Touching Madness (River Madden) #Excerpt by K S Ferguson #AmReading #Fantasy #BookClub

I cowered at the hooves of the eight-foot tall demon, wallowing in the soot and debris of the apocalyptic cityscape. He frowned at me, and his mouth formed words, but I couldn't understand him. Hoards of translucent black cloud nightmares rose and fell through cracks in the scarred ground, widening the fissures with each pass. They roiled around us, cutting off light coming from a source that I couldn't identify. I opened my mouth to scream, and one of the nightmare clouds poured in, clogging my throat, filling my lungs with ash, and shooting burning cinders up through my brain. I thrashed, trying to get to my feet so I could run, but I no longer had legs.

I jerked awake, thoroughly tangled in the space blanket, my legs numb, and looked into a pair of amber eyes that stared back at me along the blade of a big, scary military-type knife pointed at my throat. I swallowed hard. Boy, had I screwed up.

"Hi," I said.

She didn't blink. My God, she was beautiful in the pre-dawn light glowing through the windows. No human looked that perfect. Was she real? I freed my right hand and ever so slowly raised my index finger to the tip of the blade while she watched. When I pressed lightly against the point, it pricked my skin. I pulled my hand back. Blood welled from the tiny cut. Yep, real. Shit. She'd taken me prisoner.

"We're surrounded by cops," I said. "If you stick me, I'll scream like a girl."

Ah, crap, why'd I used that expression? She probably screamed like an Amazon warrior. How'd she even lift a knife that big? She was such a tiny thing. All the cops I'd met were big louts. But she had the drop on me, and the knife was a lot more threatening than her wand thingy.

"Who are you? Where are we? How'd I get here?" she asked. The taut muscles around her eyes telegraphed fear, and the knife trembled in her hand.

I rubbed my prickling wrist tattoos against my jeans and caught a whiff of something burnt. I glanced around the kiosk. Up near the ceiling, a trace of shapeless sooty cloud leaked out through the crack around the door. My mouth opened, closed.

"Do you smoke?" I asked, hoping she'd tell me she did. The cloud could have been cigarette smoke even if it didn't smell like tobacco… purposeful cigarette smoke, on the dark side. A hallucination. Not real.

A frown joined her stare. Oops. I'd wandered off topic. What had she asked? Who are you? But her team had that tracking device that reacted to me. How could she be looking for me but not recognize me?

"I brought you here so they wouldn't shoot you. I had to hide you while I led him away." I gave her a tentative smile and waited for her to gush her thanks for saving her life. Maybe she'd be so grateful, she'd tell me about the tracking device—and point that big knife some other direction. Then I could get away before she figured out who I was.

She added narrowed eyes to the stare and the frown. I chewed my lower lip. Maybe I wasn't communicating as well as I'd hoped. I felt woefully inadequate talking to someone as lovely as her, especially someone carrying a dangerous weapon. It could have been worse—at least I hadn't degenerated into word salad or spoken in rhymes.

Light bulbs talk to River Madden; God doesn't. When the homeless schizophrenic unintentionally fractures a dimensional barrier and accidentally steals a gym bag containing a million dollars, everyone from the multiverse police to the local crime boss—and an eight-foot tall demon—are after him. Can he dodge them long enough to correct his mistakes and prevent the destruction of three separate dimensions? If he succeeds, will the light bulbs stop singing off-key?

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Genre – Contemporary, Urban fantasy

Rating – R

More details about the author

Website http://www.ksferguson.net

Night's Favour #Excerpt by Richard Parry - #GoodReads #Action #Fantasy

Val felt like he’d been hit by a car.

Curling over the bowl, he retched again, hands shaking.  He didn’t remember waking up; he didn’t remember getting home, or what might have happened after his tenth beer last night.  He hoped it was only a night — he had a big meeting with the boss this morning.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lost days of time down the bottom of a bottle.

“Get your shit together, Val.”  He spat into the bowl, bracing himself on the edge of the porcelain.  Standing up shakily, he felt the nausea rise and curled back over, retching again.  He failed to get his tie out of the way this time, and it came back out of the bowl covered in —

How in God’s name was he wearing a tie?  He didn’t even have any pants.

He tried standing again, this time managing to get to his feet.  Holding himself up on the walls of the toilet, he controlled the shuddering, awful urge to throw up.  He spat into the bowl again then hit the flush button.

Slowly — and quietly — he made his way out of the toilet and into the bathroom.  He caught a glimpse of stubble in the mirror on the wall and felt confident it was only a night gone.  Maybe if he could just get in to the office before nine — God, what time is it now? — it’d be ok.

He pulled back the mirror, his fleshy reflection pushed aside as he exposed a collection of white bottles set against a backdrop of tired cardboard boxes, tubes of expired ointment, and half-empty boxes of Band-Aids.  The bulk box of store-brand acetaminophen came away disturbingly light — I bought that just last week — and he tossed the empty hundred box to the ground, hand trembling towards the Pentazine.  Expensive gold, he dry-swallowed four of the tabs.  Motion sickness be damned; the drug would take the edge off wanting to throw up his feet.  He chased it with some ibuprofen, a generic brand in a white box of fifty.

He started up a good lather to get rid of the stubble.  It was then he noticed that his left arm’s shirt sleeve was missing, ripped off by the looks of it.  The shirt wasn’t in great shape overall; it had that creaseless arrogance that only came with being rained on.  The sleeve was missing from the elbow down, give or take, the frayed end of a blue thread trailing to wrist level.  He’d been lying in a pool of good Merlot unless he missed his guess, the sleeve and side of the shirt a gentle pink.  The thought of Merlot almost made him heave the pills back up, so he stripped off the shirt and let it drop to the floor alongside the empty box.  If he just left all that crap there Baitan would sort it out later.

His belly wasn’t an admirable sight, the booze and the desk job leaving their toll, the flab hanging out over his underwear.  John kept nagging him like an old woman, saying he needed to get back to the gym, do some exercise.  There was time for that later — it was important to get more drugs, and maybe shave, if he was going to get to work today.

Focus, Val.

Valentine’s an ordinary guy with ordinary problems. His boss is an asshole. He’s an alcoholic. And he’s getting that middle age spread just a bit too early. One night — the one night he can’t remember — changes everything. What happened at the popular downtown bar, The Elephant Blues? Why is Biomne, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, so interested in him — and the virus he carries? How is he getting stronger, faster, and more fit? And what’s the connection between Valentine and the criminally insane Russian, Volk?

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Genre – Action, Thriller, Urban Fantasy

Rating – R16

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 Connect with Richard Parry on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.rage.net.nz

The Right Critique Buddy Can Elevate Your Work @J_Cornet #WriteTip #AmWriting #Fantasy

If you are a writer, one of the first things you will discover is that it is easy to find people willing to tell you your writing is awesome. You pass your work out to friends and family and all you receive back are glowing reviews and pats on the back. Now tell me, how helpful is that really? If everything is great, how can you improve? The hard truth is although nice things are great to hear, they don’t help you in the long run.

What you need is someone who can be open and honest with you about both the good and the bad in your work. You need a critique buddy. You can find a buddy almost anywhere. You can enlist someone you already know, perhaps a friend you feel you work well with. Or you can find a fellow writer in a writer’s group. Both options work as long as the person has a few important attributes. They must be honest, constructive, and unattached.

For a person, whether a friend or someone you’ve met at a writers group, to make a good critique buddy they have to be willing to dish out bad news. Ask yourself this: Would they let you walk out of the house looking like a hot mess because they are too nice to say anything, or would they tell you that you can’t pull off that outfit and need to change? I relate it to appearance because it is something just a personal to us as our writing. It’s hard to tell people you don’t like something they’ve done because it is a sensitive subject.

But you need to go beyond finding someone who will be honest. You need someone who is also constructive. If they tell you that your outfit is terrible, do they give you suggestions on a better option or leave you hanging not knowing which direction to go in. A good critique buddy will not only tell you when they don’t like something but will point out specifics and offer a different suggestion. For example instead of saying “I don’t like the main character,” a good buddy would say “I don’t like the way the main character talks down to her best friend. Why would they be friends if they didn’t get along? Maybe you can change some of the dialog.” Do you see the difference?

The last trait I think a good critique buddy needs is one most people don’t think of: they need to be unattached. I don’t mean they shouldn’t care. What I do mean is that they should realize this project is not theirs and be okay with that. No matter how much input they give you, in the end it is up to you as to what you incorporate or change. If you think the person might be offended when you don’t take their suggestions or be upset that the project didn’t turn out the way they envisioned it, that person might not be the best critique buddy.

It is a delicate balance to find just the right person to help you through your writing process. But the right critique buddy can really elevate your work in a way you couldn’t have on your own. So choose wisely!

For Onyx Bay, what started as a cathartic ink session takes an unexpected turn when a specialized blood test at the tattoo parlor reveals her true identity, which threatens to turn her entire world upside down.

When Onyx learns that she is the descendant of a fantastical race of creatures who control the global elements, she discovers that her own blood makes her a valuable prize for competing forces, known as the Orders. As the truth about her bloodline spreads, she finds herself at the center of a supernatural bounty hunt pursued by both human and creature members of the Orders willing to do anything to claim her as their own. The hunt intensifies when a prophet foresees she will tip the balance of power and upset the peace among the Orders. As she attempts to evade capture and survive, Onyx is forced to choose between her humanistic past and a supernatural destiny in order to take control of her own future.

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Genre - Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG – 13

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Connect with Jennifer Cornet on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.jennifercornet.com/