Keeper of Reign (Reign Fantasy) by Emma Right

1 - ONE NIGHT

THE LAST THING Jules Blaze thought of before he closed his eyes was how he, how anyone, could undo the curse his people were under. He was in the middle of a dream, a nightmare as far as he was concerned, begging Grandpa Leroy and Grandma Bonnie not to leave, when someone banged on their front door, shaking their entire tree house.

Who’d be crazy enough to disturb them at this hour? He sat up on his bed and cocked his head. His mother’s soft tread tap-tapped on the wood floor.

“Who’s there?” her muffled voice asked, harsh and whispery from sleep.

The banging stopped.

“Erin, open up.” Saul’s voice, gruff and loud, jolted the last fog of sleepiness from Jules. He peered over at his brother sleeping noiselessly in the bunk below him, and quietly slipped down the ladder. On tiptoe he sneaked to the trapdoor opening that led down to the living room where Saul stood dripping from the rain.

“Is everything okay?” Erin said.

“Would I visit now if it were?” Saul said. Then in a gentler voice he added, “I’m sorry. Please, let’s take a seat, Erin.” He nodded at Jules who’d slipped down the pull-down ladder to join them. “Jules.” Jules thought about his father at the war front and swallowed a lump in his throat. Was this why Dad hadn’t sent any word to them for the last months? Because he couldn’t?

Saul held Erin by the arm. He led her to the dining room chairs behind the sofa covered with knitted shawls and afghan throws.

Jules trudged to the window and peered at the branches outside. The arm of the oak tree grew so thick they could easily live in it, although getting up there could be a problem, especially since he was afraid of heights. These days they didn’t even live in stone houses, or even wooden ones, unless living under a tree counted as a wooden home. Elfies lived in trees, or burrowed under rocks, in the forest of Reign.

“Take a seat, Jules.” Saul locked eyes on him for an instant. “I just received word from the riverfront patrol—Leroy and Bonnie’s boat capsized in the storm. They’re searching for the bodies, but it doesn’t look good.”

Erin let out a gasp and brought a fist to her mouth. “No!”

“Boat? How can they be sure it was them?” Jules leaned forward in his chair.

“Some of their belongings floated to shore, and I identified the wreck—the pieces drifted to the bank.”

Erin looked at him blankly.

Saul said, again, “The boat…was a wreck.”

“Boat?” Erin said.

“I’d loaned it to them.”

“Why?”

Saul looked at the ceiling. “They’d wanted to get across to Handover.”

“Handover? That’s preposterous. After telling us never to cross the river and saying how dangerous Handover is?” Erin’s voice sounded angry amidst her sobs.

Saul pushed his chair back and stood. He reached into the cloak of his pocket, brought out a few items and laid them on the dining table. “Some things to remember your folks by.” And with that he turned and stalked back out into the dripping night.

Jules stared at his grandpa’s pocket watch, the green felt hat the old man always wore, especially on damp days, and his grandma’s silk scarf she donned when the wind ruffled her snowy white hair. Erin sobbed more violently, and Jules stood behind his mother’s back, leaned over and hugged her trembling shoulders.

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Genre - Young Adult Adventure Fantasy  

Rating – G

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Emma Right on Facebook & Facebook (Keeper of Reign)

Website http://www.emmaright.com/Home.aspx

Alice Will by Ashley Chappell @AshleyNChappell

With her leaky powers and premature smiting problem, fourteen year-old Trotter was still just trying to get the hang of the demi-godding business when the apocalypse began. In a world where the gods have withdrawn from humanity, leaving mortals bitter toward magic, she finds herself torn between the human and the goddess in her as the world begins to fade away and she becomes the prime suspect. When her search to determine the cause and prove her innocence ends up revolving around a mysterious little girl named Alice, she discovers that not all of the gods had been as distant as they seemed… Now, with everyone against her and the gods fighting amongst themselves, Trotter is on her own to save her world and stop a spiteful god from using Alice to destroy everything.

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Genre – YA Fantasy

Rating – PG

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Connect with Ashley Chappell on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.ashleychappellbooks.com/

An Honest Man (the Donkey and the Wall) @J_L_Lawson

2

It's an Art

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” 

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Are you getting all this?” asked the stranger after the lingering pause and he straightened his legs. The cat leapt down and padded off after her own business.

“Yes, thank you,” answered the young man promptly, glad that the silence was broken at last and anxious to shift the topic a bit. “So the beginning was when George and Belle had Harry?” the host ventured, still scribbling.

“You missed it by a bit. This story began when Wang Fu Kong, George, committed himself to the journey to a new world, then the trek into the wilderness, and when he finally surrendered to the harsh beauty and rewarding wonder of the natural world in which he found himself.”

“Wait. Are you saying little Harry and his son, or daughter, or whatever, all the way down to Fred Livingson, whenever he lived, is all the same story? So, no one person had an individual beginning or end? That doesn't sound quite fair or right somehow.”

The guest stood up and walked to the door. He looked out into haze of the growing Texas day and the harvested hay fields across the pond, then he thought aloud, “You know, that's an interesting point... like 'What is the tree to the forest?' or, 'Is the story of the river in the melting ice and snow of the mountain?' or...”

“Well, yeah, or 'the chicken and the egg',” added the young man, “But how can you say: 'It begins here!' and not here, or here, or here?” Then he groaned in exasperation at his infirm grasp of what the stranger was getting at.

“The simplest way to answer that is to remind you that humans have the unique capacity to dream and to choose, which stands them in contrast to the rest of the life on this planet. Yet even with that great birthright, so few people develop the ability or make the attempt to swerve even a bit from the whims of the winds of fate or of cause and effect.” He paused, assessed the effect of this last on the young man and continued. “So when on that rare occasion someone commits to a decision made of his own understanding and aspiration, acts on that commitment, and affects the lives of others in a positive way which would not have occurred otherwise... That is a beginning.”

“And it doesn't seem to be ending...” muttered the host not so silently while sharpening his pencil for another round.

“It ends; its life however is mapped, not measured,” offered the guest, “Shall we proceed with your map?” The stranger sat down, and picked up the tale again with a conversation between George and White Feathers.

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Genre - Metaphysical/Fantasy/Action Adventure

Rating – G

More details about the author & the book

Connect with J.L. Lawson on Facebook

Website http://voyagerpress.org/

The right and wrong way to promote your books online. – James Shipman

The right and wrong way to promote your books online.

Marketing a book is almost more work than writing and editing the book itself.  Not only is it critical to consistently market your book, particularly online, but it is also critical to do so in an appropriate manner, otherwise you are wasting your time.

Appropriate marketing online involves reasonable direct marketing with a full measure of relationship and audience building in between.  I recommend building Twitter, Facebook and Goodread audiences (there are others but these are the ones I use).  This can be done overtime if you are consistent and within a year or two you will have a very good group of people you are interacting with.  You are probably not going to just publish a book and have a ton of fans (if you do sell one of those books that goes crazy, congratulations, and you don’t need my advice).  Probably your list of contacts will include personal family and friends and then many other authors and some readers.  As you are building this audience start communicating with them.  Certainly post about your book or upcoming book (or sale, event, etc.), but also post about things going on in your life.  Let people get to know you.  Also ask questions, make requests, tell people what you are working on next.  Evidence shows the more you engage your readers the more they will be invested in you as a writer.  Additionally, build relationships with other authors.  Like their pages, accept their friend requests, follow them and tweet about them.  People like reciprocity.

The don’ts are all about selfishness.  You will get nowhere incessantly spamming about your book and then refusing all interaction with other people.  If people follow you and you don’t follow them, they will notice. They will drop you, they will not support you.  If all you do on Facebook is advertise your book over and over, or if you post your book on other people’s pages or personally message them for the very first time with an ad about your book, you are going to anger people and you will get nowhere.

Again, if you get an agent, a major publishing deal, and you sell five million books, you won’t have to do all of this.  You can follow 12 people and have millions of followers.  For most people it is going to take more time and more effort.  Online marketing is about relationships, and about caring about other people’s work as much as you care about your own.  Best of luck to all of you.

In 1453 Constantinople is the impregnable jewel of the East. It has stood as the greatest Christian city for a millennium as hordes have crashed fruitlessly against its walls.

But Mehmet II, the youthful Sultan of the Ottoman Turks, has besieged the city. His opponent is Constantine XI, the wise and capable ruler of the crumbling Eastern Roman Empire. Mehmet, distrusted by his people and hated by his Grand Vizer, must accomplish what all those before him have failed to do: capture Constantinople. To prove that he deserves the throne that his father once took from him, Mehmet, against all advice, storms the city. If he fails, he will not only have failed himself and his people, but he will surely lose his life.

On the other side of the city walls, the emperor Constantine must find a way to stop the greatest army in the medieval world. To finance his defenses, he becomes a beggar to the Pope, the Italian city-states, and the Hungarians. But the price for aid is high: The Pope demands the Greeks reunite the Eastern and Western churches and accept the Latin faith. If Constantine wants aid for his people he must choose between their lives and their souls.

Two leaders, two peoples, two faiths battle for their future before the mighty walls of Constantinople.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author and the book

Connect with  James Shipman on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://james-shipman.com

Evan Burl & the Falling by Justin Blaney

Six

Monday

1:05 pm

I was a wicked boy. And my loving uncle was going to cure me of wickedness. That's what he told me after we left Henri—right before Yesler took a whip to my back. It's worse when Yesler gives them. Three lashes feel like thirty.

But I didn't make a sound.

And I knew the lashes weren't for stealing food. They were for climbing the tower with Pike five years ago. Every punishment went back to that. I often went back to that moment. He hit the ground first; me, a fraction of a second later. I often thought back to that moment; all the thousands of little things that caused us to fall just the way we did. Marcus taught me about science. Physics. How little changes can add up to the difference between life and death.

A soft breeze. The turning of the earth. The way our bodies moved and how we changed our paths through the air without even knowing it. The result was a 4 foot distance between where we landed.

I hit a thick straw roof and went straight through into a shed filled with hay, breaking 12 bones. My leg never healed properly.

Pike wasn't so lucky.

He hit the cobblestone pavement just outside the hut I landed on. Marcus said that a body could bounce up to six feet into the air after a fall like that. He also said it's a painless way to die. I don't know if that's true, but I do know it's not painless for the ones who survive. Especially when I know that it was me who killed Pike. Even if I could forget that, my uncle Mazol was going to remind me.

That's what the lashes were really for.

Yesler wanted to leave me in the hall where they whipped me, make me walk back to the caldroen myself. But Ballard must have known I wouldn't make it. With one arm around me, he helped me limp through the castle. Ballard was like that. He might hold you down under Yesler's whip in the morning and sneak you a sip of stolen beer in the afternoon.

Under his other arm, Ballard carried one of the small chests that the roslings were found in. I don’t know where the stuff inside those chests came from or where it went when we were done. We might have been producing reams of cheap linen, doilies of spun gold or refined cow dung for all I knew. No one really cared. If, on the other hand, we discovered the clankers turned out cherry tarts, fresh bread—even moldy bread—now that would be something. 

I imaged Ballard carrying a chest of cherry tarts as we walked, smiling at the absurdity of it. My ragged shirt, tucked in my pants, lapped against my bad leg with every step; it would be a while before I could put it on again. I could hear the blood dripping off my back onto the stone floor as we walked.

We were moving too slow for my uncle and Yesler, so they went ahead to keep an eye on the roslings. Not long after they were out of sight, Ballard gestured to a bench. He seemed to sense how badly I needed to sit down, which was ironic given his role in my suffering.

"Don't run off," he said with a crooked smile and a growl, then set the chest down next to me and disappeared around a corner. I wasn't sure if he was trying to be funny or not, but when you have blood running down your back and your best friend is being punished for something you did, it's difficult to find anything funny.

I sat on the bench, careful not to touch my back to the wall. For a moment, I thought about trying to open the chest next to me, just to see what was inside. But it was impossible to open without the key. Instead, I stared blankly through a huge window into the courtyard. 

Daemanhur sat on a cliff's edge, high above the Leschi sea, which filled the northern horizon. A 40 foot wall circled the courtyard, running close to the castle by the tower on the uphill side and stretching for nearly a mile down the slopes toward the harbor where a small trade-town was built a few more miles down the road.

A creek ran under the wall on the uphill side of the courtyard and kept a large lake full year round. There were fish in the lake, but most were to bony and small to eat, not that bones stopped us from trying when we had the time to fish. Another larger river joined the creek just above the town and ran into a harbor where ships docked from time to time.

I sometimes watched the ships come into the harbor while I was working the clankers, just to give me something to think about besides work. Men from the town  traded with the ships, and sold some of the goods to Mazol. Those who dared to travel through the jungle only did during the daylight and always with armored carriages and trained guards. They also kept moving no matter what. They didn't stop for anything, not even if one of their passengers fell out of the carriage.

I heard once that traveling guards, runners they were called, the kind who protected deliveries through the jungle earned more money than the town's mayor. Even for that much money, I wouldn't take the job. Runners usually didn't live past thirty. To be a good runner you had to be strong, ruthless and talented with a spear. Intelligence, on the other hand, was not required.

When the warts ordered goods, the runners would come to the gates on the uphill side of the courtyard just outside the window I was looking through. There was a fortified sort of room that was open to the outside where the delivery men could wait in relative safety for someone to come open the gates. The runners would pull a chain which ran over the courtyard and was connected to a bronze bell in the caldroen; the bell was in the caldroen because that's where the roslings worked and someone would always hear it in there. 

My father abandoned me when I was an infant.
My friends have turned against me.
My uncle beats me.
The most powerful men in the world want me dead.
They all have one thing in common.
They think I’m turning into a monster.

I’m starting to worry they’re right.

Genre - Young Adult

Rating – PG

Connect with Justin Blaney on his website

#Free Alert - What Lies Inside @BloodBoundJLM

What Lies Inside – J.L. Myers

Amazon Kindle US

Amazon Kindle UK

Genre – YA, Paranormal Romance

Rating – PG13

4.5 (8 reviews)

Free until 10 October 2013

Amelia Lamont never asked to unleash her inner vampire

Amelia’s normal teen world is shattered when a terrifying nightmare awakens the monster inside her. A newfound, insatiable thirst for blood that leads her to drain the school quarterback is only the beginning; she’s horrified to discover that her family and best friend Kendrick have been harboring the secret all along. And is the strangely alluring boy who seems hell-bent on curbing her murderous, blood-filled desires a friend, or foe?

To escape detection Amelia and her twin brother Dorian are forced to move to a new town, and the challenge of a new, exclusive high school where nearly every classmate smells like prey. Including the irresistible Ty, who seems hauntingly familiar, yet darkly menacing …

Amelia’s disturbing dreams and entanglement in a web of forbidden romance render her increasingly powerless against the chilling lies and secrets of vampire power struggles. And, as she soon discovers, vampire politics mixed with outlawed love can be a lethal cocktail.

Falling in love may just cost Amelia everything: her friends, her family...even her life

#AmWatching - In A Better Worls (starring Mikael Persbrandt)

In A Better World

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews) |

7.6/10

Also available in HD

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Despite his father's plea for tolerance, a bullied schoolboy and his friend choose revenge over forgiveness in this provocative drama about family relationships and world events.

• Starring: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm
• Directed by: Susanne Bier
• Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes
• Release year: 2011
• Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

 

 

Plot Summary

Anton is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced with conflicts that lead them to difficult choices between revenge and forgiveness. Anton and his wife Marianne, who have two young sons, are separated and struggling with the possibility of divorce. Their older, ten-year-old son Elias is being bullied at school, until he is defended by Christian, a new boy who has just moved from London with his father, Claus. Christian's mother recently lost her battle with cancer, and Christian is greatly troubled by her death. Elias and Christian quickly form a strong bond, but when Christian involves Elias in a dangerous act of revenge with potentially tragic consequences, their friendship is tested and lives are put in danger. Ultimately, it is their parents who are left to help them come to terms with the complexity of human emotions, pain and empathy. Written by Sisse Graum Jørgensen, Producer