Monthly Archives: July 2021

The F.I.G. Mysteries

Posted on by

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Barbara Casey and her mystery novels, The F.I.G. Mysteries.

Author’s description

THE F.I.G. MYSTERIES

Dara Roux, abandoned when she was 7 years old by her mother.  Exceptionally gifted in foreign languages. Orphan.

Mackenzie Yarborough, no record of her parents or where she was born. Exceptionally gifted in math and problem-solving. Orphan.

Jennifer Torres, both parents killed in an automobile accident when she was 16. Exceptionally gifted in music and art.  Orphan.

THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES: Book 1

Known as the F.I.G.s (Females of Intellectual Genius), three high-spirited 17 year olds with intelligent quotients in the genius range, accompany their teacher and mentor, Carolina Lovel, to Frascati, Italy, a few weeks before they are to graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women.  Carolina’s purpose in planning the trip is to remove her unusually gifted, creative students from the Wood Rose campus located in Raleigh, North Carolina, so they can’t cause any more problems (“expressions of creativity”) for the headmaster, faculty, and other students – which they do with regularity. Carolina also wants to visit the Villa Mondragone where the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world, was first discovered and attempt to find out how it is related to a paper written in the same script she received on her 18th birthday when she was told that she was adopted.

THE WISH RIDER: Book 2

When Carolina and the F.I.G.s return to Wood Rose, Dara decides that she wants to try to locate her birth mother when she learns that she might be living in New York City. Carolina, Mackenzie, and Jennifer accompany her and their search leads them to a secret dangerous shadow world hidden deep beneath Grand Central, constructed in what Mackinzie identifies as chevroned magic squares—N X N matrixes in which every row, column, and diagonal add up to the same number—and cloaked in the discordant B flat minor key music that only Jennifer can hear.

THE CLOCK FLOWER: Book 3

The three FIGs—Females of Intellectual Genius—graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women after returning from New York City where Dara learned why her mother abandoned her all those years ago, and they are now attending universities where they can further their special talents. This means they will be separated from each other and from Carolina, their much-loved mentor and teacher who is “one of them,” for the first time in their young lives. They vow to try living apart for one semester, in the so-called real world that doesn’t include the orphanage; but if things don’t work out, they will come up with another plan—a plan where they can be together once again. Dara is invited through Yale University to take part in an exciting archeological project in China. Jennifer, once again visualizing black and white images and the unusual sounds of another cadence that seem to be connected to Mackenzie, is engrossed in creating her next symphony at Juilliard. Mackenzie, because of her genius at problem-solving, is personally chosen by a US Senator to get involved in a mysterious, secret research project involving immortality that is being conducted in a small village in China—not too far from where Dara is involved with the archeological site. Once there, however, she finds herself facing a terrifying death from the blood-dripping teeth of an ancient evil dragon. Her best friends, the FIGs and Carolina, rely on their own unique genius and special talents to save her as she discovers the truth of her birth parents.

THE NIGHTJAR’S PROMISE: Book 4

Jennifer Torres, one of the three FIGs (Females of Intellectual Genius) who is a genius in both music and art, is the last to leave the closed rehearsal for her upcoming performance over Thanksgiving break at Carnegie Hall when she hears something in the darkened Hall. Recognizing the tilt of the woman’s head and the slight limp of the man as they hurry out an exit door, she realizes it is her parents who were supposedly killed in a terrible car accident when she was 15 years old. Devastated and feeling betrayed, she sends a text to Carolina and the other two FIGs—THURGOOD. It is the code word they all agreed to use if ever one of them got into trouble or something happened that was too difficult to handle. They would all meet back at Carolina’s bungalow at Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women to figure it out. As soon as they receive the text, because of their genius, Dara starts thinking of words in ancient Hebrew, German, and Yiddish, while Mackenzie’s visions of unique math formulae keep bringing up the date October 11, 1943. And as Carolina waits for the FIGs to return to Wood Rose, she hears warnings from Lyuba, her gypsy mother, to watch for the nightjar, the ancient name for the whip-poor-will.

In their search for “The Nightjar’s Promise” and the truth surrounding it, Carolina and the FIGs come face to face with evil that threatens to destroy not only their genius, but their very lives.

About the Author

Originally from Carrollton, Illinois, author/agent/publisher Barbara Casey attended the University of North Carolina, N.C. State University, and N.C. Wesleyan College where she received a BA degree, summa cum laude, with a double major in English and history.  In 1978 she left her position as Director of Public Relations and Vice President of Development at North Carolina Wesleyan College to write full time and develop her own manuscript evaluation and editorial service.  In 1995 she established the Barbara Casey Agency and since that time has represented authors from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan. In 2014, she became a partner with Strategic Media Books, an independent nonfiction publisher of true crime, where she oversees acquisitions, day-to-day operations, and book production.

Ms. Casey has written over a dozen award-winning books of fiction and nonfiction for both young adults and adults. The awards include the National Association of University Women Literary Award, the Sir Walter Raleigh Literary Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, the Dana Award for Outstanding Novel, the IP Best Book for Regional Fiction, among others. Two of her nonfiction books have been optioned for major films, one of which is under contract.

Her award-winning articles, short stories, and poetry for adults have appeared in both national and international publications including the North Carolina Christian Advocate Magazine, The New East Magazine, the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, the Rocky Mount (N.C.) Sunday Telegram, Dog Fancy, ByLine, The Christian Record, Skirt! Magazine, and True Story.  A thirty-minute television special which Ms. Casey wrote and coordinated was broadcast on WRAL, Channel 5, in Raleigh, North Carolina.  She also received special recognition for her editorial work on the English translations of Albanian children’s stories. Her award-winning science fiction short stories for adults are featured in The Cosmic Unicorn and CrossTime science fiction anthologies.  Ms. Casey’s essays and other works appear in The Chrysalis Reader, the international literary journal of the Swedenborg Foundation, 221 One-Minute Monologues from Literature (Smith and Kraus Publishers), and A Cup of Comfort (Adams Media Corporation).

Ms. Casey is a former director of BookFest of the Palm Beaches, Florida, where she served as guest author and panelist.  She has served as judge for the Pathfinder Literary Awards in Palm Beach and Martin Counties, Florida, and was the Florida Regional Advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators from 1991 through 2003.  In 2018 Ms. Casey received the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and Top Professional Award for her extensive experience and notable accomplishments in the field of publishing and other areas. She makes her home on the top of a mountain in northwest Georgia with three cats who adopted her, Homer, Reese and Earl Gray – Reese’s best friend.

Find the Author

http://www.barbaracaseyauthor.com
http://www.barbaracaseyagency.com

Buy the Book

Amazon Author Page with Buy Links: https://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Casey/e/B001K7S4IW

Yes, there is a giveaway

The author will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

From The Wish Rider

As soon as Jennifer went to her room, she pulled out her portfolio of blank, eight-stave paper and artist pad and climbed into bed.  The black and white image had returned during supper, this time with some color—a broad horizontal streak of brilliant red.  A splash of bright yellow. And along with the red and yellow was a beat—insistent, demanding.  Pulling out a sheet of her drawing paper, Jennifer quickly started sketching the image:  swirls of fog and smoke, the brilliant streak of red.  When she did, the notes started to reveal themselves—tentatively, pianissimo, and without expression.  Grabbing a sheet of her eight-stave paper, she rapidly began writing down the notes until there were no more.

The stone in her chest had gotten large again.  She folded her arms tight against her, trying to ease the pain. When that didn’t work, she threw back the covers and went to Dara’s room where she knew she would find her two best friends. Crawling into bed with them, she turned on her side, her foot touching another, reaching for a hand.  Lying down next to Dara and Mackenzie helped to ease the pain—a little; the stone was getting smaller again.

Soon the pain would disappear, and when it did, Jennifer would sleep.

Thank you!

Barbara Casey — we appreciate your sharing your book, The F.I.G. Mysteries, with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

A Country Of Eternal Light

Posted on by

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Darby Harn and his speculative fiction novel, A Country Of Eternal Light.

Author’s description

“One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read” – Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters

 

A rogue black hole tears apart the solar system. Mairead’s life is already in pieces.

 

The Earth has less than a year to survive.

 

Asteroids rain hell; earthquakes rattle cities; manic tides swamp coasts. Mairead intends to give herself to the erratic waves that erode her remote Irish island, the same that claimed her child. When Gavin, an American, arrives to scatter his father’s ashes, she becomes torn between wanting for life and death.

 

Despite the tides, fuel shortages, and closing borders that threaten to trap him on the island, Gavin can’t seem to scatter the ashes. He doesn’t know how to let go any more than Mairead does and they find a strange comfort in their confusion.

 

Their affair draws Mairead back to the world of the living, but the longer Gavin stays, the more it seems there might be a future for them. There is no future.

 

Life closes down around them. The world they know shreds. Life drains into an inescapable abyss. And yet Mairead fights, both the gravity of her grief and the restless, dissonant desire to find some kind of peace no matter how brief.

Guest Post

In my books I’ve always have one minor character who insists on playing a larger role in the story. So I love to ask authors if there was such a character in their novel.

Darby Harn appears to be as plagued by them as I am, and just as grateful. I loved the details in his answer!

There certainly was.

Aoife (pronounced ‘ee-fah’) came out of nowhere in A Country Of Eternal Light. She is Mairead’s best friend and a fellow nurse, conscripted at least, at the nursing home on their remote Irish island of Inishèan.

She showed up in a brief scene at the home and then kept pushing her way into the rest of the novel. In many ways she’s the comic relief. It’s a dark book. It’s a sober book that deals with very difficult emotions. I think the book wanted for someone like Aoife. Her approach to the end of the world is to simply live her life to the fullest.

She’s more than just the comic relief, though. Aoife became an integral part of the story. She has an arc, which in many ways is as tragic as anyone else’s. Aoife may be the life of the party in many respects, but she also has her share of demons. My absolute favorite scene in the book involves Aoife and Mairead getting through a bad night with some recreational aids and Aoife’s spirit really comes out there. Her inhibitions fall away, or what few she has.

I love the character who is completely unexpected. I have a similar character in my Eververse series of superhero novels, beginning with Ever The Hero. I needed someone to open the door and check in on the heroine, Kit. That turned out to be Abi, and Abi wouldn’t leave the stage. Much like Aoife she became integral and in Abi’s case, she became a pillar of this series as it’s evolved.

I’m a pantser, so most of what I write is intuitive. That has its downsides sometimes, but one of the benefits of discovering your story as you go are characters like Aoife and Abi. I simply can’t imagine the books without them.

 

Darby Harn’s Story

Darby Harn studied at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, as part of the Irish Writing Program. He is the author of the sci-fi superhero novel EVER THE HERO. His short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Shimmer, The Coffin Bell and other venues.

Find the Author

Website: darbyharn.com
Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/darbyharn
Goodreads: goodreads.com/darby_harn
Twitter: twitter.com/DarbyHarn
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/Darby-Harn-255976537767428

Buy the Book

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Country-Eternal-Light-Darby-Harn-ebook/dp/B0921W3QNF

Yes, there is a giveaway

The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

Ma shuffles into the kitchen, coat on like she’s going somewhere. She sees the radio and remembers.

“Not today,” I say, but she switches it on anyway.

Six past and now time for today’s obituaries. Katie Burke, Kilmurvey, Co. Galway, 14th October, suddenly, sadly missed. Iranian quake toll rises. Russian oil fields under water. The Pope condemns American abortion initiative for all remaining pregnancies. Scientists hold vigil over Saturn, her rings scattered like a snowdrift across a country road. All her moons buckshot. Jupiter suffers the most, swollen and bruised like an aging prizefighter, determined to die in the ring.

The government handed out these little LED tickers. Alarm clocks, like, to put on the refrigerator. Counts down the seconds until the rogue black hole intersects the orbit of earth. A year from now. That’s all we have left.

If that.

The tides will drown us first. One of the comets will hit us. A planet or a moon will, or comes close enough to yank the earth from its orbit. What difference does it make? What difference is cancer? Parkinson’s. A heart attack. A bullet. A car. A black hole. All our deaths are projectiles, hurtling through blood streams or interstellar space or dark coastal roads at targets with no proper sense of the size of the barrel they’re swimming in.

I switch the radio off. “I don’t want to hear this.”

Thank you!

Darby Harn — we appreciate your sharing your book A Country Of Eternal Light with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

If Darkness Takes Us

Posted on by

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Brenda Marie Smith and her post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel, If Darkness Takes Us.

Author’s description

In suburban Austin, Texas, Bea Crenshaw secretly prepares for apocalypse, but when a solar pulse destroys modern life, she’s left alone with four grandkids whose parents don’t return home. She must teach these kids to survive without power, cars, phones, running water, or doctors in a world fraught with increasing danger. And deciding whether or not to share food with her starving neighbors puts her morality to the test.

If Darkness Takes Us is realistic post-apocalyptic science-fiction that focuses on a family in peril, led by a no-nonsense grandmother who is at once funny, controlling, and heroic in her struggle to hold her family together with civility and heart.

The book is available now. It’s sequel, If the Light Escapes, is told in the voice of Bea’s eighteen-year-old grandson, Keno Simms, and will be released by SFK Press on August 24, 2021.

“Bea Crenshaw is one of the most unique characters in modern literature—a kick-ass Grandma who is at once tough and vulnerable, and well-prepared to shepherd her extended family through an EMP disaster, or so she thinks.” —Laura Creedle, Award-winning Author of The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

“There is real, identifiable humanity, subtle and sweet and sad, and events utterly shattering in their intensity.”  —Pinckney Benedict, Author of Dogs of God, Miracle Boy, and more

About the Author

Brenda Marie Smith

Brenda Marie Smith lived off the grid for many years in a farming collective where her sons were delivered by midwives. She’s been a community activist, managed student housing co-ops, produced concerts to raise money for causes, done massive quantities of bookkeeping, and raised a small herd of teenage boys.

Brenda is attracted to stories where everyday characters transcend their own limitations to find their inner heroism. She and her husband reside in a grid-connected, solar-powered home in South Austin, Texas. They have more grown kids and grandkids than they can count.

Her first novel, Something Radiates, is a paranormal romantic thriller; If Darkness Takes Us and its sequel, If the Light Escapes, are post-apocalyptic science fiction.

When Jack Jeffers Refused to Stay in the Background

I like to ask authors if they have a minor character who insisted on playing a larger role in the story. I guess it is because I have this problem often. Brenda Marie Smith surprised me with her funny yet touching response. I loved it! Read on and enjoy. 

In my novel, If Darkness Takes Us, a solar electromagnetic pulse destroys the U.S. grid while 70-year-old Bea Crenshaw is keeping her four grandchildren alone, and she is forced to teach the kids to survive without electricity, cars, phones, or running water. Initially, I’d planned for Jack Jeffers, a man of similar age, to be the helpful neighbor who would show up once in a while with food for the kids, or would give them advice on their garden or where to find water.

But Jack was such a good, solid human being that he filled a serious need of Bea’s to have an adult friend and confidante during the apocalypse. Her husband and grown kids—the parents of her grandchildren—have not returned home since the solar pulse. She is grieving and lonely, and she spends her days and nights supervising children. Jack, being a perceptive guy, notices this and steps up to befriend Bea and comfort her, thus making himself invaluable to the story, that sneaky guy.

Then he pretty well insisted that he and Bea have a romantic history, and that I had better put that in the story if I wanted to give it depth. And the old man was right. Bea’s husband is missing, and she’s been calling him Hank the Crank in her mind for years—he infantilizes her, yells at her, and can often be downright mean. Jack would never treat anyone that way, especially Bea, whom he admires and respects so much.

Next thing I know, I have an adulterous romance between two elderly people on my hands, a romance that Bea has to keep secret from her grandchildren. That sly old dog, Jack Jeffers, came along being a genuinely nice guy, and Bea could not resist him. He made me give her what she wanted, because who am I, after all, to deny her?

As the author, I may think I’m in charge, but characters really do take on lives of their own. I had heard this but couldn’t imagine it until it happened to me. If you listen to your characters, they will not let you portray them as anything other than who they believe themselves to be. If you try to force them, they will rebel, or they will fall flat or feel gratingly wrong on the page. It was nice of Jack Jeffers to be gentle with me in his insistence on having a more important role. I’m glad that I ultimately listened to him. I’m sure I have a better novel as a result.

I modeled Jack Jeffers after my own husband Doug, by the way. Even though Bea is much like me, Doug wants everyone to know that he is nothing like Bea’s husband, Hank the Crank.

Thanks so much for hosting me and my book on your blog.

Find the Author

Website: https://brendamariesmith.com/
Twitter: @bsmithnovelist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrendaMarieSmithAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brenda_marie_smith/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJlLSnORIyoaygvZ1j49ZKw
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52206957-if-darkness-takes-us

Buy the Book

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Takes-Brenda-Marie-Smith-ebook/dp/B07WK9BQHN/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/if-darkness-takes-us-brenda-marie-smith/1133374442?ean=9781970137835
BookPeople Austin: https://www.bookpeople.com/book/9781970137835

Yes, there is a giveaway

The author will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

Through the upstairs window, we watched a fire burning yellow along the western horizon. It didn’t look like a huge conflagration, but this drought-ridden place was a tinderbox.

“Um, kids. That’s more than a fire over there. There’s a yellow glow behind it, all the way across…”

Keno and Tasha crowded up next to me at the window, making anxious sounds in their throats. We ran to the front window and saw the same glow to the north…

“What is that?” I asked, though my breath had left me. “It’s how I always imagined the northern lights would look…”

… “It could be a glow from a geomagnetic storm,” Keno said…

I whirled around to face him. “What do you mean?”

“Back in the 1800s, the sun took out all the telegraph lines once… The sky all over the planet lit up with colors, like the strongest Northern Lights ever seen, except it was in Australia, too… This doesn’t seem as strong as that. There aren’t bright colors all over the sky, right?”

“Good… Good,” I said, releasing a breath. I hugged Tasha hard. “Don’t worry.” I was trying to be comforting, though I needed comfort myself. I pulled a chair in front of the big front window and sat down to study the yellow glow that rose and fell as though it was breathing. The kids stood watching with me, all of us seeming to breathe in time with the undulations of the glowing pulses of light.

Thank you!

Brenda Marie Smith — we appreciate your sharing your book If Darkness Takes Us with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.