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This week, A Perfect 10 features author Armand Rosamilia. Armand is living proof that you can write in multiple genres and have success. I had the pleasure of meeting him in person at a mini comic book convention in Jacksonville, Florida just by chance. My daughter made A/B honor roll and her chosen reward is […]

via A Perfect 10 with Armand Rosamilia — Don Massenzio’s Blog

Arm Cast: Dead Sexy Podcast host Armand Rosamilia and his wife Shelly went on a trip again this April. It was part book signings, part anniversary, part sightseeing, part work and all parts fun! The couple chat about a bunch of people they saw and a bunch of places they visited and a bunch of […] […]

via Armand and Shelly — Jeremy Hepler

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Nurse Blood (Excerpt)

 

Prologue

The air inside the nightclub was hazy from smoke machines. Flashes of colored light cut through the swirls in beat with the pulsing music that shook the walls and the floor. The atmosphere was alive with movement―a mass of hot, swaying bodies bent on enjoying the moment. A monster waited in the depths of the darkness to bat her pretty eyes at someone and make them her prey.

The door of the establishment swung open to give way to three eager young men looking to have a good time and celebrate. The trio was instantly surrounded by dancing women. They made their way through the press of bodies to reach the bar.

Daniel forced himself not to scan the crowd for his ex-fiancée, April. But she was the least of his worries, as the real danger was a face he wouldn’t recognize.

Roy got their drinks while Hank and Daniel stood at a balcony that overlooked an even larger dance floor below. The smoke was thicker down there, and there were more lights. The dancers looked like they were paying sensual homage to their deity. The air was tainted with the aroma of perfume and alcohol; it burned the men’s nostrils and fueled their excitement for the revelry to come.

Daniel took a moment to text his twin brother, David, to let him know where they would be celebrating their shared birthday. He received a text back from David saying he was still an hour away.

Roy joined them with three shots and three cold bottles of beer, passing one of each to his friends. They downed the shots in one swallow before turning their attention to their beers.

“Dave will be here in an hour or so,” Daniel announced after downing his shot.

“Awesome—we’re gonna have a great time!” Hank yelled over the music.

As Roy took a drink of his beer, a petite, slim blonde grabbed his waist from behind. He jumped in surprise and turned, recognizing the young woman.

She tucked a finger into the front of his jeans, smiled at him, and tugged him away from his friends toward a table with another girl.

Roy looked back over his shoulder at his friends and shrugged.

“That’s Lynn,” Hank yelled to Daniel. “They’ve been seeing each other for a while. And that’s her cousin Trisha—you don’t want to go there.”

Daniel nodded and looked around. The warming effect of the shot was spreading through his body, relaxing him. He felt less paranoid about running into April.

While he was looking over the crowd, a woman caught his eye. She was a tall, slim brunette, and she was beautiful. She was standing alone at the end of the bar. He watched her for a few moments, and when she looked around, their eyes met.

He smiled and looked away.

Hank noticed Daniel’s mild interest. He knew what his friend had been through recently and why he was gun-shy with women.

“Go for it!” he yelled, nudging Daniel. “Have some fun!”

Daniel looked at his friend, took another swallow of beer, glanced at the woman—noticing she was still alone—and shrugged.

Hank laughed and gave Daniel a shove toward the bar, causing him to slam into two people who happened to be walking past. When he turned to them to apologize, he came face to face

with the very woman he was hoping not to run into: April. The man she was with was leaning on her with all his weight while she struggled to hold him up.

Daniel’s heart clenched in his chest and his lungs seized up for a moment. He felt his hand tighten around the neck of his beer bottle. He wanted to slam it over the other man’s head, but he managed to restrain himself. He didn’t want her to know how much the sight of her with another man hurt him, so he put on a brave front.

“Excuse the fuck out of me,” he said with a sadistic smile, raised the bottle in the air like he was toasting them, and then took a big swig of the brew. He was pleased with the shocked expression that spread across April’s face at his harsh greeting.

They didn’t say anything to Daniel, but focused back on each other and moved around him and deeper into the establishment.

Daniel glanced over to Hank, who was grinning from ear to ear.

He smiled at his friend, nodded, and forced himself to put one foot in front of the other until he made it over to the woman at the bar. While he walked he pretended not to notice that April had glanced back at him several times as she guided her drunken man to a table where he could sit down. He was determined to show April she wasn’t the only woman in the world. He was going to prove to himself and her that he was over the breakup.

“Hi, I’m Daniel!” he yelled when he reached the woman, leaning toward her a little so she could hear him as a new song started to play.

“Grace!” she yelled back.

They smiled at each other.

The couple chatted for a while about nothing important, since it was too loud to carry on a serious conversation, and ordered drink after drink as they stood at the bar. Daniel’s emotional tension eased little by little with every drink. He became more and more relaxed, and friendlier and friendlier with Grace. Before he knew what was happening, they were pressed up against each other while they conversed so they could hear each other better.

“Let’s get out of here,” Grace said. She kissed him and reached down between them to rub his crotch.

Normally Daniel would be shocked and uneasy by such a gesture so soon after meeting a woman, but he’d had enough drinks not to care about how respectable she was or wasn’t being.

He nodded in agreement and looked around for his friends, frowning.

“I have to tell my friends I’m leaving,” he said, taking a step away from Grace.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Grace said, rubbing his crotch again. “They’ll figure it out. Besides, you can call them later and they can pick you up from my place.”

That sounded reasonable so he followed her out to the parking lot. The night was clear and felt cool after the heat from the population of patrons inside the nightclub.

They stumbled together through the parking lot and paused to make out, pressed against the side of her car for a couple minutes before they finally separated their bodies to get in.

Daniel had the passenger’s side door open and was about to climb inside when his cell phone beeped, notifying him of a text. He stopped, stood up straight beside the car, and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket by mistake. He reached into his other back pocket and extracted his cell phone. He frowned and squinted to focus on the tiny, bright screen that said David was only a block away.

“What are you doing?” Grace asked.

“I can’t go with you,” he said with a sigh. “Sorry. I—”

He felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck. He reached up to figure out what had hurt him and spun around at the same time, dropping his cell phone and wallet to the asphalt parking lot.

Grace was standing behind him holding an empty syringe.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you have to come with me.”

He tried to shove her away, but his limbs wouldn’t do what he wanted them to. His legs gave out from beneath him as the world blurred into a black blob of nothing.

***

Grace shoved Daniel’s tall frame into the passenger seat when he started to fall, smacking his head on the door frame. She quickly picked his feet up from the ground and spun him so she could get him all the way into the car.

She heard laughing as a couple made their way through the parking lot a few rows over, so she didn’t take the time to pick up what Daniel had dropped.

Grace shut the passenger door and ran around to the driver’s side of her car. She scanned the parking lot as she pulled out, not seeing anyone close-by. She’d been careful, watching for people as they’d headed outside, but the distant couple had snuck up on them. Luckily they hadn’t come close enough to see what she was up to. She tensed slightly when she had to pass another vehicle as she pulled from the lot out onto the street, but the man was looking in the opposite direction and didn’t even glance their way.

Once she was out of the parking lot and a couple blocks away, she pulled out her cell phone and called Roger.

“Hey,” she said into the phone. “I have fresh meat…”

 

 *   *   *   *   *

Nurse Blood Summary (Limitless Publishing):

Sonya Garret roams the bar scene hoping to steal the heart of an unsuspecting victim—literally…

Sonya, better known as Nurse Blood, is part of a team of lethal organ harvesters who seek out the weak to seduce, kill, and part out for profit on the black market. When Sonya meets Daniel McCoy, a young man recovering from a broken engagement, he’s just another kill to line her pockets with quick cash.

Agent David McCoy vows to find out how and why his twin brother Daniel disappeared…

Daniel’s body hasn’t been found, and the leads are slim to none, but it won’t stop David from dedicating his life to solving his brother’s case. When the evidence finally uncovers the shocking truth that Daniel’s disappearance is linked to organ harvesters, David knows his brother is most likely dead. But he’s determined to stop the villains’ killing spree before they strike again.

One last harvest is all Sonya and her team need to put their murderous past behind them…

A family with the rarest blood type in the world is the only thing standing between Sonya and retirement. David McCoy and the FBI are hot on their trail, though, and multiple targets make this the most complicated harvest yet. Will David unravel Sonya’s wicked plans in time to avenge his brother and save an innocent family? Or will Sonya cash in her final kill and escape for good?

Murder for profit stops for no man when you’re Nurse Blood.

 *   *   *   *   *

Limitless Publishing “Coming Soon” Link: http://www.limitlesspublishing.net/product-category/pre-orders/

Nurse Blood on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nurse-Blood-Organ-Harvester-Book-ebook/dp/B01K8VOLCS/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

Rebecca Besser resides in Ohio with her wonderful husband and amazing son. They’ve come to accept her quirks as normal while she writes anything and everything that makes her inner demons squeal with delight. She’s best known for her work in adult horror, but has been published in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for a variety of age groups and genres. She’s entirely too cute to be scary in person, so she turns to the page to instill fear into the hearts of the masses.

To learn more about Rebecca visit her Website, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and/or follow her Blog!

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The Reality of Fantasy

 

Since I discovered fantasy at the young age of 10 (thanks to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia), fantasy has held my interest and never let it go. I’ve devoured science fiction, historical fiction, paranormal, mystery, and thrillers galore, yet I always come back to fantasy. It just made sense that my works would go in the direction of the fantastical.

For many people, fantasy is a genre that is “unrealistic”. After all, our world doesn’t have magic, pixies, demons, centaurs, or elves, right? The Eye of Sauron and The Sword of Shannara are completely unrealistic concepts in our down-to-earth, black-and-white world!

I’d have to say that I disagree wholeheartedly…

The term “fantasy” is defined as “the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable”. So, in many senses, the genre of fantasy does involve things that are, as the definition says, “impossible or improbable”.

But the best fantasy is based on reality. Take the A Song of Ice and Fire series by G.R.R. Martin (the books on which Game of Thrones is based). At first glance, it looks like a too-fantastical setting and plot. Dragons? Ice zombies? An impossibly tall wall? Magic? Unequenchable fire? Resurrections? How unbelievable!

Perhaps those elements are the unbelievable, but once you get past them, you see the correlations to reality. For example, the war between the various Houses of Westeros is VERY similar to the incessant wars that raged in Medieval Europe. The backstabbing, political intrigue, and murders is about what you’d expect to find in those days. The heroic villains and villainous heroes abounded during that time.

See what I’m getting at? While every good fantasy novel does have plenty of elements that are “fantastical”, they are fully grounded in reality and thus as real as a mystery or thriller!

Lloyd Alexander said it best, “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.”

Yes, fantasy does involve plenty of imagination and invention. There will always be that element of “impossible” that you won’t find in other novels. Not even science-fiction pushes into the impossible as much as fantasy.

But who cares? It is through the pages of fantasy novels that we are better able to understand the world around us. We follow the struggles of characters who are fighting to survive in a world as harsh and cruel as the one in which we live. Their trials and tribulations may be different from our own, but what remains consistent is that fact that they get put through s**t just like we do. We can learn from their examples and “fight the good fight” just like they do. We can grit our teeth, bandage our wounds, and keep facing that giant or monster in our path.

Sure, our monsters won’t be 12 feet tall, spew fire, or poison us with a spell. Our monsters will look much more like massive debt, car accidents, and horrible bosses. Yet if the characters from our favorite fantasy books can cope with the world in which they live and all the crap that world throws at them, how much more can we when we’re not really fighting for our lives?

Yes, beyond the imagination and flights of fancy, there is a reality to fantasy that makes it a genre worth learning from!

Amazon Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Bucelarii-Book-Lament-Fallen/dp/1535388668/

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Last-Bucelarii-Book-Lament-Fallen/dp/1535388668/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30973111-lament-of-the-fallen

Andy Peloquin: Lover of All Things Dark and Mysterious

 

Andy Peloquin–a third culture kid to the core–has loved to read since before he could remember. Sherlock Holmes, the Phantom of the Opera, and Father Brown are just a few of the books that ensnared his imagination as a child.

When he discovered science fiction and fantasy through the pages of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R Tolkien, and Orson Scott Card, he was immediately hooked and hasn’t looked back since.

Andy’s first attempt at writing produced In the Days: A Tale of the Forgotten Continent. He has learned from the mistakes he made and used the experience to produce Blade of the Destroyer, a book of which he is very proud.

Reading—and now writing—is his favorite escape, and it provides him an outlet for his innate creativity. He is an artist; words are his palette.

His website (http://www.andypeloquin.com) is a second home for him, a place where he can post his thoughts and feelings–along with reviews of books he finds laying around the internet.

He can also be found on his social media pages, such as:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndyPeloquin

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andyqpeloquin

www.linkedin.com/in/andypeloquin/

https://plus.google.com/100885994638914122147/about

https://www.amazon.com/author/andypeloquin

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.peloquin.1

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