Tag Archives: kindred spirits

A Country Of Eternal Light

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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

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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.

The Wall

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Today it is my pleasure to welcome author David Pereda and his thriller novel, The Wall.

Author’s description

THOMAS BERTRAM is an American living in San Salvador with his fiancée CECILIA. They own a popular neighborhood restaurant and plan to wed soon. Thomas’s dream is to obtain a resident visa for Cecilia and return to the United States.

 

DOMINGO JIMENEZ and his wife BLANCA own a small repair shop across the street. Domingo’s dream is to move to America as well so that his seven-year-old daughter NANCY can grow up speaking English and having a good education and a better life than he and Blanca had.

 

When armed gang members invade their neighborhood to demand “protection” money and threaten them with death if they don’t pay, Thomas and Domingo’s dreams for the future take on a new perspective. They decide to flee the country with their families through Guatemala and Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.

 

But their journey is more challenging than expected, and they face a myriad of difficulties and must overcome multiple obstacles that put not only their dreams but also their lives at risk.

About the Author

David Pereda is the award-winning author of eleven thrillers and mainstream novels. His books have won the Lighthouse Book Awards twice, the Royal Palm Awards, the National Indie Excellence Awards, and the Readers Favorite Awards twice. He has traveled to more than thirty countries around the world and speaks four languages.

Before devoting his time solely to writing and teaching, Pereda had a successful international consulting career with global giant Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked with the governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, and Qatar, among others.

A member of MENSA, Pereda earned his MBA from Pepperdine University in California. He earned BA degrees in English literature and mathematics at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He loves sports and has won many prizes competing in track and show-jumping equestrian events.

Pereda lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he teaches mathematics and English at the Asheville-Buncombe Community College.

Find the Author

Visit him online at: http://www.davidpereda.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Pereda-Writer/345490998614
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidPeredaAVL
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/davidmpereda
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/David-Pereda/e/B002BML17Q%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Buy the Book

Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Wall-David-Pereda-ebook/dp/B095137M8S

Yes, there is a giveaway

The author will be awarding a $20 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

The two young men who entered the restaurant in San Salvador were slender and about eighteen, maybe younger, with scraggly adolescent beards and fashionable jeans full of holes.

It was Monday morning, and Thomas Bertram was preparing the dining area for the lunch service. After tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marines, Thomas’s entire body reacted physically to trouble when he saw it—and this was trouble. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and he felt a swarm of tiny butterflies inside his stomach.

Gang members?

Thomas smoothed out the wrinkles on the clear-plastic tablecloth of the last of the six Formica-topped tables and rearranged the four matching chairs. As he straightened to his full height, he checked the time on the wall clock: 11:25.

“We’re not open yet,” he said in Spanish. “We open at noon.”

The young men didn’t answer. They wore tight jackets zipped up to the chest, one olive and the other red.

Tight jackets in summer in El Salvador?

Thomas realized how short and skinny they were when Olive Jacket strolled toward the counter near him—he barely reached Thomas’s shoulder. Red Jacket stayed by the door, staring at Thomas.

“Man, you’re tall,” Olive Jacket said as he slid past Thomas.

He had a squeaky voice, like a door needing oil. Thomas watched his receding back, wondering what the young men wanted, even though he had a suspicion—which was confirmed when he noticed the tattoo on Olive Jacket’s neck sticking out from under his jacket. He could only see a portion of it, but he knew what the letters meant: MS-13.

Definitely gang members.

Thank you!

David Pereda — we appreciate your sharing your book The Wall with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.