by Lehua Parker | Mar 1, 2014 | Blog Tours, Guest Posts, & Interviews
Here’s a first look at Matt Carter & F.J.R. Titchenell’s Splinters, the first book in The Prospero Chronicles. There’s a giftcard giveaway for this upcoming title on Goodreads. From the back cover:
Under ordinary circumstances, Ben and Mina would never have had reason to speak to each other; he’s an easy-going people person with a healthy skepticism about the paranormal, and she’s a dangerously obsessive monster-hunter with a crippling fear of betrayal. But the small town of Prospero, California, has no ordinary circumstances to offer. In order to uncover a plot set by the seemingly innocent but definitely shapeshifting monsters-that-look-like-friends-family-and-neighbors, the two stark opposites must both find ways to put aside their differences and learn to trust each other.
F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter met and fell in love in a musical theatre class at Pasadena City College and have been inseparable ever since. Though they have both dreamed of being writers since a very young age, they both truly hit their stride after they met, bouncing ideas off of one another, forcing each other to strive to be better writers, and mingling Matt’s lifelong love of monsters with Fiona’s equally disturbing inability to forget the tumult of high school. They were married in 2011 in a ceremony that involved kilts, Star Wars music, and a cake topped by figurines of them fighting a zombified wedding party.
Connect with Matt Carter & F.J.R. Titchenell
F.J.R. Titchenell’s blog: http://fjrtitchenell.weebly.com/
Matt Carter’s blog: http://mattcarterauthor.weebly.com/
F.J.R. Titchenell’s Facebook: www.facebook.com/FjrTitchenell
Matt Carter’s Facebook: www.facebook.com/mattcarterauthor
F.J.R. Titchenell’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/FJR_Titchenell
Matt Carter’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/MCarterAuthor
Splinters Goodreads page: www.goodreads.com/book/show/20860637-splinters
by Lehua Parker | Feb 26, 2014 | Blog Tours, Guest Posts, & Interviews, Jolly Fish Press Titles & Authors, MG/YA Fiction
Isn’t gorgeous? This is the cover for Mojave Green, the second book in the Dimensions in Death series by the Brothers Washburn. Here’s the blurb.
Camm and Cal thought they had killed the unearthly creature that preyed upon the people in their isolated mining town deep in the Mojave Desert. Off at college, they feel safe, until they hear news that Trona’s children are still disappearing. Caught in that nightmare since childhood, Camm feels responsible for the town’s children. As her life-long best friend, Cal feels responsible for Camm. With unsuspecting friends in tow, they return to warn the town’s innocent people, but things have changed.
Death comes in a new form. The dimensional balance is altered. Crossovers multiply. The situation spirals out of control, and Cal is pulled into another world where his chances of survival are slim. Without Cal, Camm seeks help where she can, even from the dead. Soon, she is on the run from relentless federal agents, who are hiding secrets and pursuing their own agenda. The mysterious depths of the Searles Mansion may yet contain a key to stopping alien predators, if it is not already too late.
It sounds amazing. Be sure to pick up Pitch Green if you haven’t read it. You won’t want to miss a word.
Connect with The Brother’s Washburn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrosWashburn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBrothersWashburn
Blog: http://www.thebrotherswashburn.blogspot.com
Biographies
A. L. Washburn and B. W. Washburn are licensed lawyers and full time writers, residing in Colorado and southern Utah. They grew up in a large family in Trona, California, a small mining community not far from Death Valley, and spent many happy days in their youth roaming the wastelands of the Mojave Desert. After living in Argentina at different times, each came back to finish school and start separate careers. Living thousands of miles apart, they worked in different areas of the law, while raising their own large families.
Each has authored legal materials and professional articles, but after years of wandering in the wastelands of the law, their lifelong love of fiction, especially fantasy, science fiction and horror, brought them back together to write a new young adult horror series, beginning with Pitch Green and Mojave Green. They have found there yet remain many untold wonders to be discovered in the unbounded realms of the imagination, especially as those realms unfold in the perilous wastelands of the Dimensions in Death.
by Lehua Parker | Feb 14, 2014 | Mainland Living, The Business of Writing
“It’s pronounced L’wah. It’s French,” proclaimed the guy sitting next to my son, Aaron. Aaron gives him side-eye. The guy and his girlfriend are studying the bios of the authors seated on the platform in front of the room. It’s the first day of a writers’ conference and I’m here to talk about how to write children who sound, act, and think like children instead of mini-adults. Seated in the middle of the table, I figure I’m in a power-spot.
“No, says the woman, spotting a dark-haired, olive-skinned author seating herself to my right. “It’s Native American. It’s Leh-huish-hah.”
Aaron tries not to snicker.
“I’m telling you it’s French. L’wah!”
“Welcome everyone. Let’s start by having each of our panelists introduce themselves.”
“Aloha! My name is Lay-who-ah Parker and I write…”
When they hear me say my name, they both shake their heads. “No,” the guy says, “she’s wrong.”
by Lehua Parker | Jan 5, 2014 | Mainland Living, Mana'o (Thoughts), The Business of Writing, Uncategorized
So how do you use a laptop when you can’t sit at a table and don’t have a lap?
That’s my most pressing problem right now with my right foot in a cast and needing to be propped higher than my heart. The ice bag takes up what little room I have between my gut and knee and reclining half on my back and leaning on an elbow, I’m at a loss at how to balance the computer and type at the same time. Cocooned in a pillow nest, I’m tired of taping out one letter at a time on an iPad. Serious writing needs ten fingers.
It’s my fault for always writing at a desk with a chair and keyboard and two big monitors in a room where I can shut the door. Like a jock with lucky socks, I’ve trained myself to think that it’s all about the quiet room and the ability to use a mouse. Writing on the living room couch is a cramped affair filled with scraps of other people’s conversations and too loud music.
Adapt or die. Right now death is winning.
Being cooped up the past two days has built up a torrent of words and ideas that want to pour like water over a cliff, but they will have to wait until my foot no longer needs elevation and ice or I master some new yoga poses.
It’s going to be a long two months.
by Lehua Parker | Dec 22, 2013 | Blog Tours, Guest Posts, & Interviews
My friend and critique partner Christine Haggerty just published her debut novel with Fox Hollow Publications. Acquisitions, book 1 in the Plague Legacy, introduces Cam, a teenage orphan trying to survive in a world reshaped by a plague virus that renders people immune or mutant. When Cam’s swept up in a raid to provide more slaves for Salvation, he’ll have find ways to survive in a dog eat dog world. Readers of Legend, Lord of the Flies, Maze Runner, and The Hunger Games will find much to love in this new series.
Over a couple of Diet Cokes and email, this is what Christine told me about her newest project.
The Plague Legacy world is a rough one, Christine. Most modern comforts are gone, at least for people like Cam. Are there experiences in your life that you used to help readers understand what Cam’s life is like?
My early childhood was spent on a subsistence farm in northeastern Utah. We grew most of our own food, milked a goat, had an outhouse (I think we had indoor plumbing by the time I was in second grade), snared and skinned rabbits, and gathered and ate plants that many people would consider weeds. I imagine that if the apocalypse was due to a disease rather than a nuclear bomb, we’d be shoved back a few centuries and live like I did as a kid. That’s the life that Cam and the other orphans in the story had before they were collected and sold.
What’s the most important thing Cam needs to keep in mind in order to survive?
In the first book, Cam mostly needs to trust in himself in order to survive. He views himself as a victim, as someone who is restricted by the rules of humanity. However, the rest of his world does not necessarily play by those same rules, and Cam has to choose which to follow and which to break.
Which five books would you lug around in a backpack during an apocalypse?
Illusions by Richard Bach and four ‘how to’ survival guides.
Describe your typical writing day.
I send my kids off to school in the morning and then have about 2 ½ hours to write without interruptions before my kindergartener gets home. That’s ideal. There are always interruptions. I do best when I am in the rhythm of getting up at 5:30 a.m. to have my coffee and write for an hour before their alarms start going off. When I get stressed about a deadline (and I set word count deadlines for myself), my typical writing day can involve a lot of yelling and a lot more coffee…and chocolate chips.
Any teasers for book 2 you can share? Inquiring minds want to know!
I can say that The Plague Legacy: Assets will have arena games and fighting and a much more complex world that is an interesting mix of apocalyptic old and futuristic new. A lot more character backstories play into this book as Cam puts some puzzle pieces together in order to survive. Watch my website for scenes and artwork related to the world of Salvation.
The Plague Legacy: Acquisitions is published by Fox Hollow Publications and is available through Amazon.
Connect with Christine Haggerty
Website: www.christinehaggertyauthor.com
Wattpad: www.wattpad.com/ChristineHaggerty
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/7468114.Christine_Haggerty
Fox Hollow Publications: www.foxhollowpublications.com
by Lehua Parker | Dec 18, 2013 | The Business of Writing
‘Twas the Night Before Deadline
(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)
‘Twas the night before deadline, when all through the den
Not a writer was writing, not even with pen!
The novel was due to reviewers with care
In hopes that sales stimulus soon would be there.
The words were not flowing, no dialogue said,
While visions of better books danced in my head.
And husband asked, “When?” And I said, “Don’t know.
I’ve got pages and chapters still left to go.”
When out in the kitchen there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my laptop to see what’s the matter.
Away to the counter I flew like a flash,
Tore open the wrappers and snarfed all the stash.
The moon on the beast of the new-fallen show
The depths of the bottom we writers will go.
When what to my thundering thighs should appear,
But six empty plates of neighborly cheer.
With a Diet Coke chaser, so icy and quick,
Came the illusion of writing so lively with wit.
More rabid than weasels the words how they came,
And I laughed as I wrote them—to my endless shame.
“Now Gaiman, now Meyers, now King, and Dean Koontz,
Gabaldon, Pattersen, you guys with the loot,
My books are on shelves and great reads to boot!
It’s time to move over, c’mon y’all—scoot!”
Like bad reviews before these wild words fly,
When they meet with reality, sugar crash is nigh.
So back to my laptop my fingers they flew
Enough with this poem—I’ve real writing to do!
Connect with Matt Carter & F.J.R. Titchenell
