Celebrating Independent Authors
Congratulations to Laurie, whose entry won this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The voter-selected story is recognized with a special feature here today and wins a place in our 2014 Flash Fiction Anthology, which will be published as an e-book when this year’s challenges are completed.
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Continue reading “Laurie Boris Wins Flash Fiction Challenge”
Darkest Day
by K.R. Hughes and T.L. Burns
Genre: Historical Fiction
Word count: 63,595
On the tragic day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the nation mourns the loss of a president who stood for radical change and whose charisma carried him through the masses with never before seen devotion. Kennedy’s determination to pay the U.S. back for his good fortune never wavered, with a presidency riddled in strife from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Cold War and finally to the Vietnam conflict nothing was easy for him.
In this novel, Kennedy isn’t on a world tour or even in Texas in 1963. Instead he is in the Alps recovering from back surgery, a ruse that he had planned with Bobby, and his double months in advance of the tour. With the oval office tapped and the ever-present Bobby running interference there was little likelihood that anyone would realize this was not the president. In fact, no one did.
Now, the world believes their beloved president is dead, there is no going back for Jack. While the decisions are difficult, it is far better to leave his ‘death’ alone than to risk political failure for his family clan and ridicule for his young widow.
Kennedy must now take on another face, name, and identity. Who is behind the assassination? What was the ultimate goal in killing the president? Was it to topple the American government and take down the Kennedy’s with it? Find out in this action packed conspiracy novel.
This book is available from Amazon. Continue reading “Book Brief: Darkest Day”
Carolyn Steele wrote an excellent post about character interviews. But what about the next level? I believe books have distinctive personalities. Each book not only contains characters but is a character in its own right. It has a voice, a cadence, distinctive quirks & tics, and it has something to say to the world. Like people, books need to both fit in and stand out.
While a book accomplishes this through the efforts of its author, it is also something other than a pale reflection of the author. In many ways, a book’s personality may be very different than that of its author. A book may be brash and bold and daring even if written by a timid, reclusive author.
So, if we were to interview a book, the results could be wildly different than an interview with the book’s author.
To demonstrate this personality theory, I have decided to conduct an interview with Bad Book. Continue reading “An Interview with Bad Book”
Guest Post
by Forbes West
People come up to me – at bars, restaurants, half-way houses, and ask, “Forbes? That you?” After a few moments of sideways glances and awkward chatter, they will soon say to me, “Boy, Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now), you really set up a world there, whoa, I gotta say, you know, that world you built in that sci-fi story, yowza.” And I’ll nod and glance at my watch and exit the room quietly after making an excuse as I do not like talking to strangers.
After I’ve walked away and soon realize I left my keys in my other jacket pocket and I have to wait around an hour for my wife to come open the front door, I sometimes reflect to myself, what is world building? How does one do it without submerging the real stuff of story – the characters, the plot – and explain this new setting to the reader who doesn’t have the privilege of sitting inside my brain the entire day?
When I started writing Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now) I didn’t even exactly start with the story. I started by making up the actual entire world that this story would inhabit. Continue reading “World Building Tips for Authors”