How far would you go to stay alive? Before you judge, read her story in Eden.

Eden

by
Louise Wise

Snippet from Chapter Three

There was no more shouting. All was quiet and peaceful. Jenny opened her eyes, and as awareness caught up, she flipped to her side and looked to the top. With dread, she rose and scrambled to the summit. It felt like a mountain.

Expecting to find Bodie and Matt dead, their bodies ripped in a frenzy under the clawed hands of the alien, she was relieved to see the men and the buggies were gone.

A glint of sunlight reflecting on something in the sky caught her eye. The buggies, now small space shuttles, were journeying back to Taurus as if being hauled back up by an invisible string.

Jenny climbed into her buggy. With shaking hands, she pressed the controls; nothing happened. She spoke into the transmitter but remembered that Kate was malfunctioning.

Her buggy was utterly immobilised.

‘Shit,’ she said or tried to say. Instead, her voice was nothing but a rasp. It felt sore, but ignoring it, she pressed more buttons on the screen display. She pumped the accelerator, but nothing happened. She couldn’t even close the buggy; instead, it remained open-topped.

She climbed back out, her hands on her head as panic held her in its grip. She looked at the sky and saw a glint of light reflecting off one of the buggies.

It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK. Breathe, Jenny, breathe.

She touched her throat. It was so sore, and she suspected she had alien finger marks around her throat. But she had a bigger problem in the shape of a huge alien creature with clawed, humanlike hands. She glanced around her. There was no sign of it. Surely it would’ve returned to ensure she was dead after chasing off the men.

Unless it’d gained access to one of the buggies and was heading towards Taurus.

The thought was unwelcome and quickly dismissed. Kate was programmed to destroy an intruder immediately.

But she wasn’t working.

She closed her eyes briefly. She couldn’t think that way. The alien’s body would be cast out into space when it tried to gain entry.

She climbed back inside the buggy. She’d be OK. Bodie or Matt would realise she’d been left behind. One of them would override Kate to get her vehicle operational. She’d wait.

She looked upward at the now empty blue sky.

Won’t be long now, she thought.

Around her, all she could hear was the pounding of her heart. It was a lonely sound. She sat for a long time with her head tilted back, looking up at the sky’s vastness and emptiness.

But did you know there was a book two? 
Check out Hunted!

 

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WWBB loves a 'how-to' guest post from authors, and here Catherine Fearns discusses sequel writing... and also her amazing new book! You've gotta see this one (and win a prize!!!!)! #crime #mystery #authorgiveaway @metalmamawrites @rararesources

How To… Write A Sequel

BY

Catherine Fearns

When I was writing my first novel, Reprobation, I envisaged it as a self-contained entity. I didn’t think I’d even get a publishing deal, never mind the opportunity to write more books! But at some point, I began to imagine the characters’ journeys continuing past the end of the story. I realised that the adventure was just beginning, and I was not ready to let go of the world I had created. Consuming Fire came knocking on the door before I’d even finished writing Reprobation.

Writing a sequel is a wonderful opportunity, but it comes with a whole new set of constraints, dilemmas and technical challenges that the author doesn’t have to face with a stand-alone. This is what I have learned so far about that tricky second book:

Crime fiction is made for sequels

Crime fiction lends itself to sequels and series more than most other literary genres. In fact, I can’t even think of that many stand-alone detective thrillers or police procedurals. Detectives work case by case; an investigation follows a process, a formula, which can be repeated ad infinitum. And since the character of the detective tends to take second place to that of the plot, there’s not enough scope within one book to develop him or her fully.

…. but do it for the right reasons

Sequels are notoriously weaker than their predecessors. Think about all the disappointing Hollywood movie franchises. Don’t do it to cash in (ha, not much chance of that for an indie author!), or because you think it will be easy to churn something similar out (it won’t, it will be harder). Do it because you have a story that needs to be told.

Identify your USP, and work it

What was special about your last book? Reprobation was a crime thriller with a slight supernatural twist. the reader can take the police’s practical explanation for the crimes, or he/she can wonder whether there might have been other forces at work. I wanted to develop this idea of the unknowable, of the hidden world beyond our own, and I wanted to watch DI Darren Swift’s gradual journey towards an acceptance of the occult.

…. but change things up too

At the same time, nobody needs to read two books in a row about windswept Merseyside beaches, abandoned churches and grumpy nuns. I certainly didn’t want to write Reprobation again! Consuming Fire picks up Reprobation’s characters and themes but has a complete change of mood; from a cold gothic winter to a fiery Scouse summer. It also brings in a brand new villain and a new literary technique.

It's not just your book anymore

It’s heart-warming and hard to believe, but I actually have some loyal readers now, who are looking forward to my next book! And they will certainly have expectations. I’m terrified of disappointing them, and I do need to keep them in mind and understand what it is they liked about Reprobation.

…but you have to follow your own path

People love the characters of Helen and Mikko. I do too! But they had a lot of time to shine in Reprobation, and writing a Helen-and-Mikko follow-up love story is not what I’m about. They need a rest. It’s too easy otherwise. Darren Swift is my detective, and he is on a character arc. He needs times and pages to develop, for the reader to fall in love with him. Helen features prominently in Consuming Fire too, as she and Darren begin to form an unusual investigative team. But don’t worry, Mikko will make a big comeback in the third book!

You know what you’re doing. Or do you? Keep that beginner’s mind.

You’re a published author now, so that means you’re an expert, right? You don’t need any more help or advice, right? Wrong! You know nothing, Jon Snow. Especially about writing sequels. Keep learning, always. Keep asking questions, worship your beta readers, your editors, your experts. And check your facts. Re-read the first book over and over, because sequels risk being riddled with continuity errors, and readers SPOT these things.

... but don’t be afraid to experiment

People bought and liked your first book, so you must be doing something right. Debut authors can be understandably tentative with their style and plot, so now that you’ve established yourself, it’s time to spread your wings a little. Consuming Fire uses the technique of a ‘book within a book’ – a seventeenth century found text which I had enormous fun writing and interspersing with the main narrative. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that first time round. And I hope people love it.

The book needs to work as a standalone too

Marketing is easier now; you’ve got a bigger social media following than you had before; you might even have an agent or publisher where you didn’t first time round. So your second book will reach a wider audience. But the problem is – some of them didn’t read your first book. They won’t know what the hell is going on! You need to view your sequel as a new story within the scope of a larger story. You need to re-introduce some facts and character traits, to situate the new reader and jog the existing reader’s memory.

...but don’t put in spoilers

The huge challenge is to make the sequel work as a standalone without being tedious or clumsy, and crucially, without putting in spoilers. Some people might read your new book and think, ‘wow, this is great, I’ll go back and read the first one!’ But not if you tell them whodunnit!

So that’s what I’ve learned about sequels. I’m currently writing book three, trying to catch up with my characters who have now taken on lives of their own. I can’t keep up with them…

INTRODUCING…

Consuming Fire

What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen…

Liverpool is in the grip of an intense heatwave, and strange things are happening.

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A woman dies in an apparent case of Spontaneous Human Combustion; a truck explodes on the dock road; the charred corpses of pets litter the city; forest fires ravage the pinewoods…and there are birds everywhere, silent flocks drawing in ominously.

Detective Inspector Darren Swift thinks there are connections, and his investigation delves into the worlds of football, nightclubs and organised crime. But is he imagining things?

Dr. Helen Hope doesn’t think so. And she believes the key lies in a mysterious seventeenth-century occult book which has gone missing from Liverpool Library.

In the blistering sequel to Reprobation, DI Swift is forced to confront some inconvenient ghosts from his past, as a terrifying shadow lies over his city’s reality…

 

Catherine Fearns is from Liverpool, UK. In previous incarnations, she was a financial analyst, a cocktail pianist and a breastfeeding counsellor, but nowadays she likes to write. Her first novel, Reprobation, was published by Crooked Cat Books in October 2018 and quickly became an Amazon bestseller in several categories. The follow-up, Consuming Fire, is currently on pre-order and will be available in early 2019.

Catherine writes for music website Pure Grain Audio, and her music journalism has also appeared in Broken Amp and Noisey. Her short fiction and non-fiction pieces have been published in Here Comes Everyone, Toasted Cheese, Offshoots & Metal Music Studies. She holds a degree in History from Oxford University, a Masters from the London School of Economics, and is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association.

When Catherine is not writing, she plays guitar in a heavy metal band, mainly to annoy her four children.

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Giveaway to Win a signed copy of Consuming Fire, Consuming Fire stationery, and a cuddly peacock! (Open Internationally)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will be passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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🎄This is an excellent stocking filler for any little boy or girl this Christmas! Charlie Rabbit Discovers Christmas Day (psst, and it’s one of many from the Charlie Rabbit series!). #kidlit

Charlie Rabbit Discovers Christmas Day is the first in the series of Charlie Rabbit's Adventures by Ian Davies.

A delightful Christmas story for the little people in your life.

Charlie Rabbit lived in a little burrow at the base of a tree in the New Forest in Hampshire, England. 

He was surrounded by wonderful scenery with lush fields, buttercups and tall trees. And the birds, oh the birds, singing so delightfully in the trees every single day.

Life was so good until…

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Also available separately:

Charlie Rabbit and The "Haunted House"
Charlie Rabbit Goes Fishing
Charlie Rabbit - "The Easter Bunny"
Charlie Rabbit Goes Pony Riding.
Charlie Rabbit Goes to the Seaside.
Charlie Rabbit - Train to Funtown Park.
Charlie Rabbit Goes to the Zoo.

When your world shatters, how do you put it back together? @rararesources @JuneAConverse #mentalhealth #coverreaveal

Decide to Hope

An unimaginable trauma. A future that seems impossible.

When your world shatters, how do you put it back together?

For 950 days, Kathleen Conners has struggled with that choice. Behind a scarf and sunglasses, she hides from the world, from herself, from The Event, from any future with anyone.

After receiving a box of letters from his deceased mother, Matt Nelson is shoved from his predictable, controlled life to a secluded beach in North Carolina. While trying to understand his mother's intent, he discovers Kathleen.

Matt must choose whether to follow the path his mother orchestrated or rescue the woman who has captured his heart. When the only person Kathleen blames more than herself reappears, can Matt be the strength Kathleen needs to create a new life, or will he be forced to walk away if she decides the climb is too great?

Cover Reveal

…drum roll...

Pre-order your copy!

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~~~

Author, June Converse, happily resides in Sandy Springs, Georgia, with her husband, Dave, and their dog, Sodapop.  They have two wonderful adult children and two grandchildren.  She is an enthusiastic exerciser and an accomplished cook.  She and her husband enjoy hiking with Sodapop, traveling, scuba diving, trying new restaurants, concerts, and whatever other adventures they can find.  Reading and a constant desire to learn keeps her busy too. 

A trauma survivor who struggles with mental illness, June is continuously reaching for hope like the characters in her books.  She openly discusses her personal struggles on her blog, JuneConverse.com

Decide to Hope is her first novel and relies a great deal on her own experience with trauma, choices, recovery and hope.  If you’d like to discuss trauma, coping and recovery, contact her at JuneConverse.com or DecideToHope.com

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How do authors make their characters real? Keith Anthony tells us how. @rararesources @KeithAnthonyWS #tearjerkers #fiction #action and #adventure #win

How to make your characters believable

by

Keith Anthony

Fergus from "Times and Places"

I knew the basics of Fergus before I put pen to paper: a late middle aged man who has spent a decade soul searching, since the death of his 24 year old daughter.  He has grown anxious, feeling detached from the rest of the world, but empathising strongly with those who are vulnerable or a little different.  He has a deep relationship with Sylvie, his wife, borne of a long marriage and shared tragedy, even if there are few signs of surviving passion.  He is a man feeling a spiritual draw, but one marked by quiet searching rather than preachy certainties.  He is encouraged by a seemingly miraculous moment, but his anxieties are not supernaturally resolved and, during a three week cruise, they come to a terrible head.  

A bit like a river flowing from source to sea, tributaries of further personality joined that basic character as I wrote, and I hope Fergus grew into a fully drawn protagonist.  I made him easily irritated, for example by loud phone conversations, disingenuous cruise line communications and a trio of boorish men hogging the spa bath.  But I gave him a touching relationship with his twelve year old daughter, moved by her excitement when he takes her away, but anxiously asking himself “Would she still be pleased to spend time with her father when she became a teenager?”  He feels most comfortable with Sylvie and, dancing with her on the ship, he looks back on painful discos from his youth: “there how you danced mattered, here it didn’t.  He pictured his struggling youthful self without envy, he was happy to be when and where he was, in this time and place, dancing with his wife”. 

When adding new sides to his personality, they had to complement what had already been written... and yet a complexity in creating lifelike characters is that we are rarely consistent, but adapt with different people and dependent on mood: so Fergus is confident in a flashback when meeting his daughter’s boyfriend, but shy when avoiding an opportunity to meet the cruise ship Captain; he can appear somewhat child-like with his wife, but is strongly protective of the vulnerable.  He may be intolerant, but often shows deep compassion.

We are only given glimpses of what Fergus once did for a living – rushed sandwiches for lunch over a computer keyboard, occasional home-working, colleagues who were stuck in ruts – this could be any office job, but, whatever it was, one suspects he worked to live rather than the other way round.

What makes Fergus tick are the quiet things.  That soul-mate relationship with his wife, to whose calmness “he sometimes clung as if it were indeed a lifebelt and he lost at sea”.  The peace and beauty of their home: “outward journeys were never natural to them, as if travelling against an invisible current or an atavistic instinct.  Homewards invariably felt the right direction”.  The numinous natural world and a bumbling faith which leaves him feeling out of his spiritual depths on retreat, praying hard that “he wouldn’t be found out, that nobody would ask him what he did, that he wouldn’t be chased out of the retreat centre as the fraud that he felt himself to be”. 

These quiet tools – along with a mindfulness App - are what Fergus uses to manage his anxieties and, towards the end of the book, it is clear he finally achieves a breakthrough, though still not a full cure as, when an expected visitor is late, “an old foe revisited Fergus, suggesting various misfortunes that might have befallen her”.    

After his earlier apparent miracle he reflected how:

“He would continue to grieve for his daughter and he accepted that there would be moments when this would feel almost unbearable.  He was under no illusion that he was now a saint, rather (judging himself a little harshly) that he would still have his grumpy, anxious, lazy, antisocial personality...”   

But he was unfair on himself, because “Times and Places” shows Fergus, despite his occasional ineptness, to have great depths.  I sought, though, to make him a believable mixture of good and bad, but the former being his true nature, the latter the weaknesses he struggles against.  Like many of us, perhaps he could go a bit easier on himself and just maybe - while it doesn’t magic away all his problems - that breakthrough towards the end of the story means he finally does.

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Introducing…

Times and Places

Ten years after his daughter Justine's death, an anxious Fergus embarks on a cruise with his wife.  On board, he meets a myriad of characters and is entranced by some, irritated by others and disgusted by one.  These turbulent feelings, combined with a sequence of bizarre events, only lead to his increased anxiety.

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In a series of flashbacks, Justine enjoys an ultimately short romance, a woman concludes she killed her and an investigating police officer is drawn into her idyllic world.  Fergus, haunted by poignant memories, withdraws in search of answers.

Back on the cruise, Fergus reaches breaking point, fearing he has done something terrible.  By the time the ship returns, his world has changed forever.

"Times and Places" spans Atlantic islands, the Chiltern countryside, Cornish coasts and rural Slovenia, all of which provide spectacular backdrops to a humorous and moving tale of quiet spirituality. 

~

Keith Anthony was born and brought up in the Chilterns, to where he returned after studying French at university in Aberystwyth and a subsequent spell living in west London.  He has a love of nature, both in his native Buckinghamshire countryside, but also in Cornwall and wherever there is a wild sea. 

Keith has been lucky enough to spend time living in France, Spain, Belgium, Serbia and Croatia, as well as being a regular visitor to Germany, and languages were the only thing he was ever half good at in school.  Since graduating he has worked in government departments, but between 2005 and 2008 he was seconded to the European Commission in Brussels and, thanks to a friend from Ljubljana he met there, has travelled regularly to Slovenia, getting to know that country well. 

Keith's other great love is music and he plays classical and finger picking blues guitar, though with persistently limited success.  He has always enjoyed writing, including attempts at children's fiction, and in 2016 he began work on his first full book with “Times and Places" the end result: an accessible, observational story, mixing quiet spirituality with humour, pathos and gothic horror, and setting it against a rich backdrop of the natural world.

Prizes!!!!!

Giveaway – Win 3 x Signed copies of Times and Places (Open Internationally)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Advice for writers: How to fill that blank page! Sally Jenkins offers excellent advice! @rararesources @sallyjenkinsuk #psychological #thrillers #writingtip #writerslife #mustread #fiction

                                         

Conquer Writer’s Angst 

by

Sally Jenkins

     

Being a writer is a scary business. It starts with a blank page and the fear of failing to fill it. It finishes with publication or submission for critique and the accompanying terror that readers will hate what we have written. 

Apart from popping pills and downing alcohol, how can we get control of this constant literary angst? 

Tips for Blank Page Trauma 

·       Write quickly. Pretend every month is November and NaNoWriMo.

·       Write the scene that’s buzzing in your head. Scenes don’t have to be written in the order they appear in the book.

·       Don’t read any of it back until you’ve reached the end of the story.

·       Banish that self-confidence seeping gremlin who whispers in your ear about how rubbish the writing is. The gremlin knows nothing!

·       Have an external deadline to aim for. Competitions are good for this – you don’t want to miss the closing date and the potential for prize money!

·       Accept that it’s OK to hate your first draft. It’s easier to improve a bad first draft than write perfect prose from the start.

·       Write because you love that afterglow feeling of ‘having written’. It’s the same high as ‘having exercised’. 

Tips for Accepting Criticism 

·       Understand that the adverse comments apply to one particular manuscript or book only. They are not personal or necessarily applicable to all your work.

·       You are always in control. Analyse the criticism and then decide whether or not to act on it. 

·       Taking criticism on board and giving it serious consideration shows maturity as a writer.

·       The only way to avoid criticism completely is to never show anyone your work. If you do that, what was the point in writing it? 

The Case Study 

My second psychological thriller, The Promise, was published on 28th January 2018. I banished the blank page blues by aiming to finish the novel by the closing date of a competition with a prize of publication and £1000. I kept myself buoyant mentally by imagining how I would feel when the novel was published and the prize money mine.  

I entered but didn’t win the competition. However I did now have the complete manuscript of a novel – a prize in itself! 

The next step was obtaining feedback on the novel. I sent The Promise for a critique. Two big ‘failures’ in the novel were highlighted: 

·       A romantic subplot didn’t work because there was no chemistry between the two characters supposed to be in love. The reader said, “You are much better at conjuring up a scene of horror. The psychological thriller is your genre.”

·       The structure could be improved. An inciting moment in the novel takes place thirty years ago in prison. I’d written the novel chronologically from this moment. The reader suggested the novel would be better starting in the present day with flashbacks to the past.

·       This criticism hurt and taking it on board would mean a major rewrite. But if I didn’t take action the money spent on the critique and all the time spent writing the novel would be wasted.  

I rewrote the novel. Then I used a beta reader. She came back to me with some minor changes, for example, too many names beginning with the same letter. In her summing up she described The Promise as ‘a fast- paced psychological thriller with stark, dark elements at play. The characters struggle with the central dilemma.’ 

Armed with confidence from my beta reader’s comments, I directly approached The Book Guild, the publisher involved in the competition that I hadn’t won. After a wait of several weeks they offered me a publishing deal.  

I did a happy dance and some alcohol was downed (!) but this time in literary celebration rather than to fight fear. Someday soon I hope to raise a glass to you, your writing success and banishment of writer’s angst!       

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Introducing...

The Promise

A man has been stabbed. A woman is bloodstained. The nightmares from her teenage years have begun again for Olivia Field – just as she is preparing to marry.

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Ex-convict, Tina is terminally ill. Before she dies, the care of her younger, psychologically unwell brother, Wayne must be ensured. So Tina calls in a promise made to her thirty years ago in a prison cell. A promise that was written down and placed with crucial evidence illustrating a miscarriage of justice in a murder case.

Tina believes Olivia is perfectly placed to provide the care Wayne needs, but to do so, Olivia must be forced to cancel her own wedding and wreck the lives of those close to her. Tina’s terrible blackmail demands put Olivia’s entire future and, ultimately, her freedom under threat.

The Promise is a fast-paced psychological thriller told from several third person viewpoints. The novel explores the lengths to which people are prepared go in order to protect those they love and the impossibility of ever fully escaping our past actions.

~

Sally Jenkins lives in the West Midlands. She is a member of a Speakers’ Club, a volunteer library reading group coordinator and a church bell ringer.

Sally's first psychological thriller, Bedsit Three won the Ian Govan Award.