Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The Eye-Dancers

Today's special guest is Michael S. Fedison. Michael was born in Rochester, New York, and now lives with his wife, Sarah, and regal cat, Luke, in the green hills of central Vermont. Michael has been writing creatively for as long as he can remember, and has had short fiction published in several literary magazines, including Iconoclast and The Written Word. He works as a full-time technical writer and also is a freelance proofreader and copy editor.

Michael has been a lover of imaginative stories his entire life. He enjoys any story that takes you by the hand, lifts you up, and transports you to another place, a new and creative way of looking at the world around us.


ABOUT THE BOOK

Seventh-grader Mitchell Brant and three of his classmates inexplicably wake up at the back edge of a softball field to the sounds of a game, the cheering of the crowd. None of them remembers coming here. And as they soon learn, “here” is like no place they’ve ever seen. Cars resemble antiques from the 1950s. There are no cell phones, no PCs. Even the spelling of words is slightly off.

A compulsive liar, constantly telling fantastic stories to garner attention and approval, Mitchell can only wish this were just one more of his tall tales. But it isn’t. It’s all too real. Together, as they confront unexpected and life-threatening dangers, Mitchell and his friends must overcome their bickering and insecurities to learn what happened, where they are, and how to get back home.

The answers can be found only in the mysterious little girl with the blue, hypnotic eyes. The one they had each dreamed of three nights in a row before arriving here. She is their only hope. And, as they eventually discover, they are her only hope.

 And time is running out.


AN EXCERPT


Peering out his bedroom window, his eyes flattened into squinting slits, Mitchell Brant saw her.
           
“No,” he said.  “It can’t be her.  It can’t be.”
           
But it was.  She had come again.
           
He looked away, at the night-shadows on the floor, at the sheets jumbled and strewn on his bed.  Maybe she wasn’t really out there.  Maybe it was just an illusion, some odd distortion of the light.

He looked out the window.

She was still there.

He felt the fine hairs at the nape of his neck stand up.  Gooseflesh, cold against the stifling humidity filtering in through the open window, speckled his forearms.

The girl was standing under the streetlamp, looking straight in at him—the same way she had last night and the night before.  She was just a child, probably no more than seven years old—his sister’s age.  What was she doing out in the street, alone, well past midnight?  Was she a runaway?  And why had she come three nights in a row?

He tried to look away again, but he couldn’t.  It was as though the girl had cast a spell over him.  “What’s with you?” he said to himself.  “Just go back to sleep.”  Instead, he stood up.  She had raised her right arm above her head, waving at him frantically.

“Help me.”  The voice filtered in through the window.  “Why don’t you . . .?”  The girl’s voice.  And yet, there was something different about it, something off.  It sounded hollow, as if it had originated from a dark place, a secret place, cold like the grave. 


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Michael will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: 


Monday, May 26, 2014

The Complete Check Your Luck Agency

Today's special guest is KS Augustin."Kaz" loves writing human stories, whether set on Earth or out among the stars. Malaysian-born, she has travelled a goodly portion of the world and lived to tell the tale! Her urban fantasy release, The Complete Check Your Luck Agency, consists of five books, exploring the myths and legends of the melting-pot that is south-east Asia. Come for the food, stay for the monsters! (Ghosts included at no extra charge.)


As if all that's not enough, she's also Chief Editor of the free online quarterly magazine, Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly. http://www.scifiromancequarterly.org/



ON MYTHICAL CREATURES AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

I sit here in south-east Asia, at the melting pot of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Arab cultures, swirled with Portuguese, Dutch and British invasions, thinking of how best to tell you about the creatures in my book, The Complete Check Your Luck Agency.

Unfortunately, as many creatures had to be left out of the book as got into it, but let me whet your appetite. While Western readers may have one image of a ghost, south-east Asia has a variety. There's the kuttisaathan, a ghost that haunts Hindu graveyards; the ghosts who receive no ancestor worship, or hungry ghosts, of Chinese mythology; and the hantu lubang, the Malay ghost that inhabits caves and crevices, just to name three. We have vampires, but they're exclusively female—women who have lost their lives during childbirth. Thanks to the Arabs, we also have djinn, who are believed to guard the casinos in the region!

What about elves, you ask, I bet you don't have them? On the contrary! They're called orang bunian, the beautiful people who can lure you to their kingdom. A day spent with them can translate to a decade passing in the normal world. They can give you your heart's desire, but are quick to punish if they feel they've been slighted in any way.

This is the world that Ursula Formosa enters. The problem is, Ursula has paranormal abilities but is determined to ignore them; until, that is, she can't. I know I'm only her creator, but I get the feeling that Ursula deliberately joined quirky The Check Your Luck Agency because, deep down inside, she really wanted to get in touch with her psychic side. In any case, what she discovers is much more than she expected and, if she and her new friends are going to live, she's going to have to grow up fast and learn to work together with the strangest group of people you've ever met.

Lastly, several of the situations in the book have been things that have actually happened to me, and all of them have been described to me by various locals. I try to keep a sceptical mind about all this (much like Ursula, although I don't have any of her powers), but something still scratches in the back of my mind. Was that really the wind blowing through a coconut palm? Or was it the playful breath of a lonely spirit?

I'd like to welcome you to a different world—hot, sweltering, verdant, mysterious—and hope you enjoy your stay there. I guarantee, it's different to what you're used to.


ABOUT THE BOOK


Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.

After the tragic death of her parents, and with nothing left tying her to the United Kingdom, Ursula Formosa returns to her homeland and a job with the eccentrically-named Singapore firm, “The Check Your Luck Agency”.

What begins as an attempt to stave off boredom turns into a new way of life as the scales drop from Ursula’s eyes and she tentatively enters a realm that contains vengeful ghosts, toyol, demons, pontianak and curses, not to mention old-fashioned fraud and larceny. As she befriends bomohs, mediums and a young woman already centuries old, Ursula’s ideas of friendship expand into a fresh view of the world that surrounds her.

But she isn’t going to be left to ease into things. A criminal mastermind, who is also a powerful sorcerer, is gathering mythical creatures to help him possess every living soul in Singapore, and he isn’t about to let the members of The Check Your Luck Agency stand in his way!


AN EXCERPT


“What made you take a job with Fiona Li?”

“I think it was Fiona who chose me,” I laughed. “She had the craziest ad in a newspaper one weekend, and I was mulling my options at the time. It was a fortunate confluence of circumstance, as she’d say.”

“You mean you didn’t train to become a paranormal investigator?” he asked with a smile. It dented his cheeks, giving him dimples to go with those liquid eyes, smooth voice and engaging manner. I swallowed. I was in serious trouble.

“I don’t see myself as a paranormal investigator,” I corrected him.

I knew Fiona’s views on the Agency’s work and my own differed markedly, but I wasn’t going to lie to the smooth-skinned, extremely handsome man seated across the table from me.

“I’ll admit I’m the sceptic of the company,” I began. “In fact, in every case I’ve handled in the past six months, not a single one ended up being attributed to supernatural causes.”

“Not one?” He was clearly incredulous.

“I certainly haven’t seen them,” I demurred. “So far, ten out of ten times, the ‘bad luck’ dogging our clients has been down to greedy relatives, unscrupulous business practices or malicious ex-lovers.”

“Not one case of hauntings or possession or things that go bump in the night? Not one instance where you’ve seen something you can’t explain?”

Yes! Tell him!

I looked him straight in the face. “No. Nothing like that at all.”



SPECIAL LINKS



Kaz's website is at http://www.KSAugustin.com and a list of her books can also be found at http://www.SandalPressOnline.com She occasionally tweets as @SandalPress

The Complete Check Your Luck Agency is available from:








The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: