by john | Aug 19, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today we welcome T.L. Haddix, promoting her new book, Shadows from the Grave. You can pick it up at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Welcome, readers, to Leroy, Indiana – the quintessential small Midwest town with a twist. Step inside and see just how dangerous small-town living can be. Shadows from the Grave is the third installment in the Leroy’s Sins Series, stand-alone Romantic Suspense novels that center around the fictional Ohio-River town of Leroy, Indiana. All the books are available in both e-book and printed format. Here’s a little hint of what’s inside:
When it comes to murder, the past is never really dead…
For ten years, Chase Hudson has carried the weight of his college girlfriend’s unsolved murder on his shoulders. When a ghost from the past comes calling, Chase’s friends and family become the targets of a serial killer who’ll stop at nothing to make Chase suffer. Can Chase convince the authorities of his innocence in time to catch the real killer?
Annie Jameson-Tucker has been burned more than once. Afraid to get her heart broken again, she is careful to keep her lovers at a distance… until Chase Hudson manages to slip inside her walls. Will she let him stay, or will her insecurities destroy their chance at happiness?
This book came about as rather a surprise to me, the author. There are times when characters will stand up and demand attention as I’m writing, and the conception of this book was much like that. I had planned an entirely different book as the third for this series, but by the end of the second book, Under the Moon’s Shadow, it was very apparent Chase’s story had to be told first.
In each book, there is usually a character who stands out, who is my favorite. As much as I like Chase and Annie, I have to say that I think a secondary character is my favorite from this book. His name is Murphy, and he’s Chase’s cat. He’s a very needy little guy, and has serious separation anxiety issues. Murphy came about a couple of ways – Chase needed someone, and I didn’t want that someone to be a romantic interest off the top of the book. I wanted to add someone who could contribute an endearing, quirky attitude to the story without being overtly ‘cute’. As my books aren’t sweet, happy romances, and as I’m not a naturally funny comedian, quirky seemed to fit better. Murphy is definitely that. He gets into trouble that most two-year-old children can’t accomplish, and he drives Chase crazy in the process.
The character of Murphy himself is based on a real-life Murphy, who is an eight-pound fawn ‘kitten’ owned by our former veterinarian. He’s a very alpha cat, despite his size, and is definitely in charge of the household. When Dr. G shared some of her Murphy’s exploits with us, I knew that I had to include him in a book. He’s not the kind of cat one would want for a first-time cat owner, and that’s exactly why I ‘gave’ him to Chase. The real Murphy steals food from countertops and plays “Chase me!”, steals keys, glasses, licks mold off of plants to get high, and generally keeps his mom on her toes. How could I resist that sort of personality?
Even though ‘my’ Murphy doesn’t catch any bad guys or solve any mysteries, he’s still an integral part of the story. He humanizes Chase, provides comedic relief during heavier scenes, and hopefully his antics will ring true with cat owners, helping them connect to the story. One thing I’ve tried to make sure I do with my books, my hallmark, if you will, is that ninety-nine percent of readers who pick them up and read them can relate to someone or something in the books. For me as a reader, that is a quality that I look for. If I can’t connect to the story, I can’t become invested in it, and my enjoyment of the reading diminishes. I want to provide that connection to my readers, and I think characters like Murphy help me do it.
T. L. Haddix is the author of the Leroy’s Sins Series, stand-alone Romantic Suspense novels which are available in both print and e-book form at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other fine online retailers. She lives in northeastern Ohio with her husband and three cat-children, and is hard at work on the next installment of the Leroy’s Sins series. You can contact her at www.tlhaddix.com, through www.facebook.com/tlhaddix or at www.twitter.com/tlhaddix.
by john | Jul 18, 2011 | Uncategorized
Brent is more than welcome to come squat in my cyber-space, especially after the great review he gave to Hard Day’s Knight! Check out his new book, Bert the Barbarian, over on Smashwords! You can find out more about Brent and Bert on his website here.
I’m thoroughly happy to be kicking off my blog tour in the company of John Hartness. John writes his books just the way I like ’em. I checked out Hard Day’s Knight and I think I was laughing out loud before I reached the end of the first page. He doesn’t let a good joke get in the way of a good story, though. Mystery, suspense, action, it’s all in there. And the prose is solid as well. John’s hitting the marks that I’m aiming for.
But enough about him. I’m here to talk about myself, or more accurately about my creation. I’ve been a novelist for a couple of decades now, but not a successful one. It takes a long time to learn this goofy trade. I wrote, I re-wrote, I sent submissions off to editors and agents, and I racked up an impressive stack of rejection letters. And I got discouraged.
After a while I wasn’t writing very often. I wasn’t satisfied with the results when I did write. Writing was a disheartening chore, and the meagre results hardly seemed worthy of lining the floor of a bird cage.
Then I heard about NaNoWriMo. How many of you have heard of it? Let’s have a show of hands. Okay, more than I expected, but not nearly everyone. NaNoWriMo stands for “National Novel Writing Month.” Speaking as a Canadian I can assure you that it’s international. The idea is to spend the month of November writing a novel of at least 50,000 words. NaNoWriMo is a beautiful concept because it gets writers out of all kinds of mental traps. If you’re going to finish a novel in a month you can’t agonize over every paragraph. You can’t spend a year trying to get the first chapter perfect. You have to move on.
It was exactly the kick on the seat of the pants that I needed. After years of dithering I finally got back to work, and an unexpected bonus was that writing became fun again. It actually took me about three months to get through my first draft of Bert the Barbarian, but that was still a massive increase in productivity.
At the end of it, of course, I had a deeply flawed manuscript. However, you can’t fix a blank page. For me at least, the only way to write a good novel is to write a bad novel and then refurbish it. It’s been a couple of years and an astonishing amount of learning since I finished that first draft. I’m pretty proud of the end result.
Bert the Barbarian is science fiction that reads like heroic fantasy. Bert Hoover, who’s a bit of a loser, gets kidnapped and taken to a primitive planet. His friend Janice is in terrible danger with no one else to turn to. Bert must find strength and courage to escape from slavery, rescue Janice, and find a way back home. Look for it wherever fine e-books are sold.
Thanks for stopping by Brent, and good luck with Bert!
by john | Jul 14, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today we welcome Christine Amsden, author of The Immortality Virus. Christine is the first indie author to take me up on my offer of guest posts here, and I’ve got one scheduled weekly for the next two weeks as well. She’ll tell us a little about her book and where the idea came from. You can check it out on Amazon here, and on Barnes & Noble here.
Dreams of Immortality
Inspiration never strikes me all at once. It grows from seeds, and it takes time to blossom. When it came to “The Immortality Virus,” it all began with Wikipedia, and the “random article” button. My debut novel, “Touch of Fate,” had just been released and all I had were vague notions of doing something more science fiction than fantasy for my second book.
I like to tell beginning writers that ideas are cheap, and they’re everywhere — in the news, in the fight you had with your best friend, in your dreams, and even in Wikipedia. An article on DNA led me to look into a genetic cause for old age, which led me to consider a world in which that did not happen. How? With The Change, an event that, in my world, takes place in the mid 21st century, though no one is sure precisely when. Most people barely noticed the odd strain of flue that hit so many people that year, nor did they connect their fevers and runny noses to the life-changing event that followed.
What would cause an entire race to stop aging? If immortality were for sale, it would go to the highest bidder, and not everyone would have access. For a fundamental change to the human genetic makeup, we needed something else: Biological warfare. An engineered virus, highly contagious and capable of altering DNA on a cellular level. I drew this idea from a novel by Orson Scott Card: Xenocide.
Who would do such a thing, though? And how? This was probably the toughest part of the entire process, and one that took several revisions to perfect. My heroine and sole point of view character, Grace Harper, was a far easier character to create than the elusive Jordan Lacklin, who we get to know mostly through old journal entries. First, he had to be smart, capable, and armed with a lifetime of experience, so I gave him a background in developing biological weapons for the military. Then, I had to turn him into someone who honestly believed the entire race would be better off if they didn’t age. Deep inside, I wanted him to be a good person, with good intentions, even if they didn’t work out very well. So I gave him a wife, a woman he loved deeply, a woman who was there in body, but who, thanks to Alzheimer’s Disease, had pretty much gone in every other way that mattered. He did it for her, and for everyone else who might have to experience similar pain. Growing old, he believed, was the worst thing that could happen to people.
After that, I spent a lot of time working on his journal entries. The ones in the book are sort of the highlights, the ones I hoped would convey his motives and character most concisely. He’s a complicated man, however, and by the time I finished with him he had become, at least in my mind, more than a tool to implement The Change. He and The Change have kind of blurred together a little bit in my mind, so that despite the results, I think of the actual event as a work of honest human compassion, and a sign of the best humanity has to offer. I suppose the message there is that we sometimes don’t know what’s best for us.
I began working on “The Immortality Virus” in the summer of 2006, and finished it in the fall of 2008. It wasn’t a smooth process, as I set the manuscript down several times while I worked on other things, and at some points I wasn’t sure it would ever be truly finished. Perhaps it still isn’t. I did leave the end open for a sequel, even if I haven’t written it yet, and I hope to one day revisit the world and the possibilities therein.
Thanks for stopping by, Christine, and I hope you have great success with your book!
by john | Jan 19, 2011 | Uncategorized
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on
WBCOOP to play.
Registration code: XXXXXX 971857
by john | Jan 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
Another year here on the interwebs. I worked out this morning, and now I know why they call it “work.” That crap’s hard. But I’ve let myself become a great big fatass again, so I’ve gotta do it. I can hear Suzy pounding away on the treadmill downstairs as I write this, so we’re definitely getting something going. Of course, it’s January 1, so that’s easy enough to say today. Check back in April, and if I’m still wearing this size jeans, you can feel free to kick my ass. And I’ll still be an out of shape tub o’ lard, so it’ll be easy, too!
Played a little online poker last night, over at Full Tilt. I do a little bit of Rush Poker most every day, micro stakes PLO usually. I’ve found that it’s easier to get people to put their entire stack in while behind in PLO, because most folks just aren’t very good at it. I’m not very good at it either, but I have a little tiny edge in that I’m so broke online right now I cant afford to shove unless I have the nuts, even at micro limits. So I’m making a little bit. I usually open up two tables, and if I win or lose one buy-in, I rathole it and go away. That keeps me from playing too long, so my minute attention span can keep up, and it also doesn’t get in the way of other things I need to do, like writing and working out. And obsessively checking my sales numbers at Amazon. But it’s fun, and is a good way for me to pass a few idle minutes. I’ll have to step up my attention span when the Gambling Tales Freeroll Series kicks off (hopefully this Thursday, download the latest episode for more info!), because if folks are going to just give away money, it would be rude of me not to try and take it, right?
Just a quick note for now, because I need to finish getting ready to head south for my annual New Year’s Poker excursion this afternoon. More about that upon my return. In the meantime, I know you’re off work, go buy a book!
by john | Dec 28, 2010 | Uncategorized
If you got here through the linky, give us a read then keep on hopping!
