Viral Blues #SomethingWickedTour @StoryEmpire

Hey, everyone! Wow. Day four of Story Empire’s Something Wicked Tour. For today’s schedule, click here.

You’re in for a special treat for today’s stop of Story Empire’s Something Wicked Tour. I’m welcoming back a special guest – Lisa Burton, the Robot Girl. She’s here to talk about C. S. Boyack’s new release, Viral Blues. Lisa, take it away!


Thanks for inviting me over, Joan. Hi, everyone. I’m here as part of the Something Wicked tour from Story Empire. As Craig’s spokesmodel, sometimes I get to make these appearances. While I’m here, you can find Joan over at Harmony Kent’s place, so make sure to visit her.

I see a lot of playlists and videos on this site, so I decided to try using that to appeal to your readers.

Craig is also heavily inspired by music, and one of his characters, well two actually, front a band called Lizzie and the Pythons. She sings, and he plays the upright bass, but has to use her fingers to do it. Oh, I should mention that he’s a hat. Not just any old hat, he’s actually a creature from another dimension.

We all wound up going to a fancy country club to gather information about these paranormal crimes. The only way we could do it was to steal the musical gig from another band and gain access that way.

Girl talk happened, and we agreed that Lizzie’s saxophone player is hot. He’s just so stoic and wooden that we decided to tease him a bit during the show.

Turn your speakers up, hit the video, and enjoy:

 

Lizzie leaned the bass back. “We’re Lizzie and The Pythons, and we’re joined by a special guest tonight, Miss Lisa Burton. She’s asked to sing one for everybody. This is an old Joe Cocker song.”

Fat Larry and Shade started them off with some rhythmic piano chords and low saxophone support. Lisa turned her back to the crowd and started gyrating, making circles with her hips. She pulled her left hand through her hair, while her right arm extended toward Shade. Long elegant fingers grasped air in his direction as she sang the first verse.

She swiveled across the stage to Shade’s side, grabbed a handful of his shirt sleeve, then pulled him tight into her breasts. She made a quivering intake of breath, then sang directly into his ear, “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”

Shade’s jaw dropped open, and he missed the next two measures. Tanith tried not to crack up but kept the beat, and her backup vocals, in check.


Shade is still kind of wooden, and kind of hot, but it was a nice breather in the middle of the action.

Viral Blues involves several of Craig’s previous characters in a paranormal romp just in time for Halloween. Don’t panic if you haven’t read one of his stories before, there is no prerequisite reading. You can pick up Viral Blues and enjoy the heck out of it all by itself.

Thanks for inviting me over, Joan, and I really like the new look of the place.


Lisa, it was a pleasure to have you visit today. And now, here’s more info about Viral Blues.

Blurb:

Someone knows about the hat. The creature from another dimension that helps Lizzie fight against the creatures of darkness.

They are summoned to a cryptic meeting with a secret society, where they meet other people with enhanced skills. It turns out someone, or something, has been tampering with the world’s vaccine supply. The goal doesn’t appear to be political or financial, but biblical pestilence.

Can this group of loners come together in time to make a difference when even the proper authorities are obstacles?

Check out Viral Blues, for your dose of paranormal adventure, with a strong sample of dark humor. And in recent superhero style, don’t miss the secret last chapter after the back material.

Connect with Craig:

Cover Reveal: Marcia Meara – The Emissary 2 To Love Somebody

Hello, Readers. It’s my delight to welcome for the first time author Marcia Meara. She has a brand new book soon to be released. Today I’m joining her tour to reveal the cover of The Emissary 2: To Love Somebody. Please welcome Marcia Meara.

COMING SOON!
They’re back!
Jake and Dodger are at it again,
accompanied by their
boss, the archangel Azrael.

I am so excited, I can hardly stand it. Once again, Nicki Forde Graphics Design has come up with a cover that does exactly what I wanted it to do. It provides a great-looking image that clearly links the second novella in my Emissary series with the first one. And it does this by putting Jake’s big, red-and-white semi front and center, angel wings and all, but with a completely different background.

In The Emissary 2: To Love Somebody, Jake and Dodger travel both coasts of Florida, day and night, working their emissarial magic wherever they find souls in trouble. For me, the palm fronds over the truck, the ocean in the background, and the moon shining down are perfect.

I can’t give you an exact release date for The Emissary 2: To Love Sombody yet, as I still have a few more tiny odds and ends to finish up, including the blurb. But I’m 99.9% sure it will be available within a week or two, and I’ll have more to share with you then. In the meantime, what do you think?

My heartfelt thanks to all the wonderful bloggers who have helped me share my new cover with the Immediate World! It’s lovely to be part of such a supportive online community, and every single one of you is special to me. Thank you!

NOTE: This is not a stand-alone novella, so now’s a good time to grab the first one. You can read it in an evening and be all set for The Emissary 2. You’ll find The Emissary 1 on Amazon HERE.


Author Marcia Meara

Marcia Meara lives in central Florida, just north of Orlando, with her husband of over thirty years, four big cats, and two small dachshunds. When not writing or blogging, she spends her time gardening, and enjoying the surprising amount of wildlife that manages to make a home in her suburban yard. At the age of five, Marcia declared she wanted to be an author, and is ecstatic that at age 69, she finally began pursuing that dream. Her belief in the redemptive power of love is a unifying factor in both of her popular series and her poetry. Today, she’s still going strong, and plans to keep on writing until she falls face down on the keyboard, which she figures would be a pretty good way to go!

Marcia has published six novels, one novella, and one book of poetry to date, all of which are available on Amazon:
Wake-Robin Ridge
A Boy Named Rabbit: Wake-Robin Ridge Book 2
Harbinger: Wake-Robin Ridge Book 3

Swamp Ghosts: A Riverbend Novel
Finding Hunter: Riverbend Book 2
That Darkest Place: Riverbend Book 3

The Emissary: A Riverbend Spinoff Novella

Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love

Marcia’s Amazon Author Page

You can reach Marcia via email at marciameara16@gmail.com or on the following social media sites:

The Write Stuff: http://marciamearawrites.com/
Twitter: @marciameara
Facebook: www.facebook.com/marcia.meara.writer
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/marciameara/

Why a Novella? Guest Post by C. S. Boyack

Hi Everyone. It’s a pleasure to welcome fellow author and Story Empire contributor C. S. Boyack to my blog today. Craig has a new novella he recently released, and he’s here to tell you about  the book and why he chose to write a novella rather than a longer novel.

Thanks for inviting me over today, Joan. I’m here to talk about my new book, The Hat. I’m known for trying all the tools in the toolbox, and every book has a behind-the-scenes goal. I believe this helps me grow as an author.

I’ve used different points of view, tenses, story structure, and more to write my stories. The personal goal this time was to bring out a novella length work. That may not seem like much of a goal, so let me explain why.

A few years ago I realized that modern life doesn’t allow for much time. We’re on-call even on our days off. People are in contact with their offices even when they’re on vacation. We’ve trained ourselves to get information in smaller and smaller increments. I don’t know about you, but reading a novel takes me some serious quality time. This time is at a premium for me.

I noticed a renewed interest in short stories, and decided the timing was right to try some of those myself. This led to my Experimental Notebook. Readers could enjoy a story during a coffee break. It was a story book, so they could feasibly get a new story every day until they finished it.

This one sold really well for me, so I followed it up with a second Notebook which sold even better. Maybe I was on to something here. My experimenting with styles and such was rampant in these books, thus the experimental part of the titles, but readers seemed to like it. However, a few reviewers indicated they would have liked a little more time with one story or another. (I take that as a sign that I created some fairly rich worlds within the parameters of a short story.)

What to do? What to do? I have novel length works available. I’ve served the crowd that is pressed for time. Hmm, maybe the novella is due to break out once more?

There was a time when short stories ruled. Then novels took the spotlight. Novella’s we’re always like the stepchild. They hung around, but didn’t fit into magazine parameters. New York publishing didn’t want them either. With the appearance of the e-book, neither of those excuses makes much sense. We’re not trying to fit it between advertisements for Turtle Wax, or tying up the printing presses and trucking to deliver a smaller work.

I found it to be an interesting length. It doesn’t need to be trimmed to the bone like a short story, or even tighter like a micro-fiction. It also doesn’t have that slog through the middle that novels have.

Pricing it was a nightmare, because to me it’s more like a novel. I really enjoyed the story, but now it’s my stepchild. At the end of the day, I decided to publish it at 99¢. This means I get almost nothing out of it, but perhaps some decent reviews and an interest in one of my longer works will happen. I saw this happen with both Experimental Notebooks.

Oh, as a secondary experiment, I included a few small graphics in the book. They are tiny bits intended to enhance the story.

Take a chance on The Hat. I really enjoyed writing it, and maybe you can use it to spend your lunch breaks on this week. I’ll let the cover and blurb tell you all about it.

Blurb:

Lizzie St. Laurent is dealing with many of the struggles of young life. She lost her grandmother, and her living arrangements. Her new roommate abandoned her, and she’s working multiple jobs just to keep her head above water.

She inherits an old hat from her grandmother’s estate, but it belonged to her grandfather. This is no ordinary hat, but a being from an alternate dimension. One with special powers.

Lizzie and the hat don’t exactly hit it off right away, but when her best friend’s newborn is kidnapped by a ring of baby traffickers, Lizzie turns to the hat for help. This leads her deep into her family history and a world she’s never known.

Lizzie gives up everything to rescue the babies. She loses her jobs, and may wind up in jail before it’s over. Along the way, she and the hat may have a new way of making ends meet.

Humorous and fun, The Hat is novella length. Wonderful escapism for an afternoon.

Purchase Link


C. S. Boyack was born in a town called Elko, Nevada. He likes to tell everyone he was born in a small town in the 1940s. I’m not quite that old, but Elko has always been a little behind the times. This gives me a unique perspective of earlier times, and other ways of getting by. Some of this bleeds through into my fiction.

Craig moved to Idaho right after the turn of the century, and never looked back. His writing career was born there, with access to other writers and critique groups he jumped in with both feet.

He likes to write about things that have something unusual. His works are in the realm of science fiction, paranormal, and fantasy. The goal is to entertain you for a few hours and he hopes you enjoy the ride.

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