Johnathan Rand Talks Writing

During Grand Rapids Comic Con 2015, we had the distinct privilege of meeting Johnathan Rand. I knew he was crazy and liked him immediately as he was insane enough to have a photo taken with the crazy authors of Booth 529. (He's the tall one to the left...with hair. Not the middle guy or the talented writer/illustrator to the far right.)

As he has been writing for a while, and has quite the collection of Youth Horror titles (my kids have all read him during their time in elementary school) that  take place in Michigan and other states of the U.S.A., I thought it might be interesting to hear what this fine gentleman has to say about the writing craft and the passion of reading and writing.

So, I give to you, Mr. Johnathan Rand.

*bows, cracks head on floor, collapses in a pile, passes out*

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CREATIVES HELP BOARD: When did you start writing? I started by being obsessed with filling the blank page. My downfall was wide-ruled 5 subject notebooks back in late elementary/early middle school.

JOHNATHAN RAND: I've always loved to write, ever since I realized I could put my imaginary worlds on paper and they would become 'real.' However, growing up, I never really saw myself as an author. I began going to school/college for Natural Resources Technology. At that time, I took a part-time job at a radio station and fell in love with it. Most importantly, I fell in love with the process of creating radio commercials, writing and producing them, along with news stories, sports, whatever. Although it was a bottom-of-the-barrel-paying job, I didn't care. I loved it, and in future years made a nice career out of writing, voicing, and producing radio commercials for agencies all around the country. In 1995, I began writing an adult fiction novel, and fell in love with the process. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing (and there could be a debate as to whether I know what I'm doing today!), but my love of writing and the creative process is undisputed.

CHB: When did you realize "Hey! It's fun to create!" Me... grew up with Heston and Eastwood movies, 1977 Star Wars viewing...then many strange dreams that I could only purge and regain my sanity by writing them down and trying to make some semblance of them.

JR: Yes! I think I saw some of those same movies. It wasn't until my first few years at the radio station that I truly realized I loved the process of becoming so involved in a project that time vanishes. Years later, when I started writing books, I marveled at the clock when I realized a couple of hours had disappeared. But I think I've always loved the creative process. When I was ten years old, I earned money tying trout flies for sporting goods stores, and I did this through high school. In my twenties, I taught myself how to make willow furniture . . . another wonderful creative outlet. I love the challenge(s) that creativity invokes, and enjoy finding the focus.

CHB: Did you want to be a writer, or was it all by chance? Alien abduction? Spurned from law school?

JR: When I was young, I had a voracious appetite for books and reading anything. Comics, scary stuff, the back of a cereal box. In middle school, I would hike up to Rochette's Party Store in Grayling and use part of my lunch money to buy the Detroit News or Free Press. I think there must've been a few times when I thought of being an author, writing books for a living, but it wasn't anything I took seriously. I did wonder from time to time what it would be like to create one of those wonderful stories that I discovered in the covers of my favorite books, but the idea of writing such a volume of work, such an enormous amount of material, was very daunting. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized the creative process is a slow one, step by painstaking step. I fell in love with the creation of radio commercials, and when I started writing books, I realized there was no turning back. It was just a logical progression in the creative path.

CHB: Thoughts on getting your work 'out there' or 'recognized':

JR: First of all, why are you even doing this? Why do you want to be a writer? And don't tell me it's because you "love to write." If you love to write, then write. Case closed, you're done. Simple.

No, the fact is this: you want to earn money from your writing. Nobody wants to say it, because they don't want to be perceived as "selling out," or "greedy." Well, you'd better get your priorities straight before you embark upon this "career." And it's a tough one. Just walk in to any bookstore and look at your competition. There's more competition in the field of writing than any I've ever seen.

Another question to ask yourself: "What is it that I'm not willing to do?" Wait! Stop right there. You've already shot yourself in the foot. You've read some great science fiction or fantasy or horror or whatever when you were growing up, and you've written what you think is a pretty good book. Well, so has everyone else. Doesn't make you special, doesn't make you different. Doesn't mean you're going to earn a nickel from what you've written. You've jumped into the same ocean that everyone else has, and now you're trying to be...different?

Don't jump into that ocean. Find your own pond or lake or river, a place where you can be unique and different. Find what others aren't doing, and do it. And work your butt off. Find your own uniqueness, and find your own unique way to market it. Keep at it, and never stop. If you're going to be a successful writer, you're going to have to also be a successful marketer and successful businessperson. There is no other way around it.

CHB: When do you write? Is there a BEST TIME for you personally? What is your writing routine/ritual?

JR: There was a time when I would write wherever and whenever I could. However, over the past four years or so, I've gotten into the habit of getting up right around 3 AM or so. Of course, this requires hitting the sack around 8 PM, so I really don't have an exotic, party lifestyle. But each morning, regardless where I am in the country, I am writing by 3:30 AM. The first thing I write is my
journal, and this is done with pen and ink and a classic quill pen. I do this to slow down my thoughts and my mind, and turn the process into more of a tempered, controlled, quiet art. When I am journaling, I'm not concerned with output, and I'm certainly not concerned with plot, narrative, style, whatever. No one is going to read this stuff, anyway, and it's very liberating. Addictive, in fact. I usually write in this fashion for 90 minutes or so before getting down to stories that I'm working on. Typically, I write four or five books at a time, so I jump back and forth, perhaps focusing a little bit more on the one that's pressing, the one that will be released next. When I am writing novels, I typically use my computer, as it is much faster (obviously!) than pen and ink.

CHB: Are you a plotter or a pantster?

JR: Plotting: in most cases, I almost always know how my story is going to end. Yes, I do create outlines/story maps, especially with the books I write in the Michigan Chillers and American Chillers. I do this in a storyboard fashion, and I rewrite the outline over and over until I'm happy with it. Then, when I sit down to write, most, if not all, of the plot problems have already been resolved. It becomes a matter of connecting the dots, following the roadmap I've already created. Naturally, I'll
get some different ideas from time to time and take a few detours, but having a destination assures that I'm going to reach it. Of course, I'm aware that there are many authors who feel that outlines are not only unnecessary but detrimental to the creative process, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King among them. But for me, knowing where I'm going is a guarantee that I will get there. Sure, the story might not turn out as I had hoped, but it will at least be finished.

One more note on that: I write short stories at the proverbial drop of a hat, and in most cases these are not plotted. They are simply walks in the woods, little adventures that I embark upon. Sometimes I'm surprised, sometimes not. But was short stories, I really don't care if the story is good, or even if I finish the story. They are just little journeys, short exploratory travels. I would dare say that most of my short stories aren't very good, and that's just fine with me. I will keep the bad ones under wraps and share the ones that I like.

AUTHOR BIO

Johnathan Rand has authored more than 90 books since the year 2000, with nearly 6 million copies in print. His series include the incredibly popular AMERICAN CHILLERS, MICHIGAN CHILLERS, FREDDIE FERNORTNER, FEARLESS FIRST GRADER, and THE ADVENTURE CLUB. He's also co-authored a novel for teens entitled PANDEMIA. Under his pen name of Christopher Knight, he's the author of six adult novels, included the psychological thriller entitled BESTSELLER, which was made into a movie in 2014. When not traveling, Rand lives in northern Michigan with his wife and three dogs. He is also the only author in the world to have a store that sells only his works: CHILLERMANIA is located in Indian River, Michigan and is open year round and receives over 25,000 visitors annually. He loves his wife, their three dogs, and coffee. He despises the publishing industry and stays as far away from it as he can.

AUTHOR LINKS
www.americanchillers.com
www.facebook.com/johnathan.rand.9

L. ANDREW COOPER: Five Things Learned Writing LEAPING AT THORNS

by darkheroicfantasy

Leaping at Thorns: Fifteen Impalements Penned by Andrew Cooper arranges 15 of L. Andrew Cooper's experimental short horror stories into a "triptych" of themes--complicity, entrapment, and conspiracy--elements that run throughout the collection.

The stories span from the emotionally-centered and violence-mild "Last Move," about a mother and son whose cross-country move might be complicated by a haunted U-Move truck, to the almost unthinkably horrific "Charlie Mirren and His Mother," also about a mother and son, but their lives take a turn that might be traumatic for readers as well. While "Worm Would" offers a psychosexual fantasia on the sheer grossness that is a flatworm, "Tapestry" uses absurd, sometimes comic violence to take Jessica, the young professional protagonist, into a political nightmare. The absurd reaches dark extremes in "Lachrymosa," a story of almost pure hallucination, and stretches back toward the comic in the brain-and-tongue-twister "Heart on a Stick." The 'conspiracy' panel of the triptych, from "The Fate of Doctor Fincher" to "The Special One," is a series of standalone stories that each adds important details to the fictional world and grand scheme of Dr. Allen Fincher, who also lurks in the background of Cooper's novels Burning the Middle Ground and Descending Lines.

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Leaping at Thorns (BlackWyrm, 2014), collects 15 unpublished horror short stories that originated in moments throughout my adult life so far—the first draft of the oldest story in the book I wrote when I was 19. Until published, and sometimes even after, I continued to revise, edit, tinker… so the stories, as well as the book as a whole, have almost twenty years of development. To discuss what I learned over that time period (which includes my entire post-secondary education and career as a professor first of English literature, then of writing and communication, now of film and digital media) would tax the patience of a tax attorney. So, below, I've focused on a few things I've picked up during the final phase, getting the book out to the world.

1. It’s okay to be a sick son of a bitch.

My publisher presented me with a certificate granting me the honorific status of “Sick Son of a Bitch” for having written and published Leaping at Thorns, which is indeed a brutal and sick collection of tales. I am genuinely proud of this certificate, prouder of it than most of the honors I’ve been lucky enough to receive in my life. First, I’m proud because it means I’ve found a niche and a community where the stuff I’ve been producing my whole life—with no idea, until a few years ago, if I’d ever really publish my fiction—is not only tolerable but actually exciting because it’s sick. And while I don’t think my publisher had this dimension of sickness in mind when he created the certificate (he’s far too kind and sensitive), the truth is, the nasty edge of many of these stories comes straight from my own history of clinical depression and possibly much deeper (untreated but resolved) mental illness issues that arose in my early twenties. My writing really comes from two places—dealing with sickness in my head, something we all have to one degree or another, and dealing with sickness in the world. I abhor violence anywhere but in fiction, but in my fiction, the violence really ought to put people in messed up states of mind. The book isn’t for kids, but for adults, this experience can be profound and productive, or so I’ve heard—and so it’s okay that this particular sick son of a bitch named L. Andrew Cooper is providing it.

2. For writers who refuse to follow trends, short story collections are awesome.

While I’m hoping for more reviews (the book has only been out for a month), most reviews and interviews related to Leaping at Thorns so far have pointed out that many of the stories, which I label as “experimental,” carry a significant “WTF” factor. I don’t really believe in realism, and I think editors who insist on rational character motivation and conventional narrative resolution tend to take a lot of the horror out of horror—few things are more horrific than phenomena that frighten us but defy logical explanation. Some of my stories, therefore, don’t fit into mainstream magazines and such that demand for authors to provide readers with more conventional experiences of stories with easy-to-follow characters and beginnings, middles, and ends. For my genre, horror, I’m also risky in avoiding pre-sold character types. Don’t get me wrong—I love me some good zombie, vampire, werewolf, and ghost stories, and some of the creatures that show up in my stories are arguably variants on these monstrous archetypes—but nothing in Leaping at Thorns speaks directly to these pre-existing horror markets. So again, one of these stories by itself is a homeless oddball. But with 14 friends, each story in the collection has a context where the absence of the more familiar trappings of contemporary horror is a unifying factor. The stories work better in a collection because the collection creates trends within itself.

3. Present-day me and years-ago me are different people.

I revised and edited all the stories in Leaping at Thorns in the months prior to publication, so they’ve all been filtered by my present-day brain, which belongs to a publishing author who thinks about things like audience accessibility—i.e., I think about the fact that readers might benefit from some WTF but at least need to have something to hold on to while they read. However, the me that first drafted many of these stories, particularly the oldest stories in the collection, didn’t give much thought to audience because he wasn’t thinking about publication. My 19-year-old self, for instance, was still obsessed with William Faulkner, stream of consciousness, sentences that go on for pages without full-stop punctuation and with embedded phrases locked inside other embedded phrases… a lot of that sort of stuff had to go because it would do a disservice to my audience. However, certain moves I see myself making in stories like “Hands” and “Light,” both older, I know I would never make in writing a story now, but they’re moves I would have no problem with another author making. So in preparing this book, I had to learn to draw a line between audience-unfriendly prose that had to go and narrative moves that another me made that deserved to stay.

4. Same stories + different me = easier publication.

One could say that my marvelous present day skills at revision and editing make all the difference. I don’t believe that, though. While some of the stories in Leaping at Thorns had never seen the light of day, I did send a few off to rejections. I eventually stopped submitting stories almost completely, as there’s little money and a lot of time involved in the revolving submissions processes. However, once I had a couple of novels, some good reviews, and a bit of a following, I started sending out some stories again… some of the same stories broadly rejected before… and got picked up immediately. I’m not famous or anything, but I’ve climbed a few rungs. This is just to say to other aspiring writers: if you’ve ever suspected that the quality of your writing is not at issue, rather your market position, you might very well be right.

5. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to consider “L. Andrew Cooper” to be a fictional character.

I’ve been very fortunate to work with BlackWyrm Publishing, a small press that lets me publish my grim stories—my novels Burning the Middle Ground and Descending Lines—my way. Each of those novels is politically charged, a bit more intellectual than standard horror fare, but chock full of brutal violence and page-turning suspense. With each, though, I felt worried that I had to keep my inner nerd at bay. The novels are, plainly put, less experimental than Leaping at Thorns. The recent short story collection is the biggest risk I’ve taken so far in terms of actually letting my deep nerd side come out and play with the sick son of a bitch side, and in that sense, it’s more who I am, both the past me and the present me, than anything I’ve published. The result is that Leaping at Thorns is simultaneously the sickest and most intellectual work of fiction I’ve published. And so far the reaction seems to be not only that this revelation of me-ness is not only okay but perhaps the best work I’ve ever turned over to the public. So maybe when I’m wearing my horror writer hat, I don’t have to pretend that I’m not also a complete geek for the history of philosophy and virtually every form of art our species has invented. Maybe the sum of the me-s is a viable author figure for the body of work I’m building. So maybe being “L. Andrew Cooper” can be the same thing as being myself—whatever that means.

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Author Bio

L. Andrew Cooper thinks the smartest people like horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Early in life, he couldn't handle the scary stuff--he'd sneak and watch horror films and then keep his parents up all night with his nightmares. In the third grade, he finally convinced his parents to let him read grownup horror novels: he started with Stephen King's Firestarter, and by grade five, he was doing book reports on The Stand.

When his parents weren't being kept up late by his nightmares, they worried that his fascination with horror fiction would keep him from experiencing more respectable culture. That all changed when he transitioned from his public high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to uber-respectable Harvard University, where he studied English Literature. From there, he went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Princeton, turning his longstanding engagement with horror into a dissertation. The dissertation became the basis for his first book, Gothic Realities (2010). More recently, his obsession with horror movies turned into a book about one of his favorite directors, Dario Argento (2012). He also co-edited the textbook Monsters (2012), an attempt to infect others with the idea that scary things are worth people's serious attention.

After living in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, Andrew now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches at the University of Louisville. Burning the Middle Ground is his debut novel.

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Links

L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings

Leaping at Thorns (Amazon)

Leaping at Thorns (B&N)

BlackWyrm Publishing

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Praise for LEAPING AT THORNS

"Reading Leaping at Thorns takes me back to my childhood, and those sleepless nights of reading Stephen King’s Night Shift and Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. Cooper can scare, shock, and more than that, get you to think about things you never considered before, and perhaps, were frightened to even contemplate. A real triumph!" — Michael West, bestselling author of Cinema of Shadows, Spook House, and The Wide Game

"Leaping at Thorns, a new collection of short stories from L. Andrew Cooper, will leave you paranoid! The stories make even the bravest souls cringe in shock and horror. For fans of the genre, this is a rare and fantastic treat, sure to give you gooseflesh and nightmares!" — John F. Allen, author of The God Killers

"Once you start an L. Andrew Cooper story, you can’t stop, even if you have to squint between the fingers of your hand as it covers your face. Here’s a collection of 15 such stories. Modern horror at its best, Enjoy." — R.J. Sullivan, author of Haunting Obsession

"Cooper both frequently and brilliantly focuses on the human element in his tales with the protagonists’ flaws and pains exposed for the reader to vicariously revel in while the darkly delightful antagonists/archfiends of all shapes and sizes often take a back seat in the storylines, which many would argue is the hallmark of great writing. Highly recommended!" — G.L. Giles, author of Water Vamps

"Each story reads like a frightening nightmare from which you don’t want to wake." — Christopher Kokoski, author of Dark Halo

"Cooper’s imagination delves into the bizarre, creating horrific images through windows in our minds to view." — Brick Marlin, author of Land of the Dead

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Note: I had the pleasure of getting to know Andrew Cooper two ways, one, he reviewed my TRANSPORT (Book One) short novel for Seventh Star Press, and interviewed me a bit after the fact. Two, I met him at the Imaginarium writers convention in Louisville KY 2014. I had the opportunity to talk to him and sit in on his LEAPING AT THORNS book launch. His publisher, BlackWyrm, gave out all sorts of free goodies at the launch. I even acquired a "tapeworm" as Andrew has a story in the book that involves a tapeworm.

Andrew is a very nice gent, and very talented. I recommend his book. (Plus a book of short stories is always fun because if you don't necessarily enjoy the piece you are reading, there is another one a few pages down.)

PJW Nov 2014

NIKKI NELSON-HICKS: Five Things Learned Writing JAKE ISTENHEGYI THE ACCIDENTAL DETECTIVE

By darkheroicfantasy

I met Ms. Nelson-Hicks at IMAGINARIUM 2014 during a writers panel discussing Lone Hero vs. Heroic Groups. A very cool gal with some very awesome work out there, and coming out in the near future.

The main thing that snapped my head around while hearing her talk about her Single Shot JAKE ISTENHEGYI tale was the mention of ZOMBIE CHICKENS. -- PJW

When a Hungarian immigrant out to live the American Dream rents a room to a private detective with his own aspirations, voodoo and demon chickens must follow, right? 

They do in Author Nikki Nelson-Hicks’ A CHICK, A DICK, AND A WITCH WALK INTO A BARN, the first in Hicks’ Pro Se Single Shot Signature Series featuring her original character, Jake Istenhegyi, The Accidental Detective. 

When Jake Istenhegyi inherited a used bookstore in New Orleans, he thought he had finally found a haven. Here, he could hide away and spend his days reading and drinking coffee in peace and quiet. Then he rented out a room to Barrington “Bear” Gunn, WWI vet and aspiring gumshoe who dreamed of living the life of his detective pulp heroes. 

Jake never wanted adventure or mystery but when his friend goes missing while on a case, he goes looking and ends up trapped in a shed with a hundred demon possessed chickens clucking for his blood…it’s a hell of a way to spend a birthday.

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1. I am Barney Stinson.

Not in the ‘sex with anything in a skirt’ way but in that I can’t resist a challenge.

Here’s a little back story on how Jake came into being: I was at PulpArk, a convention in Arkansas for writers of pulp fiction, where I was approached by Tommy Hancock from Pro Se Press with the challenge was to write a story, in the pulp style, that involved, in some way, chickens. 

“Challenge accepted.”

I couldn’t resist. This was an excellent opportunity to finally flesh out the character my husband and I talked about when we lived in Budapest in 1989. Our kids went to a school on Istenhegyi Ute (God’s Hill Street). Brian and I thought, “Wow, what a great name for a private investigator. Jake Istenhegyi, Private Eye!”

Now, all I needed was a way to bring in chickens. 

At the time, I was working on a short story about voodoo. So, voila! Zombie chickens!

I dropped the other stories I was working on and just barreled head first into creating a story with Jake, Bear Gunn and zombie chickens. It was a blast! 

I got it done by deadline….only to find that I was the only one. NO ONE ELSE had finished a story for the Poultry Pulp anthology so it was scrapped.

Still, Tommy liked the story so we decided to put it out as a Single Shot Signature Series with a new story, every six months, following the adventures of Jake Istenhegyi, The Accidental Detective and whatever I can throw at him.

So, now I’ve gotten a reputation taking on weird mishmash storylines.  Steampunk Superheroes? Got it. Historical Western figures fighting fairytale monsters? No problem! 

Everything starts somewhere, that is why….

2. Journals are wombs

One of my rules when I start every story gets a journal all their own. It doesn’t matter if it gets finished or published. Every story gets a place to grow and that is what journals are in my process. The journal doesn’t need to be leather or have a pedigree like a Moleskin. Jake was written in a Five Star spiral notebook. It is where I doodle, figure out plotlines and create characters. It is where my Big Bang begins. And I think that is because….

3. I like discipline.

Not the leather and strap sort (okay, maybe a little) but I do need the threat and the comfort of having a set deadline and a defined word count. It all comes down to the bare fact that…

4. I hate writing.

I like creating ideas, journaling and basically sculpting the universe in my notebooks and I like HAVING written but the actual writing part….gawd, BORING. So tedious, hard and just…..bleck. Well, not always….sometimes…RARELY but….sometimes it’s like hitting a vein and the magic just rushes out, time ceases and it is a glorious, delicious, braingasming high. 

But usually it is just typity typity type. But, really, it all boils down to the fact that….

5. I have no idea what the fuckity fuck I am doing.

Yep. Not a clue. I started A Chick, A Dick and A Witch Walk Into a Barn on a bet and just ran with it. I had NO idea it would blossom into a full series. Do I have a story arc? A story bible? A freaking clue where I want this guy to go? Hell, no! I barely know where he comes from myself! Terry Pratchett is quoted as saying ‘The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.’ 

So, yeah…..when it came to write the second story for Jake, “Golems, Goons and Cold Stone Bitches”, I was terrified and excited and angry and giddy. Basically, a bipolar banquet of emotions. One part of me, the anxious scared part, was crying, “But we don’t know what the hell is going to happen next? What if we screw it up? What if we can’t do it? What if we suck?” And another part of me, the fun, immortal, forever 9 year old, was grinning, “Yeah, that could happen…..but what if we don’t? What if we rock this fucker out of the park? Wouldn’t that be FUN?”

And it was.  

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Author Bio

Nikki Nelson-Hicks has been described by a fellow writer as the 'unholy lovechild of Flannery O'Connor and H.P. Lovecraft'. An accolade she finds terribly amusing. She is an editor and writer for Pro Se Press. She is the author of the Pro Se Press Single Shot Signatures digital series, Jake Istenhegyi: The Accidental Detective. The first of the series,  A Chick, A Dick and A Witch Walk Into a Barn is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. The sequel, Golems, Goons and Cold Stone Bitches,  will be coming out soon. She also has a story in the Pro Se Press anthology, Once Upon a Six Gun. She has stories in Nashville Noir and Nashville Gothic (Parthenon Press), Soundtrack Not Included (Nashville Writers Group), Capes and Clockwork, volumes 1 and 2 (Dark Oak Press) and she edited the horror anthology, Comfort foods. She looks forward to seeing her stories in many of Pro Se Productions anthologies to come. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks can be found constantly haunting the pages of Facebook, on twitter (@nikcubed) or creatively procrastinating on her blog, www.nikcubed.blogspot.com.

Coming late 2014, a brand new Sherlock Holmes adventure, Sherlock Holmes and The Shrieking Pits from Pro Se Press.

And SPOILERS!

The second story in the Jake Istenhegyi: The Accidental Detective, GOLEMS, GOONS AND COLD STONE BITCHES, is coming out in November 2014. The third will be out in Spring(ish) 2015. The goal is to run Jake through the wringer every six months or so. 

Other goodies coming out soon from NNH are:

Stone Baby, a short story in the anthology Nashville Gothic, that the publisher said after reading he wanted to “bleach his eyeballs out” is coming November 2014

A Sherlock Holmes novella from Pro Se Press, The Astonishing Tales of Sherlock Holmes – The Shrieking Pits is coming out early December 2014.

Delilah Ditch: The Galvanized Girl is a short story that will appear in the anthology, Capes and Clockwork that will be coming out late 2014/early 2015. Hopefully.

AMY MCCORKLE: Five Things Learned Writing BELLA MORTE: THE BEGINNING

By darkheroicfantasy

In a violent and turbulent world a young woman must decide, vengeance or destiny. 

Justice Xavier has lived half of her life enslaved. Traded from owner to owner for her stubborn refusal to capitulate to her owners’ wills she has lived a life of torture all in the name of hiding her true nature. That of the Order’s hope of Bella Morte, beautiful death. She is believed it be a skilled warrior and a commander of the elements all in the name in leading them to victory over the all-powerful Eleanor of Ke’lan and returning the world to a pre-apocalyptic state where the Order can protect the world behind its shield of anonymity against the men who would see all women and children subjugated to their collective will. 

Duncan is called Legend. An enslaved gladiator who fights to survive in the arena of the Queen he is favored by her in their illicit trysts. Only this time she is calling upon him to murder Bella Morte. But he is not alone in the tunnels, in the adjacent cell is William, a gifted and trained healer, who appeals to whatever humanity that might remain in Duncan. 

And when Duncan’s connection to Bella Morte is revealed they are faced with a choice. Depend on one another or face death apart.

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[And now, Ms. McCorkle cuts to the short and sweet of it with her FIVE THINGS LEARNED...]

1. That I can indeed go the distance in writing a full length novel, just barely 70K.

2. That my villains can not only be bad to the bone and love being that way, but be complicated and human at the same time.

3. That the good guys can turn out to be spineless and wishy washy even when you intended them to be strong and silent.

4. Not everybody is going to love your book the way you do.

5. And finally when you least expect you can hit #1 on the Amazon Bestseller List!

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Author Bio

An award winning and bestselling author, blogger, screenwriter and filmmaker Amy McCorkle also writes under the pen name Kate Lynd. Her popular blog, bestselling memoir and soon to be in a theater near you, Letters to Daniel. Her works include The Gladiator Chronicles, Bounty Hunter, When Doves Cry, and the Aurora Black series. She loves to hear from her readers and fans at amyleigh07@live.com.

Book Links

Bella Morte: Beginnings

Blackout: An Aurora Black Novel