Today we have a sneak peek from Katie Salidas’ urban fantasy book, Pandora’s Box:
After a few months as a vampire, Alyssa thought she’d learned all she needed to know about the supernatural world. But her confidence is shattered by the delivery of a mysterious package – a Pandora’s Box.
Seemingly innocuous, the box is in reality an ancient prison, generated by a magic more powerful than anyone in her clan has ever known. But what manner of evil could need such force to contain it? When the box is opened, the sinister creature within is released, and only supernatural blood will satiate its thirst. The clan soon learns how it feels when the hunter becomes the hunted.
Powerless against the ancient evil, the clan flees Las Vegas for Boston, with only a slim hope for salvation. Could Lysander’s old journals hold the key? And what if they don’t? And how welcome will they be in a city run by a whole different kind of supernatural being?
Born in Udine, in Northeastern Italy, in 1952, Guido Mattioni has lived and worked in Milan since 1978. Writing has always been his job and his life as well. During 33 years of journalism he has worked for daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines while holding almost every professional title possible, from reporter to editor-in-chief and deputy editor to special correspondent. He has traveled all over the world, especially in the USA, where he has visited almost every state. Mattioni, who recently retired, is still an active columnist and freelancing contributor to Italian national dailies and magazines. When he was younger he wrote two non-fiction works: one historical and the other on Economics. Whispering Tides is his first novel, and it is also available in its Italian version – Ascoltavo le maree. One of the yet few Italian “Indie” writers, he is utterly convinced about the positive impact of this revolutionary wave that is giving – he says – full meaning to the expression “freedom of press”. He is married to Maria Rosa, an Oncologist who is, quoting Guido, “someone much more socially useful” than he is, “apart from being definitely a much more beautiful person too”. If he could be reincarnated he would like to do it as a chef because cooking is the pastime he is most fond of. He is an atypical Italian because he suffers an incurable allergy to soccer.
Whispering Tides by Guido Mattioni
When his beloved wife Nina suddenly dies – after 23 years of life together – Alberto Landi understands he has to leave Milan Italy, where he has always lived and worked. He leaves his friends, colleagues, a good job and the polluted big city he has never loved which has now become even more intolerable to him. He is fifty, he is totally alone and he is confused, but he definitely knows that he has to escape very far away, across the ocean, to the only place he and Nina had always loved together. He lands in Savannah, Georgia. There, in a natural paradise governed by the breath of the tides and with the help of many dear friends – colorful human characters as well as wise animals – he starts to rebuild his new life. His dream is coming true until the day he wakes up one morning and discovers that… Whispering Tides is available from Apple iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and Amazon in paperback and Kindle format.
The time has arrived for IU readers to begin voting in this week’s Flash Fiction Competition. On behalf of the IU staff, I want to thank all the entrants for doing such a great job with the writing prompt and the merciless constraints of the exercise.
This week, there are 9 entries from which to choose. You may review the entries here. Please spread the word and encourage your friends to vote by using the share buttons at the bottom of the post!
The poll will be open until 5:00 PM (Pacific Daylight Time) Thursday
As I mentioned last time, I have found useful writing tips to be few and far between. This is, to me, one of the most powerful things you can use in creating fiction, but it’s subtle and has no real nuts/bolts application. But just being aware of it helps you when nothing else does. The term is “narrative voice”.
I first heard it in school from Jack Cady, a very talented short story writer who taught writing and science fiction in the Engineering department. Oddly, two weeks later I was sitting in a bar just off campus with Ken Kesey, and he said exactly the same thing. So I took it to heart.
It’s a vague and slippery concept as writing tips go, closer to psychology or spirituality than to medicine or exercise. But you should be aware of it: just keep that awareness a little unfocused. Narrative voice is, in Cady’s words, the way your story wants to tell itself. It’s way more than a point of view or style or dialect or mode or any of that, though all of those are elements in it. You pick up a children’s book about a kid looking for a lost friend and read it, it’s telling itself in a certain way that fits the story. Then you pick up a noir detective story about a guy looking for a lost friend and it tells itself in a very different way. Continue reading “A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS”
After a few months as a vampire, Alyssa thought she’d learned all she needed to know about the supernatural world. But her confidence is shattered by the delivery of a mysterious package – a Pandora’s Box.
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