THE ORIGINS OF THE NORICIN CHRONICLES: Guest blog post by Mark Sheldon

Note from Dawn: I am a big advocate of charitable causes and anything that has to do with others trying to help a charity. So when I saw Mark's post on LinkedIn about this fundraiser, I knew this was something that I wanted to spread the word about. Mark kindly took the time out of his busy schedule to create this guest post for my blog that talks about the creation of his project and how he decided to take his book a step further.







Earlier this year, I began to publish my debut series as an author, The Noricin Chronicles. There are twelve books in the series; the first four of which are currently available and the fifth will be coming out in February of 2012. Until the end of this year, I am making available a special hardcover omnibus edition of the first four books in the series, and I will be donating 100% of my author’s royalties for this edition to Book Aid International, a literacy charity based in the United Kingdom.

The Noricin Chronicles is about the Norcinites, a secret race of super-humans who have been hiding in the shadows of society for nearly two hundred years. Almost all of the Norcinites are descended from Steven Noricin, founder of the Steven Noricin School for the New Race – commonly known as Snisnar. All young Norcinites are sent to this special school to learn how to hone and control their extraordinary powers.

The story begins with Dan Regal, an orphan who on his twelfth birthday accidentally sets the orphanage bully on fire – simply by imagining it happening. Shortly after the accident, he is visited by a mysterious, purple-eyed stranger by the name of Nevar Loeren. Mr. Loeren tells Dan about the Norcinites, and informs Dan that he is, in fact, one of them. Mr. Loeren says that he has come to invite Dan to attend Snisnar, and then he promptly disappears into thin air. But this is not the last that Dan will see of the enigmatic stranger, and he is about to embark upon a journey into a world full of wonders – and terrors – he never dreamed possible.

I can't really pinpoint the exact moment at which The Noricin Chronicles “popped” into my mind, because it was really about three separate ideas that had been festering in my imagination since as early as high school. Then, sometime in late 2005, all of these ideas just suddenly came together and clicked, and I realized that they were all part of the same story. I can’t really talk too much about two of these three ideas, as they would give away too much of the plot of the last few books, but the last idea was essentially a dark Harry Potter combined with the superheroes of The X-Men and the puzzles and riddles of The DaVinci Code.

Once the three ideas came together as one, it was pretty straightforward from there. It took me about two-to-three years to plot out the books. Probably the most extensive process of this early stage was creating the Noricin family tree. Because I knew that just about every character in my world was a direct descendant of Steven Noricin, I knew that I would have to plot out the family tree very extensively, so that I would know exactly how many Norcinites were in the world during Dan’s time, and therefore have a cast of players to work with. I spent about two weeks drafting out the massive family tree containing hundreds of names – starting out with Steven Norcin and his wife, Alice, and working down through almost two hundred years of family to Dan’s generation – and most of this work was done in the back office of the hotel where I was working with my now wife and co-conspirator in all things dastardly, Betsy.

One large complication in the creation of the Noricin Family Tree was caused by the fact that there are several Norcinites who are “blood purists” and obsessed with maintaining the Noricin genes by only marrying other Norcinites. Since most Norcinites are direct descendants of Steven Noricin, this meant that a lot of people married their cousins. To help myself keep these “special” familial lines straight from the non-blood-purists, I started using an orange marker to draw these specific family lines.

An amusing side effect of this technique came when I found that the orange marker had been bleeding through the paper onto my supervisor’s desk. When approached about this, Betsy and I (we were not yet dating at the time) informed our boss that I had been inbreeding on her desk and that I’d accidentally left some stains behind. That is where I learned the valuable lesson that if you can make someone laugh, you can be forgiven for just about anything.

But I digress – after I had finished creating the resource of the Noricin Family Tree, I spent about two years plotting out the books, another year to sit down and actually write them all, and another year editing and preparing for the publication of Book 1, The Lost Boy, on January 11, 2011. The rest of the year has pretty much been a blur, as I published one book every other month between January and June and spent the rest of the time editing the upcoming books and promoting the series.

There are, of course, many underlying themes and meanings throughout The Noricin Chronicles, some obvious and some not so obvious, but if I had to pick one, specific message as the central theme of the series and my writing in general, it would have to be tolerance. I am a big advocate of accepting other people’s beliefs, opinions, and outlooks, regardless of whether I personally agree with them or not. Just about the only thing I cannot bring myself to tolerate is intolerance, which of course makes me the biggest hypocrite of them all.

This desire to promote tolerance and fight ignorance is part of what drew me to Book Aid International, for their charity is primarily focused on supporting literacy, education, and development in sub-Saharan Africa. In the last year alone, they have provided over 500,000 new books to over 2,000 libraries.

My fundraiser for Book Aid will be running until December 31st, 2011. In order to keep production costs down and keep the list price reasonable, I was unfortunately only able to make this special hardcover edition available through Lulu. However, if the fundraiser proves to be profitable, I may decide in the future to release a paperback version of the omnibus edition, and continue to donate a portion of those royalties to Book Aid.

It has been a wild ride, these last six years, and it’s only just beginning! I can say beyond a doubt that there will be more from me to come in the future, and that hopefully I’ll be able to continue helping Book Aid, and other literacy charities as I proceed!

For more information about myself, The Noricin Chronicles, and my fundraiser for Book Aid, please feel free to visit my homepage.



BIO: The Noricin Chronicles marks author Mark Sheldon's debut as an author. Mr. Sheldon lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Betsy.

Rediscovering joy

Last week, I started work on a new poetry manuscript. Well, actually, it’s kinda new. Mostly old. Some of the poems were published in a chapbook by a vanity publisher years ago. The book has since gone out of print (and, as far as I can tell from my searches, the vanity press no longer exists). So I have decided to give it a second life, just as I did with Topiary Dreams (Songs of the Dead) and November’s Child (Shadow of Samhain).

And just like I did with TD, I’m making this one “bigger and better.” That’s right; I am adding more poems and giving it a new title. It will also have a new cover. I truly believe that if you’re going to do something a second time and call it “new,” then, by golly! Go the whole nine yards! Take things up a notch and go all out in making it HUGE! Wow them! Entice them! Make it completely different than what the old play had once been.

That’s my philosophy, anyway.

So, that is what I did last week. And instead of 42 poems in the book, there will be 100! And, as I did with TD, I’m dedicating this version to the same person the original was dedicated to.

The thing of it is, well ... these poems are old. I mean REALLY old. And some of them make me cringe over the thought of them representing the poet I am now. But, you know what? They actually don’t. Those poems actually represent the person I used to be, and I guess the poet I used to be. And, as for the last of the poems in this book, the person I am now. And, in truth, I used to be so innocent and naïve just as the first 40 poems are (Hah! Sometimes I am still naïve! But, still....) And after all the things I have been through now, reading about those innocent times brought me a sense of peace. They brought me a sense of joy.

True, my younger years were not entirely pleasant. But it didn’t turn me into a negative, evil person. Despite the bad things, I held on to my innocence and sense of hope for a peaceful world. I held on to my inner happiness and my faith. And even after bad things happened, I still held on to them. I still wanted to believe that there was good worth fighting for and believing in. Even writing about.

And I’m glad I wrote them, because they are a pleasant and joyous escape from the brutal realities of this world. They are a comfort from the other bad things and the hard times.

And, in a way, watching the change in these poems – the innocence, the sense of maturity and the development of strength – was enough to make me feel these poems do represent me after all. They represent the journey I have been on thus far. Since the original book was meant to be autobiographical, that will happen here, too. And that goal is achieved just from seeing how the messages of the poems change.

Working on this manuscript became a delight for me. I enjoyed reading the early poems and cherished the sense of innocence they made me feel again just from reading them.

Mathematical writer?: Guest blog post by Sheila Deeth

I’m a mathematician and a writer.

I used to think the best thing about math was that answers were always right or wrong—no in-betweens, no opinions, no debatables. But I learned better. The best thing about math has nothing to do with answers. It’s the point where you’re trying to imagine how something might work. Could it be this? If I tweak it like that? Can I build a counter-example? A whole wide world of what-ifs. Studying math in college expanded far more than my numerical horizons.

I thought a math degree would be good training for a job (which it was, for a while), but in the end it’s just as good training for writing stories, as I’ve learned when trying to watch how my stories grow.

My latest book, Flower Child, was born when our local writers’ group challenged us to do something based on a song. The song I chose was John Denver’s Rhyme and Reason, and the line I took was “The children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers.” (You can see were the title came from now!) But the rest is what-ifs.

What if my childhood misconception of conception—that children grew from seeds in celestial fields with angels on guard—wasn’t so crazy after all? If I tweak it a bit, to deal with the case where the seed-child isn’t born… If I apply some boundaries perhaps—real children on one edge, angels on the other—and give my child an existence somewhere in between… If I let the child grow in the flow of words—like letting a program simulate the math, then reading off the results…?

It sounds kind of crazy I know, but I get the same satisfaction from seeing a story run its true course as I do from solving math problems. There’s something beautiful about the way math settles down into patterns of curves and lines; you look at an equation, letters simplified to make a sensible form, and you know it’s right—it’s just the way it has to be. Variables slip and slide in just the right order, adding, subtracting from the flow…

I hope you might think there’s something beautiful about my stories too. With luck, my imaginary characters will become as real to you as they are to me—just like imaginary numbers, existing in a universe all their own which is still, somehow, inconceivably, totally inseparable from reality.

I’m a mathematician and a writer, and there’s really no contradiction after all.



About the author: Sheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. Now living in the States with her husband and sons, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, telling stories, running a local writers' group, and meeting her neighbors’ dogs on the green.

Sheila describes herself as a Mongrel Christian Mathematician. Her short stories, book reviews and articles can be found in VoiceCatcher 4, Murder on the Wind, Poetic Monthly, Nights and Weekends, the Shine Journal and Joyful Online. Besides her Gypsy Shadow ebooks, Sheila has several self-published works available from Amazon and Lulu, and a full-length novel under contract to come out next year.

Find her on her website: http://www.sheiladeeth.com
Or find her books at: http://sheiladeeth.weebly.com





About Flower Child: When Megan miscarries her first pregnancy it feels like the end of everything; instead it’s the start of a curious relationship between the grieving mother and an unborn child who hovers somewhere between ghost and angel. Angela, Megan’s “little angel,” has character and dreams all her own, friends who may or may not be real angels, and a little brother who brings hope to her mother’s world. But Angela’s dream-world has a secret and one day Angela might learn how to be real.

Where to find Flower Child:
On the publishers’ website:
http://gypsyshadow.com/SheilaDeeth.html#Flower

On Amazon

On Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/91467

A week of interviews

Writers need to be ready for anything, whether it’s an impromptu interview (which is why it’s a good idea to know what questions you’ll ask before you request the interview) or if it’s an idea striking out of the blue (which is why it’s a good idea to keep pen and paper handy). The same goes for authors: Be ready for anything.

In my case, I had to be ready to answer interview questions last week. Quite a lot of them, actually.

I had quite a few interview requests lined up, so I took the time last week to answer all the interview questions. Some interviews went live immediately after I responded with answers, and some interviewers noted it would be a while before the interview went up. In fact, one interview won’t go up until sometime next year.

These interview requests came about because of two things: My networking with other authors and opportunities I saw for author interviews. Of course, with two books coming out soon, I had to grab these opportunities. They were a chance to talk about my books!

It was a lot of work going from one interview to the next, but so worth it. I have a chance to spread the word about my books (yay!) and give a heads-up on future books (yay again!). This was also a chance to offer some helpful advice to aspiring writers. Never give up, I said. Read everything you can get your hands on. Be persistent! This also gave me a sense of gratification.

Plus, I was grateful that all the interviews were through email. Made it a lot easier to think about, edit and rearrange my answers before the interviewer got them.

This experience was very interesting. I’ve been interviewed before, but I’ve never had so many lined up in one week. Also, I am used to being the interviewer, not the interviewee, so it was quite a change of place for once. I was asked some very interesting questions and was challenged to come up with interesting, if not lengthy, answers for certain scripted interviews.

Then after all was said and done, I went back to being the interviewer and worked on a couple of articles for SIGNews.

A couple of the interviews have been posted and you can read them here:

Interview at Writer’s Sanctuary.(Thanks, Dellani!)

Interview at Steel Diamonds Publishing.

Great Minds Think Aloud Literary Community
(Thanks, Kitty!)

And, earlier in the month, there was another interview with me posted at Highlighted Author here.
(Thank you, Charlene.)

Cop Talk with a Character: Guest blog post by Kathleen S. Allen

Greetings All! My name is Kathleen S. Allen. I am a writer. I have been asked to do a guest blog today. I recently had a book released and I thought it might be fun to do an interview with one of the characters. The name of the book is: IF IT’S MONDAY, IT MUST BE MURDER! Published by Gypsy Shadow. It’s available as an Ebook on Kindle/Nook/Smashwords. The book trailer is available on YouTube.

INTERVIEWER: Today we are interviewing Byron Williams, a police officer with the Beechton Police Department. He and his former partner, Mel Thompson, are working a murder investigation together.

BYRON: Detective. I am a detective.

INTERVIEWER: Sorry. Our interview today is with Detective Byron Williams. I know our audience can’t see him but let me describe him to you. He’s in his late thirties. He’s tall, just six foot, lean and buff. He told me before we started that he runs and lifts weights for exercise. He carries a gun, works in homicide and loves being a cop. He shaves his head and oils it every morning. His skin is caramel coloured and his eyes are a deep chocolate---more like a dark chocolate brown. He has long tapered fingers that look as if he should be playing piano or painting with! In short, he gorgeous!

BYRON: Okay, enough about my looks. [glares at interviewer]

INTERVIEWER: Sorry. Welcome to the blog, Byron---may I call you Byron? [he nods] Tell us a little about yourself.

BYRON: I promised Mel I’d do this interview but I’m not comfortable talking about myself. What do you need to know?

INTERVIEWER: I understand you are a cop. Tell our audience about your career choice. How did you decide to go into law enforcement?

BYRON: I grew up in an urban setting, lots of criminal element in my town. We had this small family run grocery store in our neighborhood run by a Korean family. The mom loved kids and always gave us pieces of candy when we came into the store. One day I heard sirens and ran out to see what happened, I must’ve been nine or ten. Both of them were shot by a failed robbery. I remember thinking that if I did nothing else in my life, I’d make sure the bad guys are caught. [grins] Guess I never grew out of it.

INTERVIEWER: So you’ve been a cop for how long now?

BYRON: Almost ten years.

INTERVIEWER: What would you say is your worse moment as a cop? Your best?

BYRON: One of the best was getting Mel as a partner. She’s sassy, smart and beautiful, plus she kicks butt! Or did before she got shot. That was my worse moment. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead when I heard the gunshot at a routine B&E---breaking and entering---at a strip club. I ran around back and there she was on the ground, blood everywhere. I thought I lost her. [tears up]

INTERVIEWER: How is she doing, it’s been how long since she was shot?

BYRON: A year. The bullet lodged in her back near her spinal cord so she has a lot of pain and walks with a cane. She had to quit the force and go on disability. We broke up because Mel doesn’t want to be a burden to me or anyone. [grins again] I’m trying to get her to let me back in her life.

INTERVIEWER: I understand you are helping her investigate a murder?

BYRON: Yes, her best friend’s daughter, Jessie was found at the bottom of a building on campus. The M.E.---medical examiner---ruled it a suicide but Mel thinks she was pushed off the building. She’s trying to prove it so the M.E. will rule it a homicide and then we’ll open it up as a homicide case.

INTERVIEWER: And you are helping her prove it was murder?

BYRON: Let’s just say I’m doing what a cop does. Mel’s hands are tied now that she’s off the force. I’m lending my resources to her, it’s all aboveboard and legal. [frowns]

INTERVIEWER: How is the investigation going? Is it murder or suicide?

BYRON: I can’t talk about the details. Not yet. We’re still investigating.

INTERVIEWER: I understand. Thank you for coming in today, Byron, or should I say Detective Williams. Good luck in your investigation.

BYRON: Thank you for having me.



Mel, a former cop shot in the back now lives in constant pain. When her best friend's daughter is missing, Mel is asked to help find her. When the girl is found dead at the bottom of a tall building, the cops believe she jumped. Did she? Or is it murder?

Book Trailer: http://animoto.com/play/BqOWt9Xj1HYrSOoOWGAsOw

Buy it here: http://www.gypsyshadow.com/KathleenAllen.html#Monday

Buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Its-Monday-Must-Murder-ebook/dp/B005PFTW8Q/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317139464&sr=1-8

Find Kathleen S. Allen:
Twitter: @kathleea
Facebook: Witch Hunter
Email: gaelicfairie(at)gmail(dot)com
Website: http://gaelicfairie.webs.com
Book Trailers on: YouTube
Represented by: Nancy Knight of Sullivan Maxx Literary Agency


Kathleen's bio: Kathleen started writing at the age of eight when she self published a book of poetry to give as gifts during the holidays. Okay, she painstakingly hand copied in her best printing her poems onto paper, used a paper punch to punch holes in the sides, made an orange construction paper book "jacket" and wrote MY POEMS on it in blue crayon, tied it with a bit of red ribbon with a very nice bow and, ta dah, her first book! She has been writing ever since. Her books are available online and in print.

Unanswered questions

One thing I love about fiction is that you kinda get to play detective. You try to figure characters out, figure out what the setting looks like, how everyone is talking and, more importantly, exactly what this story is all about. I enjoy reading mysteries, and this particular genre is of course one that should keep readers guessing. But any genre – fantasy, horror, romance and sci-fi – would do well to keep readers trying to figure everything out. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that readers won’t be able to figure everything out. And this is why certain questions need to be answered.

Readers of fiction are a lot like journalists. They want to know the who, what, where, when, why and how of everything. Why does that character walk with a limp? Why is that character afraid of traveling through that particular state? Why is that character afraid to commit? But also, who are these characters? What does this particular symbol mean? Where is the story set? When did that character find the time to make the sweater she gives to her beloved? How does that character know how to pick locks like a pro?

As a writer of fiction, I realize we can’t give away too much information in one giant info dump, but we DO need to provide that information at some point in the story. Readers are a curious sort, and if their questions about who someone is and why he is important to the story are not answered, it’s a big turn-off. And, I must say that, as a book reviewer, it can be pretty irritating. One particular novel I read had me asking "what the heck just happened???" at the very end and it was aggravating that I couldn't figure it out.

In my case, I have been working on edits for Shadow of Samhain. This particular draft that was accepted by my publisher answered two questions that were not answered in the original book, November’s Child. Namely:

How did Jonathan find out about who his mother really was?

How did Jovin end up being brought into the story? (People don’t just appear out of nowhere, after all.)

I was sure to answer these questions, but I had neglected to include one other important piece of information. At one point in the story, my character, Janay, reflects on how she hadn’t talked to her mother for 20 years. Okay … why? Did she and her mother have a falling out? If so, what was it about? Did her mother abuse her and she finally got away? Was she kidnapped as a teenager and lost track of where her mother was?

I knew I could not keep readers guessing over this. Sure, readers could draw their own conclusions about why someone was estranged from their parent, but that’s not the way it works when you write fiction. Don’t leave readers hanging when it comes to something they really can’t figure out for themselves. Don’t leave those kinds of questions unanswered.

In the original book, I did answer that question, but not in this draft. So, as I worked on the edits, I realized that was important information that needed to be in the story, and so I added it. I was grateful I was able to catch something like this during this round of edits, but, unfortunately, not every author catches something like that.

When you tell a story, tell the whole story. Answer the questions: Who, what, where, when, why and how. If you need to hold some things back for future books, write it in a way that lets readers know it’s something that you’ll come back to later (such as leaving a character in confusion about something), but do try to answer the questions you can answer in the book you are writing now. Readers will appreciate it if you fill in the gaps so that they can continue reading, and enjoying, your story.

Interview with Karina Fabian

Author Karina Fabian

Please welcome Karina Fabian. She and her co-author, Colleen Drippe, have a new book out called Frightliners. If you are looking for some scary stories to read for Halloween, check this book out! You won’t be disappointed.




Karina was kind enough to take the time to answer my questions for this blog post.



How long have you been a writer?

Professionally, since around 1995, but I was mostly doing non-fiction until around 2007. I enjoyed writing articles, but I was homeschooling three kids at the time and found I needed to cut back on the writing, and I’d been wanting to go back to fiction, which I’ve always loved writing. I’ve had such fun with it that I’ve not gone back!

What inspires your writing?

It’s easier to ask what doesn’t inspire my writing, but I can’t really answer that, either. I’ve written stories inspired by conversations, other books I’ve read, challenges, and even songs. In fact, the main character in the story “Accidental Undeath” included in Frightliner came from a Micheal Loncor song, “Truck Driving Vampire.”

What do you write?

Mostly science fiction and fantasy, often very funny but sometimes kind of eerie—like my latest novel Mind Over Mind, which is about a psychic whose powers drive him insane and his fight for control and sanity. My science fiction tends to be more serious, as well. My horror can also be humorous—like Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator—or it can be creepy, like Frightliner. I also wrote a devotional with my father and he’d like to do another about deacons when I can fit it. I write school calendars and have also written craft books. So I’m all over the place, which keeps things fresh and fun for me.

Who came up with the idea for Frightliner?

It was kind of a synergy. I’d written about a truck-driving vampire based on Michael Longcor’s humorous song. My story wasn’t humorous, but the vampire was a good ol’ boy in a traumatic situation. Colleen wondered that we never saw vampire stories where the vampire really was evil and we decided to write one.

How did you and Colleen Drippe collaborate on this project? Did you each write a chapter or...? Was everything done through email or...?

We each wrote a section, then the other tweaked it and continued on. It was all over e-mail and took us a couple of months, but it was just a lot of fun. I know Colleen stretched my writing abilities and made me write in a style I don’t usually use in order to match her better. (She’s much better at description and enjoys that. I’m a dialog-action person.)

Were there any issues you had to grapple with as a writer as you worked on this book? Please explain.

Actually, as I recall the story went very smoothly. I think out only issue was what to do with it when we finished. We first sold it to Twilight Times as a short story several years ago, and I decided to give it a try as a novella. We added a couple of stories and Crossroads took it. I’m pretty happy about that—not only did they do an awesome job of putting it together, they are handling the royalty split for us, which is a relief because I’m awful with finances that way.

How would you describe your experiences collaborating with another writer for one book? Was it a challenge? How did you both work out any problems that came up?

Like I said, Frightliner was pretty easy. We’re working on another that’s a little slower going because we’re both much busier. (It’s in my court now and I feel so bad that I’ve not gotten to it.) Also, we’ve got different ideas about where this one should go—Colleen’s plot pace is faster than I want, though I love the ideas she has. Also, we’re still feeling our way around the priest characters and how to treat them; some things I think are okay, she feels aren’t respectful, and a few things she’s wanted to do I feel are too extreme. However, we’re adults, professionals and friends, so we’re working through them pretty smoothly.

What is Frightliner about?

A truck-driving vampire is terrorizing the interstate between Arizona and Texas, and when it marks trucker Jay as its next victim, he’ll need to come to terms with the impossible in order to save his own life.

There are so many stories of things that happen to people because they hitched a bad ride or because they encountered something otherworldly on the road. How did you and your co-author make sure these stories were different?

We really didn’t do an analysis of other books or anything to make sure ours was different. We wrote the story as the characters told it to us. Since Colleen’s husband was a trucker, there’s a lot of great detail, and I especially enjoy the showdown in the abandoned church.

What other types of books or projects can your readers look forward to seeing from you in the near future?

The next book I have coming out is Live and Let Fly, which is a humorous fantasy starring my dragon detective and his partner, a magic-slinging nun, who take on a demigod who wants to destroy the worlds. It’s super-spy spoofing as only DragonEye can do it. To get folks ready, I have a DragonEye, PI Christmas story that will go serial in November: http://christmasspirits.karinafabian.com

Frightliner: And Other Tales of the Undead
By Colleen Drippe and Karina Fabian

Evil sits behind the wheel.

Short Synopsis: A truck-driving vampire terrorizes Interstate 10 in New Mexico and Texas. When he targets trucker Jay Carlson, Jay finds himself unwillingly teaming up with an illegal alien and a tough-talking custodian--both of whom claim to be vampire hunters. However, they are injured in the fight, and Jay will have to conquer his disbelief and
destroy the vampire himself before it kills them all.

Marketing Synopsis: All Jay Carlson wants is to get his load delivered on-time, and the mysterious murder on a lone stretch of I-10 is just a slow-down. Things get freaky as a stranger suggests the murderer is a truck driver—and Jay has seen the truck. Thus starts a game of cat
and mouse as the mysterious truck stalks him on his route. No one else seems to see his phantom pursuer except for two unlikely allies: a custodian claiming to be a vampire hunter, and an illegal alien who trusts his faith to defeat the monster. When the truck-driving vampire traps them in an abandoned church and his only defenders are injured in the fight, Jay must swallow his own disbelief and destroy the vampire himself before he kills them all.

Bios:

* Karina Fabian: Karina Fabian writes fantasy and science fiction, with the occasional foray into the world of horror. Her first novel, Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, the 2010 INDIE Award for best fantasy. Her latest book, the comedic horror, Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, was a
top ten in the Preditor and Editor reader’s polls and winner of the Global E-Book Award for best horror. Learn more about her works at http://fabianspace.com

* Colleen Drippe: Colleen Drippe has been writing since age 6 and has had a lot of science fiction, a moderate amount of horror and fantasy, and assorted nonfiction scattered throughout the small press and online. She also writes for children and has had three children's books published so far (The Little Blue House, Christmas at the Little Blue House, and Mystery at Miners’ Creek) and another one (Growing with the Little Blue House) due out any day. She has had one sf book published (Godcountry) and another (Gelen!) coming out this year. She is the former editor of Hereditas (of happy memory but dried up funding) and is currently working on another sf book along with various other projects.

Excerpt:

Of course that was why he had not come out to check on her, she thought with a surge of relief. He probably thought it was an abandoned car. But now--she stepped out onto the gravel, hearing for the first time how loud the crickets sang. She smelled the strong scent of the cooling air. Too early for snow. Too warm, still anyway, though she cursed herself for not thinking to put on jeans before making her big exit. She peered at the cab, but nothing moved.
“Hello!” she called, moving closer. She could not make out a logo on the truck. It was dark, dark paint. She had an impression that the shape was--not wrong exactly, but not usual. It was an older model, she decided. An old truck.
She had reached the door.
“Anyone there?” she called, hesitating to step up and look inside. What if something had happened to the driver? What if he were dead? What if she opened the door and a body spilled out onto the road?
But that was silly. He had just pulled up. Probably he was rummaging around in his berth for some tools.
But what if he was dead? What if she took hold of the door and--and what if he was right there, watching her?
She had almost decided to go back to her own car. But the thought of the semi parked behind her, silently cutting its chunk from the sky, was in some strange way even more frightening than opening the door. She reached up for the handle and pulled herself up level with
the window.
The handle turned in her hand.
It was then she knew she had done the wrong thing. If only someone else had come—she prayed for someone else. A cop. Even a car full of good old boys. Anyone.
The crickets fairly screamed their shrill and mindless song, the scent of the Russian knapweed was overpowering. But it wasn’t strong enough to hide another smell, a dark earthy smell. A smell of death mellowed by long usage.
The door opened.
Reba froze, clutching the handle, balancing there with the driver’s seat in front of her.
She tried to speak, to call, but nothing would come out. She hung there, thinking of death, while the night passed and the stars moved and the moon looked in over her shoulder. Finally, she climbed into the truck.
“Daniel,” she whimpered. She was ready to forgive the new pickup, but it was too late.
Something moved in the back and she turned in the driver’s seat and saw a pale face, caught in the moonlight, eyes gleaming. She had an impression of lank hair, grizzled beard. And then two hands reached up to take her shoulders and she saw the mouth open.

Video trailer link: http://youtu.be/pEi6y0IuOlI

Amazon link: http://amzn.to/lJDL9b

Website: http://fabianspace.com

Guest blogging

Sometimes, I start doing things only because they happen to fall into my lap. I became a book reviewer after a fellow author asked me to review her book for a site -- a site whose admin liked my review so much, she asked me to review other books for her. I started writing for SIGNews after someone who works there contacted me personally about my writing interests. And I took on editing manuscripts after my writer friends asked me to do this for their books.

And now it seems that I am getting into something else, too, this time for my blog. Now I will be hosting guest blog posts every Tuesday.

Why every Tuesday? Some authors I know have new books out, and they were hunting for blogs to include in their blog tours. Of course, I volunteered my blog, and two authors are now lined up to post on here.

They are both going to be featured here on a Tuesday. I noticed how they both ended up on a Tuesday and thought, "Hm. What if I made this a Tuesday thing?"

So, every Tuesday, look for a guest blog post from an author!

Or, it could be an interview with an author or an excerpt from an author's work. Either way, it is a free promo opp for authors to spread the word about their books!

Thing of it is, I don't have anyone for THIS coming Tuesday, October 4th. But I have been responding to emails from authors telling them this day is open. Hopefully, I can find someone. Stay tuned!