Why?

Sometimes in life we do things that defy explanation. Things that go against our natures, because jobs demand it, marriage demands it, stability, parenthood, it makes for a long list.

Speaking of lists, I’ll share one here. I could use bullet points, but it is a long list. Consider some of these things in modern life: bills, jobs, mandatory overtime, politics, social media, violence in the street, import tariffs, export tariffs, immigration, social problems, terrorism, military actions, taxes, home maintenance, chores, yard work, house work, health care, veterinary care, it goes on an on.

We can all use a short break. Sometimes we need to take time to shut it all out for a few hours. This is why I write speculative fiction. The big “why” is so we can all escape for a few hours. I escape when I write it, and I hope you do too when you read it.

We have enough of the unavoidable things in our lives. It’s nice to know that the good guys can win. That a proper ending is still out there somewhere, even if it’s between the pages of a work of fiction.

I finally got Viral Blues into NetGalley and Book Sprout. If any of you are interested in a free copy in exchange for an honest review, these links may interest you.

http://netgal.ly/RcaLDo

https://booksprout.co/arc/22202/viral-blues

I’ll be back out on the tour trail next week. I hope you’ll join me and speak up in the comment sections.

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Peeking out

I’ve been admittedly quiet around here lately. This is because I’ve been appearing everywhere else. My local efforts haven’t been that interesting, so I’ll just brief on them.

I try to have a couple of posts per week out there, then spend my time supporting those. If you’ve hosted me, you may have seen all the Twitter action and such.

Every weekend, I try to contact a host or two, then write something specifically for them. This tour has been 100% unique material, even though the cover and blurb are the same.

There has also been a surge of interest in Lisa Burton Radio. This takes quite a bit of work, but I like to be there for my fellow authors. I’m not one of those who takes but never gives in that regard.

It honestly doesn’t sound like much, but it’s kept me hopping. I’m enjoying the baseball playoffs to no end this year, but many of those games find me with my iPad across my lap and trying to polish up a post during the game.

Some of you might wonder why you haven’t heard from me for this tour. I will send something if you like, but I have another book coming right on the heels of Viral Blues. I don’t want to wear my usual hosts out, but I’ll need places to promote that book, too.

Part of this weekend is dedicated to whipping Serang into final shape. Most of it involves adding a title and copyright page, a bit of back material, and a fast sweep of the tale itself. If I get everything done, that will make three publications for me this year. I think anyone would admit that’s a pretty busy 2019.

For now, it’s Viral Blues until the end of the month. It has a Halloween theme, and you can read it in a long day. I think it’s funny, and maybe you’d enjoy some seasonal reading.

With this schedule, something had to give. I’m sad to note there is no Macabre Macaroni this year. I never had to time to write some seasonal micro-fiction. Nobody appears to have noticed, but I hope you’re all having a fun Halloween season anyway. Here’s an old MM image of Lisa to hold you over.

Old What’s Her Face has a Pirates film festival on today. I adore these movies, and find the music inspirational. They also serve to remind me that I haven’t touched Lanternfish II in over a month. In a perfect world, I would finish this manuscript by the end of the month.

It’s about time for me to knock off, eat some Asian pears, drink a pumpkin beer and find some baseball. (So many Asian pears this year, and they’ve been better than any previous year.)

Creative Solutions for the Modern Writer

Harmony Kent is a dear friend, and a colleague over at Story Empire. She has a new book out that is designed to help us with our fiction. Make her feel welcome today, and use those sharing buttons.

Hello everyone. Harmony here. I’m excited to share my latest non-fiction book with you all today. Huge thanks to Craig for hosting me today.

 

Creative Solutions for the Modern Writer does what it says on the tin (or cover, lol), and offers tools to fire your imagination. With chapters on things such as using chess and tarot to develop stories, plots, and characters—as well as adopting the principles of nursing triage, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, horoscopes, and more—this little guide is full of fun tips and tricks to get your muse working overtime.

 

This excellent writer’s companion is available on pre-order now in ebook. And both ebook and paperback go on sale on October 9th.

 

Here’s an excerpt for you:

It’s lovely to meet you. This book is all about getting you writing and keeping you going, as well as offering aids to idea generation for your plots, characters, and story premises.

Before we begin (in the spirit of all great procrastinators) …

 

 

Apologies for the awful pun, but I’m sure for many of you, this bit of fun rings a bell or two … or three …

Experienced author, editor, and proofreader that I am, I still experience occasional challenges in getting going and/or keeping going. At such times, I’ve found it’s useful to have a few tricks hooked onto my writer’s tool-belt. Even when we have a great idea and know what’s expected of us, we can struggle to dirty that first, pristine, blank page …

 

With the help of this guide, as well as adopting a regular writing practice and developing good habits, you will have plenty of tools to get you out of any imaginative rut.

 

***

Author Bio

After spending around thirteen years as an ordained Buddhist monk, living in a Zen Buddhist temple, and six years after a life-changing injury following a surgical error, Harmony Kent returned to the world at the tender age of forty.

Now, she is famous for her laughter, and has made quite the name for herself … she’s also, um, a writer … and fairly well known for that too. She’s even won a few awards. Harmony lives in rural Cornwall with her ever-present sense of humour, adorable husband, and quirky neighbours.

Harmony is passionate about supporting her fellow authors.

 

Links

Website: https://harmonykent.co.uk/

Story Empire (co-authored): https://storyempirecom.wordpress.com/

Amazon Author Page: author.to/HarmonysBooks

Twitter: @harmony_kent

LinkedIn: Harmony

Goodreads: Author Page

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/harmony-kent

Creative Solutions Pre-order Link: http://mybook.to/CreativeSolutions

 

 

Big Sale for War of Nytefall

Charles is holding a big sale for the month of October. This is for his fantasy vampire series, so you can see the Halloween theme behind it all. This is a great opportunity to jump onboard.

War of Nytefall (CLICK ON IMAGE FOR AMAZON SITE)

For the month of October, all three War of Nytefall books will be available for 99 cents each.

I’ll be posting about this once a week and keeping up a pinned Tweet for the entire month, which is really it for promotions.  If anyone wants to host a simple promo post or copy/paste the above then let me know.  I can put some posts together for people, but I really can’t do anything complicated due to time restraints.  We can discuss things in the comments if you want to help.

There’s an ulterior motive here as well, which is why this isn’t working exactly like a big announcement promotion:

If I see enough movement of War of Nytefall with the new price then I will consider dropping all of my books to 99 cents ($2.99 for those Legends of Windemere bundles) for an extended period of time.  So, for all those people who wanted to read my books, but thought $2.99 was too much, this is your chance to sway me into an across the board price drop.  With my job, I can pay my bills, so I’m pushing for exposure on the books instead of royalties.  That means, this is a fairly easy contest for that crowd to win if they convince their friends to join in.

Do I expect there to be a lot of movement?  I have no idea, but October is the best time to promote my vampires.  So, have fun, enjoy the stories, and thank you to anyone who is willing to help spread the word.

I’m so happy about this

Apple recently split out iOS, making one for phones and a slightly different one for iPads. Like a good gadget zombie, I dutifully updated everything.

This is followed by the rash of apps that need to be updated. Check that box off.

I do everything on my big iPad Pro. I bought one of the original ones, because I wanted to be able to open more than one window at a time. It works great, but it was limited to different programs.

This is why I lamented my old iPad’s inability to handle the new operating systems. I used to take redlines of my critique sections, open them on the old iPad, then edit on the iPad Pro. Worked great.

The last few rounds, I’ve been opening the redline on my phone and “getting by” that way.

However, the new updates provided something wonderful. I can now open two Apple Pages documents side-by-side. With the big screen on the Pro, it works wonderfully for my purposes.

I made this image as an example for this post. Imagine the Viral Blues side being my work in progress, the Lanternfish side being a redline markup of the latest critique I received. I’m excited, let me tell you.

Rumor is that it works on other gadgets, too. I can’t imagine trying to use this on a phone, but if that shakes your booty, apparently it works there, too.

It still works with different programs, and there are times when I use the slider in the middle to make the right side narrow, then leave a Google search open. Thesaurus.com, maps, you get the idea. The ability to have two documents is a game changer for me.

I may be the only person out there who writes on Apple Pages (with an iPad), but if you’re one of us, you might find this helpful.

Wednesday author chores

Today is my flex day again. I really want to be working on a couple of manuscripts, but I have other duties to attend to.

I started off with Lisa Burton Radio. I have two authors who are looking for a bit of promo, so I wanted to get their shticks out the door. I spent a couple of hours on those, then shipped them out. One of them already returned his, and while I’m tempted to work on it again, I’ll probably put it off for a couple of days.

Viral Blues got its first review, and it’s outstanding. Things like this make me glad to know that someone had a good time with the story.

I need to tour this book around, so I spent some time writing tour posts. I have a bunch more to write, but can only do so much in one sitting. Three of them were shipped out, and that’s a reasonable start.

Additionally, I received a post that I’m going to host, then assembled and scheduled it. This is part of the Something Wicked tour the Story Empire authors are going on. This is going to be a fun group event, so I hope you guys will come along. I’m including Something Wicked as part of the tour for Viral Blues.

As I catch up with the tour posts, I may put the touch of a few of you to host something. I’m a couple of weeks away from that, but working that direction.

I think the sidebar is up to date now.

Yak Guy has moved out of the spotlight. You can still find him by visiting my Amazon page, along with all my other books. I added Viral Blues to the carousel, and gave it Yak Guy’s premier real estate. If you click on the larger covers, they go directly to those books.

All in all, it was a productive day. No new fiction, but there are other tasks an author has to attend to.

Old What’s Her Face is home now, so productivity is coming to an end. It’s time to enjoy a few hours like other people do with a day off.

Viral Blues, on #LisaBurtonRadio

Hey, everyone. Welcome to a special Friday the 13th, late night edition of Lisa Burton Radio. I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and while we’re awaiting the full moon to rise in conjunction with this day, I have something special for you.

Craig thought this wonderful event would be a perfect time to release his latest paranormal story, Viral Blues. He told me to note that it’s also his 13th publication. You have to admit, it seems kind of Karmic somehow.

If you’re familiar with these shows, you know I always have a guest, but I’m the guest today. I’ll explain how that all happened.

Craig wanted to write a sequel to The Hat. One evening, he was commuting home from work when he was joined by his Muse. Lorelei told him he has a lot of characters who could all be living in the same world. He called me at the writing cabin, and set me to work immediately.

I went down to the Character Union Hall, and all these people were just hanging around, looking for new stories to appear in. I interviewed them, one by one, and chose some to appear in the new story with Lizzie and The Hat.

The next weekend, Craig came out to the writing cabin to look over the list, then get started. He said it needed something extra. I was afraid of letting him down, but he was only teasing me. He said what the story needed was a robot girl to round out the cast.

I have to admit, I cried a little. I like being helpful, but I’ve been asking for another story for years. Then to find out I get to be in a story with some of his most popular characters. It was kind of overwhelming.

Superhero team-ups are all the rage right now. Why not in book form too? This is the group of heroic characters in the story:

• Me (obviously)
• Lizzie St. Laurent
• The Hat
• Dr. Gina Greybill
• Mohan Gupta
• Clovis
• Jason Fogg
• Clovis’s girlfriend, Justine

This story also has a bunch of Easter Eggs inside for those who have read Craig’s previous work. I won’t go into those, so as not to spoil it for you.

The deal is that Dr. Greybill and, and her helper Gupta, called this group together under her Host Program. There is someone or something tampering with the nation’s vaccine supply. That’s where the story starts.

If you’ve been following along with the teasers, my posters and the music will start to make sense now. The posters all have something to do with the book.

The Hat is Craig’s most popular book, and they are going to be getting even more stories in the future. Just this one time, we all thought it was fun to get together for one huge adventure.

I want to point out that just because this is a sequel, well, for a bunch of us, really, there is no prerequisite reading here. If this is where you start, it will all be perfectly readable.

The story is set up to be a Hat story all the way, so the format is like that book. There are some fun graphics inside, and a lot of dark humor, too.

Also, be sure to check out the secret last chapter at the very end of the book. It’s beyond the author material, kind of like those scenes after the credits in movies.

I had a lot of fun, and I’ll bet you will, too. Check out this awesome cover, and I’ll include a purchase link. This thing just went live about 30 minutes ago.

http://a-fwd.com/asin-com=B07XVTSYYV