Day: November 12, 2012

Sneak Peek: Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories

Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other StoriesToday we have a sneak peek from author Katherine L. Holmes’ short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories.

Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction exploring the complexities of life. Laying the profound beside the mundane, author Katherine L. Holmes creates rich and complicated characters who search for identity, meaning, and purpose within a world often dangerous and sometimes even cruel.

A couple clashing with early computers, a divorced woman finding her scattered family to be strangers, a girl running away to the shop where her parents’ antiques were sold, Midwestern college students in weather and water emergencies – these are some of the conflicts examined by the author.

Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories  is available on Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Here is an excerpt from Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories: Continue reading “Sneak Peek: Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories”

How Long is a Piece of String?

Graeme K. TalboysIn the distant past when typewriters still roamed the earth, people would ask me: “How long should a book be?”

Being the contrary soul that I am, I would answer: “How long is a piece of string?”

Annoying as it was (and it led to people searching out bits of string long enough to strangle me), there was a truth there. A book, any book, needed to be just the right length to complete your intended narrative in the exact amount of detail appropriate.

Observant readers will notice that last paragraph is in the past tense. Personally I would still say a book needs to be just the right length to complete the narrative, but I’m just a writer, so what do I know? Continue reading “How Long is a Piece of String?”

EX-PERTISE

This article makes me feel a little weird because it runs counter to a longstanding peeve I’ve had with internet writing information. Namely the widespread impression that anybody with a keyboard is equally qualified to tell other people about how to write and publish, whether or not their degree of knowledge on that subject is greater than or equal to the average ass of the average rat.

I know of two blogs in which 13 year old writers give advice on how to write novels. Dozens with invaluable insights on writing from high school kids. How many more with scintillating tips from people who just wrote their first book, or are going to finish it any day now, except blogging writing advice takes up so much of their time? Many of the newbie forums like Writers Digest are packed with total wannabes who have no sense of irony when it comes to contradicting published authors, even best-selling authors. The equality of information seems to reduce experience to the quotidian.

You can imagine how fond I am of this sort of thing. Continue reading “EX-PERTISE”

Featured Author: Sandra R. Campbell

Sandra R. Campbell lives along the tranquil waters of the Chesapeake Bay with her new husband and weight challenged cat. She can trace her passion for the macabre back to reading Edgar Allen Poe as a child, with her pet crow, Big Fellow, by her side. She has since submerged herself in a wide range of dark literature. An avid thrill seeker, Sandra is always looking for her next big adrenaline rush, and when spelunking, climbing, diving and monster hunting fails to deliver, she turns to the creation of through-the-rabbit-hole worlds and sends her characters on their own adventures. Sandra’s first paranormal thriller, Butterfly Harvest, was published in September 2010. Currently, Sandra is at work on Dark Migration, the second in the Butterfly Harvest series, scheduled for release in the spring of 2013, and The Dead Days Journal, a newly, richly-imaginative novel.

Butterfly Harvest
by Sandra R. Campbell
Available from Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Seanna Raines has spent her teenage years wishing for the day she can escape her miserable, barely-functioning family. Samuel is an ancient being, bored and alone, his only desire is to create another immortal – successfully. When Samuel rescues Seanna from an altercation with her alcoholic father, Seanna believes he is the perfect man. Just the scent of him has her head swimming in a beautiful fog. But when she accepts his first gift, a delicate black butterfly, her life is irreversibly changed.

Seanna’s newfound dream becomes a nightmare as a plague of death falls upon her family and friends. As the body count rises, her collection of black butterflies grows. With increasingly vivid nightmares, and the color fading from her eyes, Seanna suspects the man of her dreams is the cause. Never sure if she is awake or dreaming, she struggles to find the truth. Seanna may be willing to give up her new love, but the question is, can she survive without her soul?