Features

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Point of View: Total Immersion

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Immersion - deposit photos

I love it when a story sucks me in, pulling me so far under that I actually forget the real word exists, and just an afternoon (or half the night) exploring an entirely different place. Such experiences of total immersion in a story seem to come more and more rarely for me. I’m not sure why – maybe because I tend to be more distracted when I read? Or maybe because many of the books I choose these days are more character driven, or tend to go light on the details of the world in which they take place? In … Read more

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New Release / Giveaway: Beside the Darker Shore – Patricia J. Esposito

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Beside the Darker Shore - Patricia J. Esposito

Patricia J. Esposito has a new MM paranormal romance out: Beside the Darker Shore. And there’s a giveaway. What might the ethical Governor David Gedden give up for one man’s exquisite beauty? It’s terrifying to consider when the man is a destructive blood prostitute and David is responsible for the state’s peaceful vampire community. Blood sales in Boston are up, blood taxes support a thriving new nightlife, neighborhoods have been refurbished, and deaths by vampires have plummeted. David is assured reelection. However, the blood addict Stephen Salando has returned from exile with one unalterable plan: to turn the good governor into … Read more

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Author Spotlight: Danielle Ackley-McPhail

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Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Award-winning author, editor, and publisher Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. In 2014 she joined forces with Mike McPhail and Greg Schauer to form eSpec Books (www.especbooks.com). Her published works include eight novels, Yesterday’s Dreams, Tomorrow’s Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court, The Redcaps’ Queen, Daire’s Devils, The Play of Light, and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day … Read more

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New Release: Spark & Tether – Lilian Zenzi

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Spark & Tether - Lillian Zenzi

Lilian Zenzi has a new queer sci-fi romance out (nonbinary/pan/queer/gender-fluid): Spark & Tether. Working odd jobs across the Outer Ring gets a little lonely sometimes—not everyone loves having a synchronist with supraliminal perception around. But all Sacheri wants, he tells himself, is to wander the stars. Then he takes a salvage run to an abandoned moon where he meets the wry, reserved, strictly-by-the-rules archivist Jin. Mesmerized by their confidence and charm, Sacheri can’t resist showing off his abilities–and instead of the damaged ai he was tracking, he stumbles onto a signal left by a synchronist who went missing decades earlier. Sacheri … Read more

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Point of View: It’s the People

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friends - deposit photos

It’s been a rough few months. We’ve recently lost a couple friends to cancer, and found out a couple more have it too. Other friends are fighting unknown maladies that have reduced their lives to misery. My Mac died, and was in the shop for two agonizing weeks before it finally came home. I broke my arm for the second time in October, and then Mark and I got a really bad cold in December. Facebook temporarily kicked me off, scaring me half to death. A great job I really wanted didn’t even bother giving me an interview, and I … Read more

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Point of View: New Sneaks In

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Rat peeking through hole in cardboard - deposit photos

Every day is the same old boring routine. Then, good and tired, it’s off to bed, where I will then proceed to stare at the ceiling, tossing and turning, and generally being unable to actually, you know, sleep for at least two hours. Why I can fall asleep on the couch with the TV blaring and then not be able to in bed is one of the enduring mysteries for the ages. Nothing ever changes, Except… Yesterday, my aunt arrived from Southern California. She’s selling her house there and moving up here to be closer to us. And last year, … Read more

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Review: Four & Twenty Blackbirds – M.X. Kelly

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Four & Twenty Blackbirds - M.X. Kelly

Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Sci-Fi Get It On Amazon About The Book Twenty-four previously published speculative fiction stories and poems by M.X. Kelly for your reading enjoyment. The Review Four & Twenty Blackbirds is a grab-bag of very short horror, dark fantasy and dark sci-fi stories and poems by M.X. Kelly. None of the stories is more than a few pages long, but they never the less burst with storytelling and worldbuilding – tasty little morsels to whet your appetite. All of these stories are fascinating, but I had a few favorites. “The ABCs of the Apocalypse” is a jagged, broken … Read more

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Author Spotlight: Katharina Gerlach

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Author Spotlight: Katharina Gerlach

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Katharina Gerlach was born in Germany in 1968. She and her three younger brothers grew up in the middle of a forest in the heart of the Luneburgian Heather. After romping through the forest with imagination as her guide, the tomboy learned to read and disappeared into magical adventures, past times or eerie fairytale woods. She didn’t stop at reading. During her training as a landscape gardener, she wrote her first novel, … Read more

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Point of View: Grateful Amidst the Rubble

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On paper, it’s been a fairly disastrous week. One of our dear friends is dying of cancer, and to watch him and his family going through this just breaks our hearts. On Saturday, my Mac – the one I use fourteen hours a day, seven days a week – gave up the ghost, deciding it wanted to reboot every 30-60 seconds. And Facebook suspended my account – apparently because their new AI bot thought I was “impersonating a business.” – and in an instant I came this close to losing a community that I have spent fifteen years building. That’s … Read more

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New Release / Giveaway: The Wasteland Kings – Jaimie N. Schock

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The Wasteland Kings - Jaimie N. Schock

Jaimie N. Schock has a new queer sci-fi book (MM romance subplots) book out: The Wasteland Kings. And there’s a giveaway. Hacker Bast has it all: a cushy condo, a sexy boyfriend, and a place among the wealthy elite. When his past catches up with him, he flees into the dreary and dangerous wastelands between domed cities. There, he meets Delphi, who saves him, and Galeron, who runs a small town. He is anything but safe, however, as robotic “dogs” roam the countryside, looking for people to kill, and humans can be just as deadly. As Bast settles in to … Read more