Book update - The Risen FREE - PART 2 OUT NOW!

Helloooo! It's been a while! Just a few things going on in real life, but hopefully a semblance of normality returning! Hope everyone on my list is okay - I wish you well, wherever you are! As it's been a while I thought I I'd do a run-down below of books and their availability, starting with the newest, and some Audible news. If you previously won a copy of Neon Sands, I'll be getting these in the mail this week!

The Risen Part 2 is out now!  This is my first 1st-person narrative novel, recently completed and released to little fanfare. So here's some fanfare! It was a nice change of pace to really get stuck inside someone's head, especially someone not quite human. Click through now to follow Ffion as she explores post-apocalyptic Wales, and her own strange history.

The Risen Part 1 is FREE! And to whet your appetite, grab part 1 for free now, if you haven't already. It's non-essential reading if you'd like to dig into Part 2, but serves as a decent standalone story too. Each book shares some narrative twists toward the end that reflect what's going on in the story at the time. And there will be a Part 3 to round off the trilogy, so worth an investment!

Plains of Ion is on AUDIBLE! If you read and enjoyed Neon Sands and have an audible account, you can click through now to listen to its sequel, Plains of Ion. #3, Flames of Apathy (and the rest of the Neon series) will be following shortly. Where's Neon Sands you ask? I wish I knew. ACX approved Plains of Ion in 10 days, while we're still waiting on Neon Sands 2 months later. Hopefully incoming shortly!

SIGNED PAPERBACKS - £10 All my titles apart from Neon Zero are available as paperback. However, if you'd like a signed copy of Neon Sands, get in touch!

Click here to connect to Goodreads to review. Please also consider Amazon!

Whole bunch o' freebies!

So this week is a kicker for freebies. Scroll down and you'll see plenty of links to promos currently active - and stop here if you still don't have Neon Sands Book One on your reader, this is FREE today only (Monday 3 Feb). 

Since revising the novel and adding an extra 15k words, I've been getting more and more favourable reviews for it, so there's never been a better time to begin!

BUT THERE'S MORE!

Two new shorts have been added to the blog - first, The Order, the short story competition entry with Obsession, Mason and Fantasy as the keywords. Read it here now.

The Risen Part II Prologue

In addition, The Risen Part II's bloody prologue has also been uploaded. Delve into Ffion's world of isolation, bodily changes, and malting. And if that grabs your interest, it's on preorder now for the special price of 0.99. 

Viewing pleasures

It's all go at work and with the novel writing, so haven't caught much. I started the Picard series, and though I will watch it all, I'm finding much of it forced character-wise, plot-wise, all-wise! I guess I miss the episodic nature of Trek. And good writing. O.O. Speaking of which, I thought Uncut Gems was a cut above, a force of nature that ramped up the stress along the way. It was a good example of how to have your characters make stupid decisions - under different circumstances each of Sandler's decisions could seem contrived and forced to cause conflict for the film to ride on, but by the end you realise this is the character. He is Sandler-esque despite himself, but having watched him in the actor's roundtable and knowing the effort he put in to research, you can call it one of his best performances.

Leave No One Behind

For warriors, those words and the meaning behind them have been sacred law, ever since the first human picked up a stone in anger. For Captain Shane Mallory, United Nations Air & Space Command, the spirit of those words rings no less true now than it did then.

Captain Mallory and the Special Operations soldiers assigned to her gunship have just completed a cake mission, and all are looking forward to some well-earned down time. But when a desperate distress call comes in over the communications wave, those sacred words—leave no one behind—will truly be put to the test. DOWNLOAD NOW

PROLOGUE: The Risen Part II

I first menstruated when I was nine years old; waking in bed to a small puddle of dampness, the morning light warming through the heavy curtains. When I felt the wetness there was shame, making itself known in the tears that came. It had been years since I wet the bed. I sat up slowly, and it felt as though I’d tipped something over, such was the gushing. The emptying. I squeezed as hard as I could and finally it stopped coming. It was too cold in the winter air and too warm beneath the layer of blankets to get up, so I guessed it was still real early, and figured it would dry. Two hours later and the day at full bloom was pressing into my bedroom, up the peeled wallpaper and the cracks of plaster, black mould spots in the corners of the ceiling. I wriggled my hips. It felt sticky. It would smell bad, I thought, wary of lifting the blanket. Mother would not be happy. I tentatively put a hand down there, feeling for the damp. Instead it was tacky, like wet cornbread dough, and when I brought my fingers to the light they were the colour of the mould.

I’m mouldy! It was a silly thought, but I was a child. I let in the ice of the air and there was the meconium stain on my faded-blue pyjama bottoms, black-red and the size of a newborn kitten. Shuffling backwards, the stain on the sheet was much larger, as black and as wide as Rhodri’s well. It looked like blood! I stifled a scream but the creaking springs of the mattress betrayed my consciousness and Father came in to make sure I was quick with the chores, as he always did. He took one look at the sheets, then back to me, and said; “So you are a girl, after all. Mother!”

I made myself as small as I could, backing up against the wall, while Father left to get Mother to deal with my problem. That he hadn’t acted much surprised settled what frightened nerves were needling in my stomach. It couldn’t be that bad. Quiet, I listened to the footsteps of the house; my brothers showed their heads around the edge of the door and laughed when they saw the blood on the bed. I quickly reached forward and covered it over, but it was too late. They ran off giggling, screaming “Raggedy Anne, raggedy Anne!” as though I was meant to know what that meant.

Mother finally entered, shutting the door behind her. She was the only woman in the house, and, I guess, after today I became the second, though it would be another five years until I menstruated again. She pulled the bedcover away and then sat on the bed, asking if I was scared. I told her there was nothing to be scared about, and she nodded in agreement, going on to tell me about the way of things with that resigned sadness she had about her, as though she was constantly experiencing something in the past. She told me to get up and then she pulled the cover from the bed. “Go to the bathroom,” she said, locking my bedroom door. I had my own bathroom, you see.

There, she told me to strip and poured some freezing water into the plugged sink. I sometimes made wee in the bathtub, which was green and black with dirt, so I didn’t much want to stand in it, but I did as I was told. The pyjama bottoms peeled away with some difficulty, much redder than the sheets, and stuck to my thick, matted hair. My skin was already hard with goosebumps by then, the lighter hair across my body prickled to attention, so the water made little difference. It stung a little over my nub, as sensitive as the end was, but I was used to that by now. Mother lathered soap into the hair on my inner thighs and up to my belly button and cleaned away as much blood as she could. I couldn’t help but notice how she averted her gaze from it, and wouldn’t touch it. “There you go,” she said, “you can do the rest yourself. I’ll leave a towel on your bed, and get you clean sheets.”

Alone, I finished washing and then dried and clothed, while my belly ached, hammering blows bouncing around my abdomen. A little cramp. I always wore long trouser legs and sleeves in those days, to cover all the hair. Even then little wisps crept beyond the hem of my sleeves, so I wore gloves whenever we left the farm, just in case we bumped into anyone. And a scarf for my neck.

Whenever I think back to my early childhood, I always come back to this day, for so much seemed to change for me from here on out. Father had it right: I was a girl. Not long after, I began to malt, waking up in the mornings not to blood, or urine, but body hair. A little later and my breasts began to grow sore, my nipples turning from pennies to old tuppences. I grew my hair long, because that was what girls did. My brothers stopped mocking and Mother even began to take me between her knees with a comb, and brush and brush for minutes at a time. She’d always wanted a daughter, and I was close enough, I guess. I don’t blame her, how do you treat an orphan baby covered head to toe in hair and with seemingly both sets of genitals? It can’t have been easy.

They named me Ffion, and Father’s surname was Adie, as in A-D, so that was how the locals knew me. Not that there were many locals to be had up here on the hill. Us Adies liked to keep to ourselves most of the time, anyway, tending to our farm and keeping the borders secure. If my family were muntjacs, then I was a vole, or perhaps a mole, my own sect within a sect, the outsider within.

Father and Jack did the heaviest work; they both had the arms to show for it too. Up early to count the sheep and pigs and chickens, while I and Dylan fed them, and then it was the two hour walk, checking that the border was secure. Where the wind – for it blew a gale up here in the hills just north of Aberffrwd – had dislodged one of the giant tree trunks or bent a section of barbed wire, they were on it, fixing it in a jiffy. Aled was the youngest, though still older than me, and his morning routine was to collect all the water for the day from the nearby stream. When I was done feeding the animals, sometimes I might help Mother in the kitchen, but most often I went off by myself, and always had, ever since I was little. They never stopped me; if anything ever happened to me then I would be a mouth less to feed. Chances were slim – mostly – because that perimeter wall was sturdy. I saw them sometimes, prowling on the other side, testing the barbs and drawing blood. Licking their wounds. One sight of Father’s shotgun and they ran.

The Risen Part II on preorder, special 0.99 price

The Risen Part I available now