Congratulations to Yolanda Renee who recently signed a contract with Curiosity Quills Press!
In November, Yolanda was selected as a winner and acquisitions editor Andrew Buckley made a full request for Memories of Murder. In late January, Andrew offered a publishing contract for Memories of Murder AND a contract to re-release her first self-published novel, Murder, Madness, & Love. She recently signed both contracts and is now officially a part of the Curiosity Quills family.
I am so thrilled to have been a part of her success story. Also, thank you and to the super villains and criminal masterminds who helped with the contest!!
Murder, Madness & Love and Memories of Murder are the first two books in a three book series, Mystery / Romance / Suspense. The story is set in Anchorage, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington, the protagonist is Detective Steven Quaid. Caught in the web of a black widow spider in Murder, Madness & Love, he comes up against an extraordinary foe, Lucifer, in Memories of Murder. Detective Quaid solves the mystery / brings the evildoer to justice, and saves the damsel in distress, unless she saves herself first!
A message from Yolanda:
Thank you so much for sponsoring that Clinic. I had massive doubts about my chances the entire way through. I didn’t think my Query was good enough, and while I believed in my book, writing a query and posting the first page were daunting. But the announcement that I won was amazing and then the offer of a contract, and not one, but two were, well, beyond words. When Andrew wrote that he didn’t usually read my genre, but liked my story, wow, so unexpected, it sent me over the moon!
Today I am proud to highlight, Sanity Vacuum, Book One of the ABACUS Protocol series. Here is what James Wymore has to say,
"The first in The ABACUS Protocol series, Sanity Vacuum by Thea Gregory is the best pure science-fiction book I've read in years. Beginning with a blue-skinned protagonist leaving her home world to work on a quantum computer housed on a distant space station, the book maintains a nice balance between fun and dark. Deep, compelling characters presented in a conversational prose speed the reader through layers of intrigue, which compound through the entire story."
I picked this one up a few days ago and look forward to reading!
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Vivian Skye just finished university, and qualified for her first-choice internship. Not many would consider the distant and isolated Extra-Galactic Observatory cushy, but it’s a dream come true for Vivian. Hailing from the low-tech planet of Aurora, she studied hard for this opportunity—and to leave her old life, and planet behind.
Her assignment is simple: perform a routine upgrade for the station’s supercomputer, quIRK. Her reception isn’t a friendly one, and eccentric quIRK becomes her only friend. However, the station’s administrator, Bryce Zimmer is obsessed with quIRK—he suspects that the station’s computer may have achieved sentience, something explicitly prohibited by the ABACUS Protocol. Compounding their issues, Bryce’s traumatic and privileged past makes him distrust Vivian from the beginning. Desperate to keep control, he sabotages quIRK in order to eliminate Vivian. But, his plan threatens to consume the entire station and send them into the unknown void of intergalactic space.
Vivian must struggle to survive not only Bryce’s megalomania, but also the emerging artificial super intelligence that is quIRK. Can Vivian and quIRK learn to trust each other and work together, before it’s too late?
Thea Gregory is a farm girl from English Western Quebec, a total nerd, and she loves science fiction, zombies and physics. Between marathon cooking sessions, her clerktastic day job, and part-time studies, she manages to find time to write. Author of the Zombie Bedtime Stories, her debut sci-fi novel, Sanity Vacuum releases December 6.
I have another 99 cent recommendation today, the high-tech sci-fi, Theocracide, by James Wymore. I've started reading Theocracide, and it's one to check out! And of course, this is a good time because it's 99 cents this week.
News headlines in the future repeat endlessly. Aliens bent on conquering the world close in on a weakened America. Epidemic alien-flu leaves people afraid to go outside their homes. America, led by the Undying Emperor, is drafting people of all ages despite the plummeting world population. Nobody really cares. They live in a fantasy facilitated by computer glasses, which project images right over the parts of the world they don’t like.
With a sports scholarship and an amazing girlfriend, Jason had it all. As captain, he led his college team from one victory to another. His new love, Di, created digital artist in a world where life didn’t exist outside of the virtual. As long as they ignored the constant barrage of terrible news, their lives would turn out to be perfect. Perfect, except for Jason’s secret.
Jason liked to imagine his family was just dysfunctional in the usual ways. He easily concealed his father’s rampant paranoia because the man lived alone in the wilderness like a hermit. In a world where everybody saw whatever they wanted, nobody noticed Jason’s father. But when Jason goes to visit, his father drops a bomb on him. Jason’s very existence is a heresy against the Undying Emperor. People would burn him at the stake if anybody found out. Also, his father secretly dedicated his life to finding and assassinating the theocrat.
Why did his father wait so long to tell him this? Because he didn’t want to worry Jason until the government found out. Why was he telling the secret now? The government just found out. They are coming to get them both.
Cara Devon has always suffered curiosity
and impetuousness, but tangling with a serial killer might cure that.
Permanently.
London, 1861. Impoverished noble Cara has a
simple mission after the strange death of her father - sell off his damned
collection of priceless artifacts. Her plan goes awry when aristocratic
beauties start dying of broken hearts, an eight inch long brass key hammered through
their chests. A killer hunts amongst the nobility, searching for a regal beauty
and an ancient Egyptian relic rumored to hold the key to immortality.
Her Majesty’s Enforcers are in pursuit of
the murderer and they see a connection between the gruesome deaths and Cara. So
does she, somewhere in London her father hid Nefertiti’s Heart, a fist sized
diamond with strange mechanical workings. Adding further complication to her
life, notorious crime lord, Viscount Nathaniel Lyons is relentless in his desire
to lay his hands on Cara and the priceless artifact. If only she could figure
out his motive.
Self-preservation fuels Cara's search for
the gem. In a society where everyone wears a mask to hide their true intent,
she needs to figure out who to trust, before she makes a fatal mistake.
Books and writing have always been an
enormous part of Anita’s life. She survived school by hiding out in the
library, with several thousand fictional characters for company. At university,
she overcame the boredom of studying accountancy by squeezing in Egyptology
papers and learning to read hieroglyphics.
Today, Anita is a writer living in rural
New Zealand, surrounded by horses and homicidal chickens. Being a bona fide
corset wearing, sidesaddle riding freak, probably explains her fascination for
historical novels :) She loves to blend steampunk adventures with an Egyptian
twist and turn up the heat.
To celebrate the huge 99 cent sale at our publishing house, some awesome author friends and I are sharing the love. Use the rafflecopter form below for a chance to win an easy $75! Everyone is eligible to enter and win.
But before you do that, check out some of these great books available now for only 99 cents!
There were quite a few good entries and it was tough to choose. At the end of the day, much of it was subjective, so don't feel badly if you didn't win. I chose Stevie's entry because of the strong sense of place with very little "telling." The worldbuilding came from the dialog and sparingly placed but colorful descriptive details.
Stevie Carroll is the winner of a full manuscript critique. If you were one of the first 30 people to sign up and participate in the Worldbuilding Blogfest (yes, this is more generous than my original promise :) ), you'll be getting a gift from me soon. I know many of you have already downloaded, The Charge, but already being awesome shouldn't preclude you from winning! Please just forward the gift to someone else if you already have it.
Linda eased her car up the gravel drive, careful not to scratch its paintwork on the trees to either side. At the top was a double garage, with Parking painted neatly across its door, the only vehicle a Land Rover that was a good decade past its prime. Linda did as instructed, stopping her car in front of the garage, close to the Land Rover, leaving plenty of space for other guests to park.
Leaving her bags in the car, she crossed the drive and followed a similarly gravelled path, squeezing past more trees, to the half-open front door. She pressed the doorbell, and waited. After a minute or so, and another attempt at the bell, she pushed on the door, and stepped through it into a small hallway.
"Hello? Is anyone at home?"
A dog barked once somewhere deep within the house, as a buxom woman, with greying brown hair, bustled into the hall, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. "I'm sorry, dear." She folded the tea-towel, and slipped it into the pocket at the front of her very floury apron. "I wasn't expecting anyone today. Did you ring the bell?" She reached over and switched on the ceiling light.
Linda nodded, dazzled more by the vibrant orange and yellow sunflower wallpaper than by the light itself.
"You're not a Jehovah's Witness are you?"
"No I'm –" An atheist? Not a churchgoer? "– I'm firmly Church of England."
"We get them sometimes, you know. Bussed out from Chesterfield or Derby, I expect. Not that they're likely to convert anyone around here, but I suppose you can't blame them for trying." She looked Linda up and down. You can't be here about the eggs, because it's not Tuesday..."
"I was hoping you might have a room available."
"I've got a whole house available. We don't get many visitors until a week or so before Well Dressings start. Was it just for the one night? Dinner, bed and breakfast?"
"I... don't know." She didn't know. How could she know anything anymore?
"You don't have to decide right now, dear." The woman wiped her hands down the front of her apron, adding more flour to them than she removed. "I'm forgetting myself. I'm Elaine Ollerenshaw. Do you need a hand with your bags? There's just me, but I don't suppose you've got more than we can manage between the pair of us."
On the way back to her car, and then up to her room, Linda learned that the guest house had formerly been the farm manager's residence, but the estate manager had a house in Lower Pemberley. Following Mr Ollerenshaw's death, the present duke, who at the time had 'just buried his father and brother', had kindly allowed Mrs Ollerenshaw to stay on in the tied accommodation providing she could find a way of paying the rent. Not that it was much rent, but the money from paying guests did help to see that it got paid 'regularly on the first of the month'. Dinner was usually served at six-thirty, but Mrs Ollerenshaw had been busy with baking, and hadn't expected guests, so that day it would be a little later. She would prefer to know how long Linda was planning to stay 'by breakfast time tomorrow' as Saturday was market day in Ashbourne, and she needed to know how much food to buy in for the week.
If you haven't gotten around to buying The Charge yet, now is a great time! From 3/17-3/23 it will be only 99 cents on Amazon. If you've already bought The Charge (thank you), may I suggest gifting copies to friends...or enemies, or strangers. Doesn't matter who. :) All you need to know is their e-mail address.
Or just spread the word! Tweet and share the purchase link. Hopefully we can bump it back up the rankings so more people will see it!
And while you're at it, it's a great time to stock up on other Curiosity Quills Press titles. ALL of the books below are only 99 cents this week! I'll be making some suggestions for you throughout the week.
Lovey Dovey Books |1 reviewer made a similar statement
What do you do when you realize that nothing in your life is what you’ve always believed it to be?
The death of Arionna Jacobs’ mother has devastated her, and Dace Matthews is torn in two, unable to communicate with the feral animal caged in his mind. When they meet, Dace tumbles into Arionna’s mind as if he belongs there, and everything they thought they knew about themselves and the world around them begins to fall apart. Neither of them understands what is happening to them or why and they’re running out of time to figure it out.
An ancient Norse prophesy of destruction has been set into motion, and what destiny has in store for them is bigger than either could have ever imagined. The end is coming, and unless they learn to trust themselves and one another, they may never unravel the mystery surrounding who they are to one another, and what that means for the world.
Enter the giveaway to win one of these awesome prize packs including some prizes that I am especially fond of. ;)
Congratulations to Ellie Garratt on her release of Passing Time, nine dark fiction stories that may just give you nightmares.
A man lives to regret Passing Time. A father will do anything to save his son in Expiration Date. An author finds out her worst nightmare is back in The Devil’s Song. A woman gets more than the claim fee when she takes out vampire insurance in Luna Black.
In Dining in Hell, the Death Valley Diner becomes the wrong place to stop.
A serial killer wants to add another file to his collection in The Vegas Screamer. In Eating Mr. Bone, an undertaker could meet an unfortunate end. A con man meets his first ghost in Land of the Free. And will truth finally be set free in The Letter?
Excerpt from Passing Time
We took death for granted, you and I. We spent our lives in quiet desperation, hoping the final call would arrive later rather than sooner. Yet even though we knew the end was coming, until we met the man with the briefcase, we believed there was nothing we or anyone else could do to stop it. We were wrong.
The first time I saw him, the man who would change everything, he stood at the entrance to my office building one week before my retirement. He wore an old grey raincoat and carried the same briefcase as I, though his appeared worn around the edges through a lifetime of misuse. His face bore a myriad of lines gained through hard living. Holes caressed every edge of his clothing, and I guessed by his silver-patched hair and gait he was in his eighties or nineties. I did not know it at the time, but he’d been waiting for me. I’d passed him twice a day for thirty years and never even noticed.
“Mr. Ashby?” he asked as he placed his sinewy body in front of mine, blocking my path. He stood the same height as I, and we stared at each other like two men preparing to fight.
“Yes,” I said after a few seconds of hesitation.
He reached out a skeletal hand and I took it, though I did not know why. His skin felt cool and ash-like–as if prolonged contact might simply rub it away–and I pulled my fingers free one by one, like peeling a band-aid I feared would rip away the top layer of his skin.
“Thank you,” he said, the timbre of his voice sounding more jubilant. He turned his back to me and, with tremendous ease for a man of his age, began walking down the steps I had just assailed.
“For what?” I called after him.
He stopped for a moment and looked back. “For passing time, Mr. Ashby. Passing time.”
A life-long addiction to reading science fiction and horror, meant writing was the logical outlet for Ellie Garratt’s passions. She is a reader, writer, blogger, Trekkie, and would happily die to be an extra in The Walking Dead. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and online. Passing Time is her first eBook collection and contains nine previously published stories. Her science fiction collection Taking Time will be published later in the year.
This week I'm trying out the Teaser Blog Hop from Indie-licious, a great resource for independent and small press authors.
Picking just one paragraph is tough!
So, without further ado, a teaser from The Charge.
I have a son. I
had no choice. Will memorized every word. Nothing else remained of his
father other than the recorded words from the trial. An international tribunal
found his father guilty of the "wanton destruction of human life not
justified by military necessity," then sentenced him to death. Will didn't
get to say goodbye to his father before the execution. His mother had said, "Daddy
says he loves you very much, and to be a good boy. You'll see him again in
Heaven."
Heaven. Yeah, right. But what should she say? Be a bad boy and maybe
you'll get to see Daddy again in Hell?
