to join me and some indie author friends for our first ever Indie Roundtable Read, where we’ll be reading excerpts from our books and drafts! You can tune in to YouTube as it happens at 4pm ET / 9PM BST, or watch the replay at your convenience, with coffee and scones or bagels with clotted cream and strawberry jam. ☕️🥯 (Okay, someone’s clearly fallen in love with her afternoon tea, LOL.)
I’ll be joined by these lovely authors 💕
Dawn Christine Jonckowski is a writer / editor / dancer / musician / shoe connoisseur and lover of the Oxford comma. She is married to her very own rebel leader and they live with two adorable yet spoiled dogs in Wisconsin under an infrequently seen single sun.
A creator of worlds, Des M. Astor has a taste for the dark and dangerous. A dark fantasy and horror writer, she aims to shatter certain tropes and turn monsters into heroes. Very violent ones, of course. She also enjoys blending biology into her works. After all, she graduated from University of Connecticut with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.
Author, scientist, husband, father, homesteader, philosopher… E.B. Brooks stays busy! He lives in Appalachia with his wife, two children, and many, many pets, in a house they’re building as they go. He’s written a few short stories, but his main creative effort (thus far) has been the Emissary Quintet.
Kristina Brooks is an author, mother, wife, and homesteader who loves to bring out the magic in everyday life. She posts draft chapters, research notes, and custom stories for her patrons, along with free daily flash fiction for everyone on her Patreon page. She writes in all genres and lengths, but lately her efforts have been concentrated on short stories which she bundles into anthologies.
Kyle Robertson is a writer, editor, and all-around creative from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By day, he works in marketing at an online financial college, but his dream has always been to be a full-time writer. He’s also a second-degree Black Belt who enjoys teaching martial arts to the next generation.
Rebecca Lemke is an audiobook narrator, YA author, artist, formatter, and hobby addict. When she isn’t writing, she is spending time with her husband and son in their Oklahoma farmhouse.
As for me, well… here’s my other surprise! 🙈 One of my entries to a recent writing challenge has been quite well-received that I’ve decided to pursue it further and take it up as one of my next projects. So I’ll be reading the prologue to Broken Wings, my new young adult fantasy WIP, which is about a teenage girl who discovers that she’s a dragon – a creature of emotion – and has to deal with growing pains on top of saving the world. 🐉
I even have a cover already, thanks to my dearest brother Michael 😘 (And in case you guys have forgotten, subscribers to my newsletter can avail of our pay-however-much-you-want book cover offer by simply replying to this email! Yes, the price is up to you. We’re serious – ask Rebecca and Amy Johnson 😉)
Hope to see you there, and in our future sessions! ❤️ You can also follow #IndieRoundtableRead on Twitter for updates and shenanigans. 😉
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 