DailyFlash: Lightning Rainbow

"The rains are coming on! The rains are coming on!" shouted the little boy. He jumped into an excited run and tried to pull his sister with him.
     She stood, knowing there was no need to rush. There was a little bubble of excitement within, but it wasn't quite as big as it used to be.
     The boy lead the way, bounding up the stairwell from level three where he shared accommodation with his family - and a few others. Neon strip-lights lit up as he passed beneath them. The girl watched him disappear into the courtyard of the dome through heavy double doors that swung back into her face.
     In the courtyard her brother was already standing with his friends, waiting for the weekly shower.
     "30 seconds..." said Kirillion's voice over the loudspeaker. The girl looked up to the apex of the dome and the saucer-shaped shadow of the watchtower from where Kirillion spoke. Where the important things were done.
     Then it began. The pipes that ran adjacent to the shaft leading to the watchtower gushed with water. She put a hand on one and could feel it vibrate. At the top, the pipe passed from their dome and into the outer dome - the Agridome - and there; they watched as the water cascaded in a rainpour they could see, but not feel.
     Lightning rainbows shimmered on the inner lining as the rain made its way down to the crops below, and all the kids "wooowed" in wonder.

This flash fiction was inspired by the world of Neon Sands, the first in a trilogy currently accepting nominations on Kindle Scout. Like this world and want to read more? Please vote for Neon Sands on Kindle Scout and get a free copy!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

Neon Sands - Kindle Scout Nominations

Hi everybody! The first book in the Neon Sands trilogy is now up on Kindle Scout awaiting nominations.

Link spam: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

What is Kindle Scout? It's an Amazon affiliate - if a book gets enough votes in a 30 day period, they publish it and market it, making the whole exercise a lot easier for the self-published authors. Voters also get a free copy!

Link spam: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/M0AVK7KHQVAB

Sand like powder smothers the decimated planet; those that eke an existence scavenge and utilise old technologies they barely understand, wanderers drifting from outpost to outpost. But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged. What else is the sand hiding? A sci-fi/punk adventure in an inhospitable landscape, Neon Sands is the opening book in an epic series that will explore Man’s technological and innate potential, and the search for hope when all looks bleak.

IF YOU VOTE I WILL BE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!

Book Review: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

His Dark Materials is up there with my favourite books so it was a pleasurable, warm and cosy return to the alt-Oxford world of daemons and anti-religiosity. Set before the first trilogy, it introduces Malcolm Polstead who charges himself with protecting a baby Lyra from forces that want her for their own needs, and from a 40-days and 40-nights style flood.

The writing is beautiful and the story is great; the first half being a reintroduction to the world, told leisurely, with the second half ramping up the tension and action as a chase on the water ensues. There is a sense early on that you are still reading the book's introduction, despite being a couple hundred words in, but then you realise you have become immersed in it.

Malcolm as a character, and latterly Alice (who is forced into the journey too) both grow and develop as the story winds on, escaping the one-dimensional traits. And we meet some old (young) characters from His Dark Materials too, but they don't interfere too much. With the next one set 20 years after this, I do wonder about the pertinence of this story and how it will add to the whole, especially with the introduction of certain important characters. 20 years sees like a loooong time to jump ahead...

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Dead Silence by Jane B

The Dead Silence by Jane B.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a weird one; extra stars given here for the subject matter itself and not the story or characters or way it is told. This is a book about the various psychoses surrounding motherhood, and in particular, the negative ones; it does a great job of detailing these and opening your eyes to postpartum depression, and a whole host of other disorders, but it does so at the expense of everything else. The exploration is sometimes essay-like, and always through conversation, the problem being that you could interchange who was speaking and it wouldn't matter. There's even one moment where Anna, suffering from a disorder and in a counselling session with Dr Sam Haley, who up until now has spoken in barely legible broken sentences, suddenly opens up and has a deep, philosophical revelation, all to get a point across it seems.

The information in the book is important, but as a novel, could have been handled better. We follow Sam Haley around as he talks to mothers, holds counselling sessions and explores what he wants to do with his life. But he, like many of the characters, are often vessels for the message being told. He's a good man, but he's one-dimensional. The most interesting moments, and the most depressing, are when we are seeing through the eyes of Anna, or her mother, Maria, in a plot that explores more directly this interaction. There's also a plot involving Sam's secretary, but I'm not entirely sure what this adds to the story. Perhaps a sense of foreboding, which if true is actually displayed with a good sense of understatement, sometimes missing in indie work I have read recently.

One question that always arises with indie work is the writing and editing: here, while it does need another edit to clear up some grammar issues which are just errors, an edit couldn't really help the writing style which is perfectly readable, but does sometimes read as though English was a second language for the writer. This works well for the Anna sequences, but not so well for the doctor sequences. One more slight quibble is that if there is more than one character in a scene, the POV will move freely between them, which is slightly jarring.

Overall, worth reading for the message it has to tell.

View all my reviews

Neon Sands nearly complete

I've had a lot of fun writing this book and I can't wait for people to be able to read it. It's the first in the Neon trilogy of trilogies and sets the series up perfectly. I'm also conscious of not having it end with a massive cliffhanger - it may be an opening book but it's also important for it to have a beginning, middle and an end. I know how I'd feel if there wasn't at least some resolution to some arcs.

The cover will need a bit of tweaking, the manuscript editing, and then proofs ordered. I may also try this on Kindle Scout, so watch this space.

Sand like powder smothers the decimated planet; those that eke an existence scavenge and utilise old technologies they barely understand, wanderers drifting from outpost to outpost. But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged. What else is the sand hiding? A sci-fi/punk adventure in an inhospitable landscape, Neon Sands is the opening book in an epic series that will explore Man’s technological and innate potential, and the search for hope when all looks bleak.

Add to your Goodreads shelf here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36371205-neon-sands

Horror Book Review: My Dead World by Jacqueline Druga

My Dead World by Jacqueline Druga
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just finished and jumping straight into the review with my thoughts still fresh - just like the many wounds that are gashed or slashed or mutilated in My Dead World.

It gets an extra star for the gore and its brazen attitude towards a world taken over by a zombie virus (the Z-word that must not be mentioned. It's interesting to me who choose to call the walking dead 'zombies', and who make up other words for them. Guilty of it myself. In the real world, for sake of ease of description when chatting to other people you'd end up just calling them zombies, right?)

While I did enjoy the read for the horror and gore, it also had me shaking my head in disbelief over some choices the characters made, and it became apparent that there were outside forces at play who didn't want everyone to live til the end of the book, despite having prepared so well and having so much info about the virus beforehand. Ergo complacency.

Nila and her family are forewarned by her CDC brother to start preparing an apocalypse shelter, using the cabin they own in the mountains. This thing is stocked, fenced, and everything. Yet shit still continued to hit the fan. Complacent little things that the characters, or, more prominently Nila, kept doing to endanger them kept pulling me out of the story whenever it was hotting up.

I guess it highlights the reality of the layman, that whenever I wanted Nila to turn it around and step up, she couldn't, letting emotion lead the way, leaving space for mistakes. Maybe that's what the majority of people would be like, but you'd like to think they'd catch on quicker. (Just a little too much indecision and second-guessing going on perhaps.)

And then all the death made for a bit of a sombre read in the end.

Fast-paced, lots of action, could do with another round of editing as a few errors, but a pretty accurate portrayal of a world falling apart from a ravaging virus.

View all my reviews

Indie Book Review: The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M Appel

The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M. Appel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jeremy Balint:; hospital division chief, husband, father, would-be serial killer.

After one of those freakish sort of life coincidences that sends you tumbling down an alternate path, Jeremy sets his heart on the perfect murder. Only, to murder one person, he should really murder some others too so it looks random.

This is the kind of cold calculation you can expect from Jeremy's narrative, told from his POV. The story is solid, though (view spoiler)[perhaps lacks a bit of tension, as I rarely felt any doubt that Jeremy would complete his mission. (hide spoiler)] It was an entertaining read but felt restricted by (view spoiler)[it being from Jeremy's POV. While something like American Psycho goes the literary and raucously crazy route, if you took the gore and ambiguity out of that, you'd be left with a relatively straight tale of 80s excess, murder, and incompetent police work, which is kind of the feeling I was left with here, everything a little too tightly controlled. Except there was little chance for the police to be incompetent, because the murders were clean, albeit lucky sometimes (especially with respect to Jeremy's car not being registered at the various scenes). The murders were also matter-of-fact - anti-climactic almost. Again though, this is Jeremy's POV so the general tone is consistent with his character and can't be faulted. My one fault perhaps, and which could have been included with consistency, is Jeremy's insistence of the importance of his daughters, though there is relatively little interaction there. Maybe this too is a ploy, a case of himself pulling the wool over his own eyes. If not, a couple of fleshed out scenes with his daughters would have given him a little more warmth.

I did also think at the beginning that his sudden fall was 'too sudden' - that if he was capable of this he would have known earlier in his adult life, even his child life. We are glimpsed a moment in his childhood which goes some way to explain this, but even then Jeremy seems almost surprised by his own capabilities. (hide spoiler)] It's certainly fascinating to try and unravel the thought processes going on.

The cold moments in the narrative are lifted every now and then by Jeremy's wit - often in the form of mickey-taking, especially when he is in discussions with the rabbi who co-opts him into running some free clinics, which is a nice change of pace, while also revealing Jeremy's sociopathy. And as I said, the writing is solid and mostly unflourished, giving us an accurate insight into the working mind of a serial killer.

View all my reviews

DailyFlash: Anubis

When the death throes scuttled through his murmuring lungs and chuckled down his carotid, it was finally over. A restless night was day; the dewlight of dawn blued the thin curtains, lighting the empty eyes. The jackal's head distended over the corpse's mouth, jaw unlocking and teeth glistening. Its human stomach rippled and something within it gurgled until a clear amniotic expelled from within, cascading into the dead man. As his body filled, his body emptied; blood dripping up from bulging eyeballs into the nostrils at the end of Anubis' snout. When the embalming was complete it howled a morning howl.

Zombie Madness Instafreebie Collection - next 10 days

And so begins 10 days of zombie horror ebooks being given away over on Instafreebie! 

Get scared this halloween.

https://www.instafreebie.com/gg/O2baD7qdILwuAWMdgGhK

Halloween Horror Feast - Paranormal and Occult Free

Grab a free book for Halloween! Check out these Instafreebies!

https://www.instafreebie.com/gg/ZeKD8fgSd8t6yaErIalX

Horror collection promo

From the 16-18 October David Neth Books is hosting a promo for horror fans - head over to:

https://www.davidnethbooks.com/promo

And find yourself a deal. Looks like a good collection, but then I would say that with The Risen included!

Rarity from the Hollow review & reading update

Straight from Goodreads:

Rarity from the Hollow 3/5

by Robert Eggleton

This was an odd read that fluctuated throughout trying to find its own identity but never settling. It gets an extra star from me because it was interestingly written, often witty and dry and punchy, riding quite heavily on dialogue, but there was a lot that didn't really work.

Lacy Dawn is a preteen in an abusive family; physical from the father and neglect from the mother. They live in a rundown home in the hollow, a mildly undefined space at the edge of town. She chants roundabend, roundabend, roundabend and floats into the woods (where the trees talk to her) to see her alien-android friend, DotCom. At first you're not sure what's real and what's made up, and though a lot of things are made concrete there's so many elements in this book it's a feeling that never quite goes away.

Neon Sands Trilogy - Goodreads

Feeling oddly satisfied after working out the arc for my characters in the Neon Sands trilogy - and with that, the titles! We have:

Book 1: Neon Sands: A Trilogy

Book 2: Valley of Ion: The Neon Sands Trilogy

Book 3: Subterranean Wasteland: The Neon Sands Trilogy

This is the first trilogy in the Neon Series, with 4-6 and 7-9 also loosely planned in my head. As we go through the series we'll be touching on a variety of genres: we begin with scifi and punk, with a dash of dystopia and a mysterious post-apoc vibe, perhaps crossing into serious cyberpunk and... I don't want to give too much away. The story will be epic and well worth the books I have planned. The first one is on Goodreads now if you want to hop on board. Check out the blurb and cover below and then head over to Goodreads to add it to your shelf...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36371205-neon-sands

Sand like powder smothers the decimated planet; those that eke an existence scavenge and utilise old technologies they barely understand, wanderers drifting from outpost to outpost. But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged. What else is the sand hiding? A sci-fi/punk adventure in an inhospitable landscape, Neon Sands is the opening book in an epic series that will explore Man’s technological and innate potential, and the search for hope when all looks bleak.

Blade Runner & Hereafter New Cover

Hereafter has a new cover, one that looks the part, all in the name of the plan of looking more professional. Readers are enjoying it too!

Saw the new Blade Runner last night and was glad the local, small cinema wasn't showing it, forcing us into a mainstream multiplex with all the dolby goodness going on. It's gloriously cinematic, wide shots of beautiful dystopian cities accompanied by a dark, industrial soundtrack. Good story too. It may have lacked an iconic line or shot compared to the first one, but it was consistently awesome, and bravely paced, throughout.

New cover, new lease of life - The Risen

You can grab The Risen for free til midnight 3 October - after that, it'll be getting some promos to go along with its new cover, just to keep things ticking nicely over. This is a marked improvement:

So head on over and don't forget to review! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H9VETZ4