Tuesday, April 30, 2019

PROMO Blitz: Master Your Moods by @SaskatoonND #excerpt #nonfiction #promo #mindbody #health


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Mind/Body - Health
Date Published: January 2019


ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A HAPPIER BRAIN?

We know we should exercise regularly, get enough sleep and eat well to increase our quality of life and performance. So why is it so hard to do?

According to brain health enthusiast Jacqui Fleury, ND, it’s because we take on too many big changes all at once and get overwhelmed! Plus, if you are already anxious, depressed or have a foggy brain, making positive changes can be even more of a struggle!

Master Your Moods is a proven, practical, easy-to-read guide that will help you understand what contributes to a happier brain and show you how to make a few simple changes that will make a big difference in your moods, your energy and your outlook on life. You can thrive. This guide will show you how!



Excerpt

What you eat and how you move your body affects the way your brain works. Conversely, the thoughts you think can have a dramatic effect on the way you eat and the foods you choose and, in turn, can affect how (and if!) you move your body. But knowing this isn’t enough. Many of us know that we need to eat well, exercise and get adequate rest; yet we struggle most with these three things. The number one reason diets fail and we stop going to the gym is because we can’t sustain the regimen. Deciding on a few small changes, committing to these changes 100% of the time, and staying consistent over a sustained period of time will ultimately bring you more longterm results than any fad diet or extreme eating or exercise plan. In this book, I will lead you through creating a customized 3-step plan that will help you make small changes toward better health and wellness. The ultimate purpose of this book is to adopt a few key strategies as part of your routine. These strategies will simplify your habits around brain health while providing the best outcome for you, both mentally and physically. I firmly believe in keeping this simple for you, as I know simplicity is the key to long-term success! I’ve seen this to be true over and over. As such, this book is meant to be user-friendly. I intentionally chose the length and size of this book to help you succeed in reading it front to back quickly and to avoid overwhelming you with too much information. I will give you just enough information to inform and educate you on how your mind and body are connected and show you the way to upgrade both without committing an unnecessary amount of time and resources to the process.


About the Author

Dr. Jacqui Fleury, ND, is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, and naturopathic doctor with a passion for helping people survive and thrive as top performers. Her consulting is tailored to guide individuals, teams, small businesses and large corporations to build emotional and physical resilience with the vision of fostering higher levels of engagement, creativity, well-being, and performance. Having been in private practice since 1998, Dr. Fleury has successfully treated many patients for the acute and chronic effects of stress. Her treatment style is to provide clients with a framework and customized recommendations on how to make small, sustainable and highly effective upgrades to their physical and mental health that results in better sleep, moods, digestion, hormone balance and overall happier brains.

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Book Blitz & Giveaway: The Lonely Hearts Bar by Konni Granma #fiction #newadult #giveaway #excerpt


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Literary Fiction, New Adult
Date Published: August 14, 2007
Publisher: Editus Publishing

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With high hopes of conquering Hollywood, the novel’s main character goes to Los Angeles to study directing and screenwriting. On the way, she ends up at a roadside bar that uncannily links the destinies of the main characters, who had given up everything to follow their dreams. What’s in store for the young rebels in Los Angeles? Does your dream have another side, one that’s just as enigmatic and invisible as the far side of the Moon?



Excerpt

“To be honest, I have no idea what cinema is and why it’s so magnetic...  Also, I don’t know what it’s like to be called a ‘great’ director. I only just jumped out of the plane and am waiting for my parachute to open.  In the meantime, I’m just looking at an illusion of how my life should be.  Maybe I’ll see the light as soon as I hear the clapperboard and ‘Action!’ But it’ll all be meaningless if people aren’t inspired... My name is Connie. I came from New York on a long journey in my old car. Maybe, on the other side of the world, a little girl is going to bed who, just like I used to, dreams of becoming a filmmaker. And every time, closing her eyes, she holds a camera in her hands and mentally goes over her movie’s screenplay… why am I a director? I think I’ll be able to answer that when I become one. Now I’m just one more student who is just dreaming of becoming a filmmaker and is still falling asleep, just like that little girl.  The main thing is to not lose faith...”

About the Author

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From the age of 11 Konni has been writing books. When she came of age she moved from a small abandoned town to Moscow where she exchanged the dream of “becoming a director” for the profession “doctor.” Now at the ripe old age of 21 years old, Konni is enjoying the acclaim of The Lonely Hearts Bar and working on her next novel.



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Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Release Blitz & Giveaway: Soul Remains by Sam Hooker @SamHooker #fantasy #humor #giveaway #excerpt


Fantasy (Humorous)
Date Published: 23 April 2019
Publisher: Black Spot Books

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It’s Dark in the Old Country.

Where do goblins come from? Why do they only turn up in the Old Country, and why do they like swearing so much? In the second book of Terribly Serious Darkness, Sloot Peril—a “hero” who’s staunchly averse to heroics—goes searching for answers. Much to his chagrin, he finds them.

Everything changed after the Fall of Salzstadt, but try telling that to the people of the city, whose capacity for denial is unmatched. They have yet to acknowledge that Vlad the Invader cut a bloody swath through their city, that the dead are walking the streets, or that the Domnitor—long may he reign—has fled to wherever despots go on very long vacations while goblin infestations take care of themselves.

The worst of villains holds all of the power, unspeakable dark forces are on the rise, and everyone wants to kidnap the Domnitor—long may he reign—for their own nefarious ends. If all of that weren’t bad enough, Sloot’s got the fate of his own soul to worry about.

Can his girlfriend help him save the Old Country from annihilation? Is Myrtle really his girlfriend? If all goes well for Sloot—which it never does—he might just sort it all out before the Dark swallows them all up.

Excerpt

Life After Afterlife

There is a common misconception among the living that death is the end of it. Go vigorously onto the business end of a sword, wear the colors of a west-end boulderchuck team into an east-end pub, or simply hang around long enough for your organs to start switching off, and that’s the end of the line.
On the contrary, there is such a thing as death for the dead. No one is really sure how long it takes, but eventually, each and every ghost withers away and ceases to be.
“So that’s it then,” said Sloot after an indeterminate amount of time. “I’ll be a ghost until I’m nothing.”
“Well, not nothing,” said Hans. “Not necessarily.”
“Something else, then?”
“Well, there’s considerable debate on the topic. Especially among the philosophers.”
As if things weren’t already bad enough, thought Sloot. He knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time before—
“Did someone say philosophy?” Arthur appeared in the doorway, his moustaches standing on end.
Oh, no, thought Sloot. “Please, nobody say any—”
“Hans was just telling us that no one knows whether ghosts are really gone after we fade away.”
Arthur’s eyes were wild, like a lion who hadn’t eaten in a week. Geralt must have resembled a porterhouse.
“Portnoy the Sacrilegious once chained himself to the doors of the cathedral to prove the impossibility of life after death! He was wrong, obviously, but his arguments are sound if applied to life after death after death.”
“Well said, Arthur,” Sloot blurted. “I think that’s all that anyone can—”
“Malarky,” said Hans. “You’re saying there’s nothing beyond the Hereafter, based on a theory that there is no Hereafter?”
“I’ve still got a few more questions—” Sloot began.
“It’s not that simple!” Arthur was pacing around the room and gesticulating wildly. Myrtle had always refused to indulge him in that while he had her possessed. “It makes sense in light of his Treatise on Bedtime Disobedience—which he wrote when he was eight—but only if you understand the finer points of Mauler’s Unticking Clock. I can solve this in … seventeen moves!”
“I’m sure you can,” said Sloot, “but I really need to ask Hans about—”
“I studied Mauler in college,” said Geralt. “The Unticking Clock is a metaphor for the struggle between hunger and apathy. I hardly think it applies—”
“That’s where you’re wrong!”
Sloot wandered off. He could never stomach philosophy for this very reason. Even if you didn’t know anything about Nutter’s Hungry Clock or whatever, you could join in the conversation with your angriest voice. Philosophy, as far as Sloot could tell, was the art of determining who could have the loudest opinion while not doing anything useful.


About the Author


Sam Hooker writes darkly humorous fantasy. He is an entirely serious person, regardless of what you may have heard. Originally from Texas, he now resides in southern California with his wife, son, and dog.



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Giveaway

3 signed copies of Peril in the Old Country, the first book in the series. 



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Book Blitz: From Mind to Body: You Can Do It by Reza Zarmehr @shapeurphysique #promo #selfhelp #nonfiction


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Self-help ( particularly in Health & Fitness)
Date Published: Feb/2019

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You have goals, and you have plans to reach them.You may have a step-by-step process in place for how youre going to get there, maybe even complete with milestones and a timeline. But have you considered the most important thing?

Have you conditioned your mind for success?

Mind conditioning goes beyond having a positive mindset. It means “working out” your mind and elevating it to better habits of thinking, which in turn affects everything you do, leading you closer and closer to what’s most important to you. There are many factors that lead to a healthy and high-quality lifestyle; one of the most important of those factors is how you program your mind, and in turn, your body.

So how do you work out your mind? From Mind to Body will show you everything you need to know to start conditioning yourself for success!


About the Author

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Reza Zarmehr is a 25-year weightlifting veteran and former world-class bodybuilder. He knows exactly what it means to “work with what you don’t have.” With determination at a young age, he trained with discipline and grew up to build his career in his home country of Iran, which he continued to expand when he came to Canada. Despite the personal and professional challenges that come with moving to a new country with very little financial support, he grew his business to become a life coach, fitness trainer, and osteopath.

He had the goal to become an industry leader in the health and wellness industry, but he wasn’t sure how to get there. The secret, he learned years later, was not to ask himself what he could do with what he had; instead, he learned to ask himself how he could work around the things that he was missing. He asked how he could take what he didn’t have and turn it into what he would have, and what he would need. Asking questions in this way forced him to look at the world differently—to focus on using the shadows to find the light. He began to forge practical solutions in attaining his goals and chart reliable pathways toward success.

Reza is always looking for new ways to help people reach their goals and thrive in all areas of their lives. He is happy to bring you his second book, From Mind to Body to help you do just that!


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Saturday, April 20, 2019

PROMO Blitz: An Even Exchange


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Contemporary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Publisher: iUniverse

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When independent student, Beri Baines,  is selected to study abroad, she has no idea her independent nature will be challenged by the very charming and conservative Brit, Colin Chapman.  Their strong attraction for one another continues to create conflict in their lives as the story leads them along and unforeseen events intervene and transform their future.

Their lives come full circle not realizing the implications of the choices they make.

The unique format of how this story is told, in two separate voices, is captivating.  Each page is a stand-alone chapter alternating between characters.

The novel is loved by book clubs for the discussion it creates for readers.


About the Author

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Chris Fedorka Tomalin is a published author.  She spent thirty-five years as an educator.  She holds a master's degree from the College of New Jersey and a mediators certificate from Rutgers.  Chris is a mediator for the Kent and Sussex County Courts with people's Place in Delaware where she resides with her husband Tim and Roxie, her Cairn terrier.





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Thursday, April 18, 2019

PROMO Blitz: Bed, Breakfast, and Beyond


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Memoir, Travel
Publisher: BookBaby

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In September of 1998, Ted and JoAnn Dawson purchased a horse farm in rural Maryland to fulfill their lifelong dream of owning a bed & breakfast. Little did they know what lay ahead! 

Restoring a filthy, dilapidated, nearly condemned Victorian house to a charming and welcoming country inn while raising two rowdy young boys was only the first of their challenges. Dealing with shady former owners, a string of ghostly events, and a wide variety of colorful guests opened their eyes to a whole new world.

With the fortitude and life lessons born of years growing up on a dairy farm, the rare good fortune of choosing the perfect partner in life, and a boatload of humor thrown in to preserve their sanity, they have managed to keep Fairwinds Farm Bed & Breakfast running strong for over twenty years.          


About the Author

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JoAnn S. Dawson grew up on a dairy farm in Newark, Delaware and has been a full-time horse stable owner since 1983.  She currently owns and operates Fairwinds Farm & Stables in North East, Maryland with husband Ted, offering riding lessons, summer camp, trail rides, horse-drawn carriages, pony rides, hayrides, local honey, birthday parties, weddings, and a bed & breakfast. (www.fairwindsstables.com.)

Fairwinds Farm has been honored as a national finalist in the 2015 Time to Ride Challenge, an inductee of the 2015 Cecil County Business Hall of Fame, 2011 Cecil County Tourism Business of the Year and 2009 Outstanding Farm Operation, and has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on Good Morning America.

JoAnn works as an animal wrangler for film and TV, and as a Screen Actors Guild member has held principal acting roles in The Sixth Sense, 12 Monkeys, and Oprah Winfrey’s Beloved.  She is the author of the award-winning Lucky Foot Stable series for ages 8-12 and appears at schools and book signings with her pony, Butterscotch.  She is a 4-h leader, former columnist for Cecil Soil Magazine, an appointee to the MD Equine Advisory Committee, a LEAD Maryland fellow, a board member for Cecil County Economic Development Commission and Cecil County Tourism, and is known nationally for her hilarious and enlightening presentation Bed, Breakfast & Beyond: Twenty years of Kooky Guests, Gentle Ghosts, and Horses in Between - based on her book of the same name.

JoAnn is the mother of two grown sons, Zach and Nick, and teaches both Equine Science and Acting for Stage and Screen at Cecil College in North East, Maryland.


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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Book Blitz: Duncan


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Thriller
Date Published: February 2019
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

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A cunning pederastic serial killer nicknamed “Santa” is making his way up the East Coast from New Orleans to Boston, leaving a trail of young bodies in his wake. Santa covers his tracks along the way by working as an itinerant bass player in a series of jazz combos. At the same time, the Driscoll family – Mark, Julie and their nine-year-old son Nate – who live in an upstate suburb of Syracuse, New York, struggle to come to grips with Mom’s quadriplegia following a horrific auto accident. The suspense builds to a fever pitch as these two plot strands approach each other for the inevitable confrontation. All this tension is heightened by the mystery of Duncan, Nate’s stuffed-toy gorilla, who is not only the boy’s beloved companion but becomes a kind of family totem, and, later on in the story, so much more.

This is a novel not only for readers addicted to thrill rides and maddening suspense, but also those who are curious about the abnormal psychology of the pedophiliac killer. The book gives food for thought as well as a kind of perverse satisfaction for the imagination and senses. It is a thinking reader’s thriller.



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Excerpt

It was the best cut at the ball little Joey Simmons had ever taken, but he fouled it back over the chain-link fence. As catcher, Zach Moss had the job of retrieving it. He slipped down through the hollowed-out area under the fence, looked both ways before crossing the empty street lined with warehouses and loading docks, and darted across to where the ball lay nestled against the curb—just a few feet in front of the charcoal van. It was Sunday afternoon and the area was deserted. As Zach reached down, out of the corner of his eye he spotted the tall man in the black polo shirt leaning casually against the van’s open sliding door, kicking a crushed paper cup to the curb.

                “Whatcha got there, pal?”

                “A baseball,” Zach answered shyly, noticing the van was empty.

                “Wow, that looks like a Phillies ball. I’ll bet you caught it off the bat of Ryan Howard or some big slugger like that, huh? Could I have a look?”

                Zach hesitated, torn between advancing and retreating, politeness and caution. That hesitation sealed the boy’s doom. The man made as if to reach for the ball, but grabbed the little wrist holding it instead. It was a deft move, a practiced move, and lightning fast, carried out with the larcenous dexterity of a seasoned pickpocket. The boy was so stunned that he forgot to scream.

                The sliding door slammed shut and the man was behind the wheel pressing the accelerator before the boys on the ball field knew what was happening. He had kept himself on the sidewalk side of the van during the entire abduction, carefully hidden from their view. Zach knew he’d done something very wrong, even though he hadn’t meant to. All those endlessly repeated parental warnings raced across his mind, all the “Don’t ever listen’s” and “Always avoid’s” and “Run screaming from’s.” Could he have another chance? Please! He’d do it right this time. He splayed his fingers against the window, crying out—too late—to his friends as the van pulled away. He hadn’t noticed that its windows were dark-tinted, transparent only from the inside.

                Passing through the industrial outskirts of the city, the van headed up Old York Road into the northern suburbs. It neither sped nor lagged and it obeyed all traffic laws. The man at the wheel enjoyed a supreme confidence in his trapping skills. It was a craft, an art even, and he had mastered it. Soon there was more wilderness than houses, until at some point the van turned left off the main road onto a poorly marked crossroad that, in short order, forked at a dirt road. The van took the dirt road across a tiny rustic bridge spanning a creek, continuing then across a cleared, open field on the right, at the end of which stood a modest white colonial house atop a gently sloping lawn. Potted plants overhung the small porch with its two rockers diagonally facing each other on either side of the front door. The place stood in the open, yet was well hidden by hilly wilderness beyond property boundaries. The dirt road saw little traffic.

                The van pulled off the road and circled around to the rear of the house, stopping next to the angled steel cellar doors. The man got out, looked around and inhaled deeply, basking in the mellow sunlight of late afternoon. He was alone, the only sound that of the gently rustling trees. He slid open the van’s side door and leaned in, hands braced against the roof, ogling his prey with satisfaction. And lust.

                Terror widened the boy’s eyes, making them—and him—all the more alluring to his captor. He cowered, pressed against the corner of his seat, his body balled up in futile self-protection.

                “What do you want, mister? Why am I here?” he asked tentatively, knowing full well the man knew he knew why he was there.

                “All in good time, Zach, all in good time,” the man chuckled. He’d heard the other kids call the boy by name weeks ago when he first began scouting him. He always made sure, if at all possible, to get a kid’s name before taking him. The process went much smoother that way. Strategic use of a boy’s name soothed the boy with the delusion that, despite appearances, his captor was well disposed towards him. A tactic that would make an adult instantly wary tended to pacify an eight-year-old. He’d learned that the hard way many years ago from the debacle in Austin when the words, “Whaddaya say, kid, let’s hang out,” triggered a shrieking that forced him to start, rather than end, the process with lethal violence. After that, from Atlanta through Nashville and Blacksburg and on up the east coast—it was his first “tour”—he made sure to get the name up front and learned to soften his diction. It was part of his evolution from a seat-of-the-pants amateur predator to a serial pedophile of deadly proficiency.   

                “Why don’t you climb out of there and come in for a cold drink, Zach? You must be thirsty. Catchers eat a lot of dust. They need to rehydrate all the time.”

                “No! I don’t want to! I wanna go home!”

                “I’d like you to think you are home—for now.”

                “No, I’m not!” the boy cried with mounting panic. He began to whimper.

                “Come on now,” the man said, mildly irritated. He extended his powerful right arm inside, like reaching for a prize in a grab bag, and gently but firmly pulled Zach out of the van. Then, bending over slightly while holding onto the boy, he pulled open the already unlocked cellar doors with his free arm.

                Instinctively, Zach began to buck. He tried to pull away and squirmed furiously—to no avail. He had never felt such physical strength before. It was like trying to jerk a piece of wood loose from the vice in his father’s basement tool shop. Even when, not so long ago, his father would playfully toss him up in the air and catch him coming down like a medicine ball, it was nothing like the sheer physical resistance, the total control by another, he was feeling now.

                The man carried the boy down the steps, bracing him on his hip like a surfboard. They entered a finished basement, though one that had the same dank, musty air all basements have, with or without dehumidifiers. The smell of the air caused a new spike in the boy’s panic, suggesting as it did the mold of the grave. Even at eight Zach was aware of the connotations of mold. The man cuffed him, as if scolding a pet, and got off on it. It was all part of the one-way foreplay.

                The man carried him to the far end of the dark basement, which was largely uncluttered by the usual piles of stored junk, as if the house hadn’t been occupied long enough to accumulate much to store. There, well behind the furnace and hot-water heater, was a small, inconspicuous room, walled off from the rest, no doubt originally intended as a study or office. But the man had converted it to a kind of private pleasure cave. Richly paneled and lushly carpeted, hung with lurid pornographic images, both paintings and photographs, of naked children, many interacting with “erect” naked men, the windowless room was the sick expression of what had become the man’s sole reason for being. He had left the door unlocked and ajar for quick and easy sequestering of his latest prey. Lowering the boy onto the quilt-covered king-size bed that occupied more than half the room’s space, he raised an index finger to his smiling lips to shush the signs of panic contorting the boy’s face and body language. Then he leaned forward and switched on the portable CD-player on the nightstand. The soft strains of “So What” filled the room, the opening track of Miles Davis’s cool-jazz masterpiece, Kind of Blue, with the insouciant opening base sequence introducing Davis’s smokey trumpet. It was always the same music, always “So What,” setting the same naughty jazzy mood— anything else would have been unthinkable to him.

                As the man pulled his shirt over his head and began unbuckling his jeans, the boy’s whimpering swelled into alternating sobs and shrieks. He had no idea he was playing right into his predator’s game plan, for the man’s lust was spiked above all else by another creature’s helplessness. He wanted the boy to beg for his innocence, his bodily integrity—his life. He craved the dark bliss of godlike power over the destiny of another, especially when that other was fully aware of his own utter dependency. This was his drug, his elixir, immeasurably more potent than the heroin he had tried so many times, which, while bestowing bliss, had also dulled his senses, and he lived for the sharpening of his senses. This got him out of bed in the morning.

                “Zach, Zach. It’s all right. We’re just gonna cuddle for a while. Okay? Just lie together and hold each other and make each other feel good, you know?”

                “I wanna go home!” the boy bawled in tearful protest, apparently shocked by the urgency of his own voice, for his sobbing escalated, opening up to a pathetic wail fueled by panic.

                Its only effect was a quickening of the man’s desire. Stimulus … response. No one could hear them there, and it was all just becoming so delicious. As the man slipped out of his jeans, Zach’s eyes were riveted on the bulge in the crotch of his briefs. At eight, he had just enough sexual awareness to know what that bulge meant. Still, it was his dim but nightmarish sense of what might come afterward that intensified the stabs of panic.

                The man lay down on the bed and snuggled up to his prey, whose flinching reflex merely spiked his lust once again. The man was lost within the dark caverns of his desire, the boy trapped within those same caverns.

                “This is so nice,” the man breathed dreamily, reaching down deftly to their mutual nether regions while pressing the sobbing boy to him with unnatural strength …



The sun was down and a purplish twilight graced the overgrown area behind the house as a dark figure strode purposefully from the cellar doors in the rear into a little copse of oak and cedar about a stone’s throw away. He was carrying a base fiddle case. But his firm grip and taut right arm left no doubt that the case’s contents were heavier than any fiddle.  

                After a while, the only sound to pierce the darkening stillness was the rhythmic thrusting of the spade into the soft earth. Far from being drained by the effort of the

cleanup, the man felt juiced, energized, expansive, and, at the same time, utterly relaxed. He reveled in the digging, each thrust of the shovel a little aftershock of that explosion of pleasure for which he lived. Finally, dropping the shovel behind him, he sank to his knees, opened the case and stared for a while at the olive-hued double-strength trash bag that served as a shroud for the lifeless body. Gently lifting the body from the case, he lowered it into its shallow grave, again staring and carefully straightening out both the bag and the body it contained, though without attempting to pose the body in any way. No tableaus, no “necro-symbolism” to titillate the profilers. Just putting it where it belonged.


About the Author

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Author Dennis McCort (1941-) was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, the „mile square city“ on the Hudson, in the shadow of Manhattan. He writes of his experiences growing up there in the postwar industrial era before gentrification in his book, A Kafkaesque Memoir: Confessions from the Analytic Couch (PalmArt Press). McCort is now retired from Syracuse University in upstate New York where he taught German language and literature over a long career. He has authored literary studies on German and Swiss writers and on the influence of Zen Buddhism on such Western writers as J.D. Salinger, R.M. Rilke and Thomas Merton. His understanding of Zen, both as scholar and practitioner, i.e., from both outside and inside, helped him to add layers of complexity to the fascinating personality of the pedophiliac protagonist of Duncan. McCort has also written a comic novel, titled The Man Who Loved Doughnuts, about a young professor who fails to get tenure at his upstate university and spends a lost weekend in lower Manhattan. It is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook. Duncan is his novelization of a macabre seed-concept coming from his wife Dorothy: that of a serial pedophiliac murderer on a collision course with a young boy whose only defense is his stuffed toy gorilla. Both McCort and wife describe the book as a “thinking man’s thriller.”


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Monday, April 15, 2019

PROMO Blitz: The Gordon Place by Isaac Thorne @isaacrthorne #horror #excerpt #giveaway #releaseday


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Horror
Date Published: 04/15/2019
Publisher: Lost Hollow Books

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Lost Hollow constable Graham Gordon just walked into his abandoned childhood home for the first time in twenty years. Local teenagers have been spreading rumors about disembodied screams coming from inside. Now, thanks to a rickety set of cellar stairs and the hateful spirit of his dead father, he might never escape.

Meanwhile, Channel 6 News feature reporter Afia Afton—whose father is the victim of a local decades-old hate crime—is meeting with town administrator Patsy Blankenship. Her mission is to develop a ghost story feature for a special to air on the station’s Halloween broadcast. When Patsy tells her about the screams at the Gordon place, the past and the present are set on a collision course with potentially catastrophic results.

Can Graham come to terms with his father’s past and redeem his own future? Can the murder mystery that has haunted Afia for most of her life finally be solved?

It’s a fight for the future and the past when spirit and flesh wage war at the Gordon place.



Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE EXCERPT



The only net gain for Graham, if it could be considered such, that had come out of the election so far was that he had been able to use the position to convince the town to turn his old homestead over to him for a song and a promise he’d clean up the blight. That had been another lark. In the same town board meeting that had seen him sworn in as constable there had appeared on the agenda a plan to demolish the old place as a means of curbing the juvenile delinquency it seemed to entice. The rumors being spread by the kids in town had reached the board’s ears, and they had come to the same conclusion he had: the place was turning into an attraction for vagrants and ne’er-do-wells. Therefore, tear it down.

When the time came for public input on the matter, he’d suddenly found himself standing—without having previously planned to do so—and arguing that the place had sentimental value for him and that he’d like a shot at restoring it. He might even turn it into some kind of tourist spot, an idea he’d come to by way of town administrator Patsy Blankenship, she whom he’d hung up on moments ago. She had already renovated one old local homestead into a bed and breakfast that hosted the occasional guest or local event. The board had balked at his idea at first, but after he’d promised to either clean up the blight or hand the old Gordon place back to the town for demolition within a year, they’d relented. Now he owned the home: a shelter for rats, snakes, vagrants, and bored teenagers. He had no idea where to begin.

Graham pushed the thoughts away. This was no time to go second-guessing his life choices and cost himself what little nerve he had summoned to search for trespassers. He sidled up the hall. The back of his shirt created a loud scraping sound against the faded and peeling fleur-de-lis wallpaper covering the entry hall, a remnant of his mother’s New Orleans roots. He left his own narrow trail of Wolverine sole prints in the dust on the floor, carefully avoiding stepping on the ones left by the previous visitor. The physical memories of life in the house came flooding back to him. The sound of his footsteps on the hardwood floor. The sound of his father’s footsteps. Even the scrape of the wallpaper against the fabric of his shirt bubbled up memories of him dashing all over the house, running his hands and fingers over the walls as he did, just as any normal wild young boy might do.

The tiny hook and eye latch that had been meant to secure the cellar door was already undone when he got there. Graham didn’t know whether his father had initially installed that latch, but he’d always thought it a silly and unnecessary addition. The door to the cellar was no more than three uneven slats of painted pine carelessly supported along their backs by two horizontal two-by-fours. Large gaps between each slat rendered useless any attempt to keep the cooler air of the cellar out of the entry hall by just shutting the door. Besides, it had always managed to swing shut and stay closed on its own—even unlatched—which was one more reason the cellar had made for such an excellent hiding place.

A small wooden cabinet knob was mounted a couple of inches below the hook. Graham grabbed it and pulled. The door swung open easily on its spring hinges and without much complaint about the new tension; surprising after so many years of disuse. The ray from his Maglite spilled into the opening and revealed three splintery and slowly disintegrating steps, approximately one-quarter of the familiar set of plank stairs leading from the mouth of the door before vanishing into the damp darkness below. Graham felt for the light switch just inside the cellar door and flipped it on, but it produced nothing. He’d had service activated so he could begin work on the place. Maybe the power company hadn’t gotten around to it yet. That would certainly explain the state of the security light out front.

“Hello?” he shouted into the depths of darkness. “Lost Hollow Constable! Is anyone down there?”

There was no answer.

Graham stepped through the door. He’d covered only one tread before the sound of the creaking staircase started to get to him. There he paused, not allowing the door to swing shut behind him and not liking the soft and spongy feel of the tread on which he stood. It had much more give in it than he remembered from his youth.

From this position, the narrow beam of his Maglite enabled him to see the end of the staircase, but nothing beyond. The final step looked black and almost completely rotted away. The one above it didn’t appear to be in much better shape. If he went forward, he risked breaking those steps, which would make climbing out of the cellar much more difficult. If he didn’t go on, and someone was trapped down here, he might lose his job in disgrace. Worse, a real law enforcement officer, like a county sheriff’s deputy, might end up investigating the “screams” and finding a dead body he’d missed out of fear, in which case he could at the very least be accused of neglecting his duties as an officer of the peace.

Maglite secured in his left hand, Graham pawed at his right hip, immediately taking comfort in the shape of the county issue radio clipped to his belt. He ran his fingers along the top of the device until they closed around the volume knob, which he turned to the right. A thin click and a spurt of white noise erupted through the tomb-like silence of the old house. It vanished just as quickly, leaving in its wake the distinct hum of radio silence. Even so, it was reassuring that he had not only remembered to carry his direct connection to the Hollow County Sheriff’s Department inside with him but it also appeared to be in proper working order.

“Let’s hear it for technology. Thank God.”

From somewhere inside his head, he thought, the darkness replied: GOD AIN’T GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

The next thing he felt was the bone-crunching shock of something blunt and heavy striking the back of his head. He heard what sounded like the shattering of thick glass. He was able to stay upright just long enough to feel what might have been a trickle of blood oozing from his scalp to the nape of his neck. A pair of unseen hands at his back thrust him into the darkness of the cellar, launching him down the full length of the rickety staircase. He fell forward, plummeting face first into the densely compacted earth beneath the house. The bridge of his nose exploded in a bright starburst of pain. His upper teeth crashed down on his lower lip, ripping open the pliable flesh. He felt an immediate swelling there. A thin stream of hot blood ran tear-like down his chin from the wound. Dimly, he heard the crack of splintered wood as his shins came down last, disintegrating the deteriorated lower steps in a fireworks show of wood rot and ancient dust.

His radio went flying when he hit. He heard it shatter in a hiss of static somewhere off to his right. The base of his Maglite struck the ground at the same time. It flew from his hand and bounced off the earth once, twice, and rolled some distance over the ground before coming to rest against the farthest cinder block wall of the cellar. The lamp behind the flashlight’s lens flickered madly, creating a nauseating strobe effect, a stop-motion version of Graham’s shadow on the wall beside him as he at first struggled to regain his feet and then gave up, collapsing flat to the earth.

The lamp finally steadied itself at a low burn, illuminating almost nothing about the cellar but the corner in which it had landed. It had come to rest too far from the limit of Graham’s reach. He stretched his left arm out for it anyway, hopeful that the darkness had merely created some sort of illusion of depth. His fingers clawed at the dirt for a second or two before they ultimately surrendered and lay still.

Graham Gordon lay broken and exhausted on the black earth at the bottom of the cellar stairs. In the fading last rays of his dying Maglite, he saw an eye: a disembodied, full white orb broken by jagged lightning-shaped lines of red capillaries. The iris in the center of the eyeball was a murky dark brown color, unshining and nearly black. Its pupil was but a pinprick in the beam from the flashlight.

It stared at him from just beyond the edge of the darkness, unblinking.

“Dad?”

The world went dark.


About the Author

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ISAAC THORNE is a nice man who has, over the course of his life, developed a modest ability to spin a good yarn. Really. He promises. Just don’t push him down a flight of stairs.

You can find Isaac on Twitter or on Facebook

Isaac reviews films for TNHorror.com and TheHorrorcist.com. He is the host of Thorne’s Theater of Terror and Classic

Cuts on 24/7/365 horror-themed SCRM Radio at scrmradio.com.

More of Isaac’s work is available at isaacthorne.com and wherever books are sold.

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