Congratulations!!!
Christine D ~ won an ecopy of Her Dear and Loving Husband
Joannie S ~ won a print copy of A Dog's Way Home
Thanks to all who entered! Happy Reading!
It's all about books and all bookworms are welcome! I hope you enjoy your visit.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Frightful Fall Read-a-Thon 2011
This Read-a-thon was presented by The Book Addict at Castle Macabre!
Here is the list of what I read during the Frightful Fall Read-a-thon!
The Vampuire Way by Clendening - reviewed here.
Her Dear and Loving Husband by Meredith Allard - reviewed here.
The Nation's Daughter by Valerie Maarten - reviewed here.
Expendable by Maggie Jaimeson - reviewed here.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Blog Tour: Hunters by Gregory Marshall Smith (International Giveaway)
This virtual book tour presented by Bewitching Book Tours.
You can see the entire tour schedule by clicking HERE.
Welcome to The Wormhole and my day on the tour!
I am pleased to present Gregory Marshall Smith!
Gregory Marshall Smith, born in Somerville , Massachusetts and raised in historic Medford Midnight , Spectacular Speculations and SFH Dominion, among others. Hunters is his first full-length novel.
Ever restless, he currently resides near Columbia , South Carolina
Greg’s Guest Blog
First off, I would like to thank the Wormhole for allowing me to toss a few words. I’ll try to keep it brief (those who know me are rolling their eyes right now).
Probably the one question I have gotten for most of my writing career has been why I, as an African-American, am writing in what, essentially, are “white” genres.
The answer is simple -- because I want to.
Seriously though. When I first began writing fiction, at the tender age of 9 (back in 1976 when I was known as an Afro-American), I didn’t go into the horror genre. I went for science fiction, a genre with even fewer black faces than horror. Back then, I had only Samuel R. Delany (Triton, Dahlgren) and Octavia Butler (Lilith’s Brood) to inspire me and, strangely, I couldn’t find their books on the shelves of the Medford (Massachusetts
I was heavily influenced by Creature Double Feature, a sci-fi anthology series on WLVI-Channel 56 in Boston Tokyo
I also liked Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, feeding my science fiction bent even more.
Finally, I had all of the neighborhood kids razzing me for trying to be “white” for writing science fiction. That just made me more determined to stick to the genre.
Horror came along most unexpectedly in 1982. The NAACP had begun holding Academic Cultural & Technical Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) to give black kids a chance to shine in areas other than sports. At the behest of the Boston NAACP, a bunch of kids in Boston Medford was my friend Terri Lyne Carington, Grammy-nominated jazz drummer; she used to play at a famous Boston
I drew up a poster of a giant monster attacking Boston Harbor
Don’t ask me how I came up with the idea but I got a book on writing plays and developed (in less than a week) a script called “The Ghost.” I turned it in right before the deadline and forgot about it because I knew it was a vast idea that couldn’t possibly be anything more than half-vast in execution. I concentrated on my “superior” drawing instead.
The drawing made the top 50. Ouch.
Dejected, I checked the rest of the results board and found “playwright.” I swallowed hard and couldn’t breathe. “The Ghost” had taken second out of 12 scripts.
Even though only the regional winners advanced to the national championship, I was happy to have placed so high. Turned out I had a knack for writing horror, as well as science fiction. Of course, I was also glad I hadn’t entered my “superior” comedy The Brown Cougar (a rip-off of The Pink Panther and the less said about that one, the better).
Ever since then, I’ve alternated between horror and science fiction, though sci-fi is my greater love. Numbers-wise, horror has more African-American authors, like Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes and Maurice Broaddus. Alas, in August, the publishing world lost L.A. Banks to adrenal cancer.
As for science fiction, there are few recognizable names, basically just Steven Barnes and Delany. Octavia Butler died a few years ago of injuries suffered in a fall.
So, for the foreseeable future, I will continue writing horror and science fiction, and I may even do some fantasy so a black face appears in that genre as well.
Excerpt from Hunters:
Above Kane’s body, the two silhouettes stopped. One stepped forward, into the moonlight, pulling something long and shiny from somewhere on his person. He raised it and, with one swing, made sure Kane would never take the blood of anyone again.
“God, I hate it when you do that, Ryker,” said the woman next to him.
“Show some backbone,” the man called Ryker snorted. “For a change.”
The woman glared at him, but stopped when she heard a moan nearby. She played her flashlight back into the shadows. Cursing, she moved over to Heidi’s body.
She didn’t pay attention as Kane’s corpse suddenly flared up like a match, dying out almost as quickly. Caring only about Kane’s victim, she called Ryker over to her.
“What about her?” she queried, sounding forlorn and sad. “She’s lost a lot of blood. She’s well into the turn. You know we can’t let that happen.”
“No, we can’t,” Ryker agreed. “But she might be one for the doc.”
“Always the pretty ones, right Cantrell?” the female commented, with disgust.
“Au contraire. I saved you, didn’t I?”
Glaring at him, the woman fought the urge to hit him with her flashlight.
“Very funny,” she said finally. “Okay, check her out then. If you think she’s worth salvaging, we’ll take her. But, if she can’t be helped, you’re the one who has to finish her.”
“So I have to do all the work, eh?” Ryker commented. “What else is new?”
Ryker looked down into Heidi’s eyes, feeling pity instantly. He knew she was yet another innocent victim, in a war she didn’t know had been declared. He saw her eyes darting wildly side to side, as if the brain behind them could not handle what was happening to it. Shaking his head, he checked her throat, touched her carotid artery, and looked at her skin pallor.
“I’m truly sorry about this, Miss,” Ryker said. “I really am. But, it’s war and everybody dies.”
As he lifted his obscenely long knife into her field of vision, her eyes stopped darting and grew wide in stark fear. Breaking contact with her almost pleading eyes, he lifted the knife and brought it down toward Heidi’s head.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Winners!
Congratulations to:
Katie who won an ecopy of
An Unexpected Bride!
Tammy who won an ecopy of Ardeur!
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Blog Tour: Expendable by Maggie Jaimeson (International Giveaway)
This Blog Tour is presented by The Bookish Snob Tours.
You can get to the entire tour schedule by clicking HERE.
You can see my review by clicking HERE.
Welcome to The Wormhole and my stop on the tour!
I am pleased to present Maggie Jaimeson and an excerpt from Expendable:
During the week, Maggie’s days are spent assisting colleges and universities with technology, distance education, open source software, and open education resources. At night and on the
weekends, she journeys into the world of her imagination and writes novels that reflect her passions and her belief that the good guys win in the end and that love will conquer all.
Maggie has published several short stories in romance and science fiction, but since 2004 she has
focused on publishing novels. Expendable is her first romantic suspense novel and she promises there will be more. Also currently available is Eternity, an SF with romantic elements; and Undertones, a contemporary romance which is the first in a four book series about the women of the Sweetwater Canyon Band. All of her full length novels are made available in ebook and print by her publishers.
Excerpt:
The kid stepped off the trail on the up slope and started climbing cross-country, then scampered further south again. Reed closed the gap. Only a few more strides and he’d have him. The boy slipped and screamed, tumbling down the slope. Reed braced himself, scooped his arms down and caught the boy, bringing him up against his chest.
The boy flailed at him, kicking and crying.
“Hold on,” Reed said. “Just a minute. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
The boy kicked again, and Reed let out an “oof” as the boy’s foot connected with Reed’s kidney. He set the kid on the ground, tightly pressing down on his shoulders. The kid kicked his shin.
“F…if you do that again, I’m going to sit on you.” Reed said. The kid twisted in his grasp and Reed applied more pressure, forcing the kid to bend lower to keep his balance. “Now tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”
For a moment, the boy quieted, tears streaming down his face. For the first time, Reed had a chance to actually look at him. Red marks encircled the kid’s wrists, as if they’d been tied for a long time. A large purple bruise on his left cheek looked like he’d been hit hard by someone strong. His shirt was ripped at the collar with what looked like dried blood along his shoulder.
Reed loosened his grip a little. “What’s happened here?”
The boy’s shoulders slumped and he looked down at the ground. Reed let go completely and the kid took off again, running up the trail.
Shit! Whatever had scared this kid was way beyond Reed’s stupid flashback.
The boy turned suddenly, jumping over a large boulder and then veered sharply to the left. Reed tried to adjust, but he stumbled and landed flat on his chest and face-to-face with a woman on the ground. Obviously dead. Reed scrambled back to a sitting position and scanned the woods for the kid.
Nowhere.
Had the boy been part of this? Maybe escaped from the assailant?
The woman wore a nice suit—skirt and jacket—but she was bent in an unnatural way. One leg splayed out to the right crossing over the other, putting her almost completely face down, with one arm pinned beneath her. Her long blonde hair, matted with blood and needles from the conifers, looked sticky and stiff. She’d probably died several hours ago. He’d seen people bleed out in Afghanistan
His training kept him close to the ground, though he doubted whoever did this was still around. If they had been, the boy would be dead too. He listened for a moment, unmoving, just in case.
Nothing.
Slowly, he turned the woman on to her back. Her clothes were intact except for an open shirt that showed some type of wound beneath her bra. Her hand compressed fabric against the wound, a torn yellow piece of paper clutched in her fingers with dried blood acting like a type of glue to keep the note there.
Based on the amount of blood, he guessed it had been a gunshot wound. Shit. No wonder the kid was running. He probably didn’t know the good guys from the bad.
Reed didn’t want to move her any more. The police would need to see her exactly as he’d found her. They’d want the kid, too. It’s likely the boy was a witness, and probably also a victim. He braced his hand against the ground and pushed himself up. To his surprise, the kid stood just ten feet off the trail. There were no tears now, no trembling, just him standing still as a statue with a tortured look in his eyes.
Reed didn’t move. He didn’t want to scare him into running again. “I’m sorry, kid. She’s dead.”
The boy stiffened and refused to look Reed in the eye.
“I guess you already knew that.”
The boy dropped his eyes to the ground and let out a big breath. His shoulders slumped.
“Do you know who did this?”
Again, the boy said nothing. He stared at Reed, his eyes wide, unblinking, as vacant as a sacrificial lamb. His lips trembled, but he didn’t cry out. Suddenly, he folded to the ground and curled into a fetal position.
Reed took a step forward, then another. When there was no flight reaction, he hurried to the kid and scooped him into his lap. Small arms went around his neck and held tight. Reed rocked him, hugging him to his chest.
“I don’t know what happened here, kid. But I’ll keep you safe. You hear? I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The boy didn’t cry, didn’t say anything, but he held on as if his fingers had a death grip on a hand grenade.
The next stop on the tour is: Oct 10 – Paranormal Opinion
You can enter to win a copy by filling out the form below! Good luck to all who enter!
Connect with Maggie online at:
Website: http://maggiejaimeson.com
Twitter: @maggiejaimeson
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maggie-Jaimeson/118916694787820
Behind the Book blog where she interviews other authors: http://author-secrets.blogspot.com
Thanks for stopping by The Wormhole!
Happy Reading!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Review: Expendable by Maggie Jaimeson
***received this ebook in exchange for an honest review and participation in the blog tour. The tour is being presented by The Bookish Snob Tours.
From the inside flap:
Jenna lifted up the blanket and gasped. "What the hell?" She was in only her underwear and an oversized T-shirt, not her own. No bra. No dress. No stockings.
"You bastard! What did you do to me? Where are my clothes?"
He slowly pulled a chair up to the bedside and she scrambled to the farthest corner away from him, wrapping the sheet around her. His dark brown eyes invited confidences, but she wasn't in the mood for sharing.
"I'm not going to hurt you--believe me. If I'd wanted to hurt you, you wouldn't be talking to me now." He patted the pillow where her head had been. "Please, relax. Come back and we can talk."
"I'll stay right here, thank you." Jenna edged a leg over the side and eyed the door. If he made one move toward her, she'd drop the sheet and run like hell. She didn't care if she was half naked; it would be better than being raped.
"Start talking," she said. "What happened after you hit me on the head?"
"I didn't hit you on the head."
"Right, and you didn't kill Tanya, and you didn't take her baby." She stared at him, her teeth clenched. She could bite him too, if she had to.
"Who's Tanya?"
"As if you didn't know, you murdering bastard."
My thoughts:
I fell in love with this story as soon as I started reading. The characters captured my heart upon introduction. David - the small, frightened child. Reed - the strong, ex-military man who was so very damaged. Jenna - the peace-loving fighter. Jenna's and Reed's friends too as we meet them. I loved the parallels, three women and three men - all tough, amazingly single, so close to each other that they feel as if they are family and passionately protective. Throw in their quirky personalities, a dangerous situation, a truly evil bad guy (Doctor Crane is terrifying and evil to his very core, the kind of villain that you instantly despise and secretly hope doesn't get to come out of the story unscathed), and a small child in need - and you have the makings of an incredible story.
Maggie Jaimeson does not disappoint! She takes these cleverly created characters and puts them into a story filled with danger, death, desire, fear, and passion, then she throws in hope and love. She takes you on the ride of your life as Jenna and Reed struggle with the problem of saving David from a madman when neither are totally sure they can even save themselves from themselves.
This story is a roller coaster of emotions. We are taken along on a journey where the questions asked are hard and the answers can only be found within a field gray, where even more questions are asked. Questions of ethics, morality, and judgement. What risks are worth taking? What cost is too high? Who gets to decide who is expendable and why? What would be worth killing or dying for?
Wonderfully written, exciting page turner! Couldn't put it down!
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