Free Novel and New Cover!

I am excited to announce the Neil Jackson has designed an amazing cover for my novel Fall Leaves and the Black Dragon!

To celebrate, I am offering it free for the entire weekend…even Monday, because we all wish Monday was part of the weekend…check it out and I would love to hear your thoughts…

Click the cover to go straight to the Amazon page!

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Leaves-Black-Dragon-ebook/dp/B004NIFPBO

Now off to our yard sale, get to listen to people try to talk me down on things marked 50 cents all day

Lucky Seven Meme

I was recently tagged by Paul D. Dail for the #luckyseven meme. In fact, I stole his instructions instead of rewriting them….hope that’s ok.

If you haven’t seen this meme before at other blogs… well, I’d be shocked. In fact, I was wondering if I was going to be tagged for it, but as I don’t normally participate in memes, I wasn’t terribly surprised that it had been floating around so long without hitting me.

Anyway, the longer it stays out there, the more flexible the rules seem to get. But two things remain:

1- You’re supposed to go to something you’ve written (be in WIP or already published) and then post something to do with 7’s. Either your 77th or 7th page, then a 7th paragraph, or line 7, followed by 7 sentences or lines. Your choice of formatting will affect this, but…

2- (and this isn’t really a rule) it should hopefully be interesting. Because that’s really the idea behind this, right? Writers are always told to make sure to grab a reader with their first page, but what about those readers who pick up a book and flip to a random page. What if it was page 77 of a novel? Or page 7 of a short story? Or whatever.

So here goes…I am going to use my WIP (AKA not yet completely polished and edited) to come up with my selection. The title of my WIP is The Rise of the Wenchiron Zombies….enjoy!

Page 77:
As the villainous pack of mysterious creatures vanished into the dark woods, Trent popped out of the vegetation like a slice of toast in a toaster. “Did you see that?”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
“That—that, whatever it was, was wearing my brother’s baseball cap.” His anger was making him shake, fighting the the urge to just blow them all away. Or drink. He wondered where that bottle of vodka ended up and if there was anything left it in.
“Holy shit,” Steve gasped. ““Son of a bitch, what are they?”
“Freaking murders, that’s what they are,” Trent snapped a cattail between his fingers and squeezed the cottony bulb.
“Where do you think they are headed?”
Trent looked into the darkness and thought of their vehicles sitting out in the open and vulnerable to sabotage. Screw the cars. “Where did they come from, that’s what we need to find out. Come on.”
Steve stood frozen as Trent shouldered past him, trotting along the sand. “What?”
Trent turned around when he realized he was alone and saw his friend, a shadowy figure in the distance.
Steve finally decided to catch up.
They stopped when they were at the place Trent guessed was where the creatures had first appeared. They flipped on their flashlights, searching the root-covered cliff, which rose about two feet above the water. Tall grass was surrounded them like an angry mob, jutting from the center of the patch was a rotting gray branch. The type of natural protrusion he would have used as a diving board when he was younger. Trent tracked the limb with his beam, it lead nowhere interesting.
Steve spotted the tracks first.

Then….step three is to nominate 7 people to do likewise, so no fair ducking and hiding or pretending you don’t hear me asking you to do this…besides its harmless fun!

Gina Penn
Robert Wilson
Ian Woodhead
Armand Rosamilia
Christine Sutton
Lori Lopez
Marcia Carrington

Hope you rise to the challenge! Looking forward to reading what you come up with.

Not much more than a headache

Well I thought about my book a lot today but I haven’t written anything yet!  I think I have the opening chapter scratched out….I will post the first sentence here if anyone wants to read it and see if it has a little bit off a hook in it.  The first sentence seems very important.

This is what I have:

He knew no one would call, no one would come over and worse still no one would remember but Lukas LASTNAME secretly loved his birthday anyway.

The first sentence for my first novel “Fall Leaves and the Black Dragon” is:

I often wished I could remember more of my childhood, but sadly most of my memories seem to fade off and get stored away in massive containers of time on shelves high in the closets of my mind.

In each I intend to grab the reader at an emotional level and create a connection right away…what do you think?