Tag: novels

The Zombie Turkey Speaks.. err.. Gobbles

The third Thursday of November snuck up on me; I was sleep deprived from staying up late to make the NaNoWriMo word counts and waking up early to soothe the angelic baby who had previously never seen the other side of nine a.m. Burning not a candle but my brain at both ends did not leave me excited about hosting a dinner for eight adults and five children, but then with toys for the aforementioned little ones and no grouchy neighbors, we were the logical choice. I’m glad I did because sitting down for dinner Thursday night, a pumpkin cheesecake cooling in the fridge, a loaf of pumpkin bread still warm on the counter (yes, I did manage to get both in the oven after a five hour seminar that morning and picking up the deep fried turkey) my heart filled with gladness.

For some reason my favorite holidays tend to be those where the table is so laden with food, you can’t get a dish in edgewise. Yes, Thanksgiving ranks ahead of Easter, but only because at our house, the little ones get to decorate the tree while the rest of us stuff our faces with combinations of turkey, sweet potato, and everything edible. This year I’ve actually used the leftovers; last night in soup and today in a casserole. I highly recommend both recipes.

Almost as much as I do checking out the young adult paranormal novels mentioned below. You’ve heard of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Myer — but the truth is many authors are hard at work crafting tales that would thrill and entertain you or your young reader. So check them out: may be worth a look as a stocking stuffer or quality entertainment on the road to Grandma’s.

Ah yes, Thanksgiving. Nothing says the holidays like sitting around a fully decked out dining room table with mouthwatering temptations waiting to be gobbled up. Everyone waits anxiously for the big reveal… the turkey!

Lovingly prepared since early that morning, the turkey is brought out in a covered, silver serving platter. Aunt Edith smacks little Tommy’s hand as he attempts to steal a candied yam dripping with marshmallow. The collective breath is held as the silver cover is removed… revealing… a zombie turkey!

What—what? That’s right folks, this year; we are celebrating this American holiday paranormal style. And what says paranormal holiday better than a walking, talking zombie turkey?

This zombie turkey brings you important tidings of great prizes that shall be for all people… who participate and win of course.

November 25-27 you could win up to $200 in prizes!

 

Three days. Four YA paranormal books. Five chances to win!

And who are these crazy paranormal authors? Check them out. It’s like the Nightmare Before Christmas, Thanksgiving style!

 

Emlyn Chand, author of Farsighted

“Psychic or not, you’ll never see the end for this one coming! Emlyn Chand is pioneering ‘the next big thing’ for YA.” ~ Emily Reese, author of Second Death

Alex Kosmitoras may be blind, but he can still “see” things others can’t. When his unwanted visions of the future begin to suggest that the girl he likes could be in danger, he has no choice but to take on destiny and demand it reconsider.

Monster Mash: Emlyn says… I. AM. WEREWOLF! And why’s that you ask? First off, my name (Chand) literally means moon in Sanskrit. Next, werewolves are super cool–we can blend in with common folk, and then out of nowhere, kapow! I’m a werewolf, and I sure am hungry. Lastly, Team Jacob 100%. Now excuse me while I cock back my head and howl at my namesake.

 

Patti Larsen, author of Family Magic

“Patti Larsen is truly gifted because I read Family Magic cover to cover and I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment!” ~ from Goodreads review

Sixteen-year-old Sydlynn Hayle is the daughter of a powerful witch and a demon lord, but she just wants to be ordinary. When her coven comes under attack, Syd must face the fact only her power can save her family’s magic.

Monster Mash: Patti says… I am a witch. Naturally. I weave spells with my words, cast incantations from my keyboard, mix up the very best potions in my cauldron of documents. You want to stay on my good side. Trust me. Unless you enjoy waking up as something… unnatural.

 

Kimberly Kinrade, author of Forbidden Mind

“Forbidden Mind is a thrilling, dark and deeply romantic read that had me sitting on the edge of my seat and eagerly awaiting the next installment.” ~Refracted Light Young Adult Book Reviews

Paranormal teens with unimaginable powers. An evil organization with deep secrets. When Sam, a girl who reads minds, meets a boy who controls minds, she discovers her future isn’t what she thought. Together they must escape and free the others… or risk losing everything—and everyone—they love.

Monster Mash: Kimberly says… I may look like a demon, but I’m actually a succubus. Enchanting and seductive, I weave stories that will fuel your passions and make you fall in love. But be warned… once you fall under the spell of my words, your world will never be the same.

 

John Corwin, author of The Next Thing I Knew

Corwin does a phenomenal job of including humor throughout this novel. This book was like . . . Ghost (the movie) meets The Host (by Stephanie Meyer) meets MIB (Men In Black the movie). ~Maryann, Chapter by Chapter

The afterlife is the last thing on Lucy’s mind until she and every other human on the planet drop dead and find themselves in the hereafter. Lucy drags her social life back from the grave and enlists her friends to figure out the rules of the afterlife and, more importantly, to discover who or what killed everyone and why anyone would do such a mean thing.

Monster Mash: John says… I am a ninja. After all, vampires are simply ninjas with fangs. They can hide in plain sight, right in your living room. Jump out and scare the wits out of you. Drop a smoke bomb and poof! All you’re left with is stinky smoke in your house and soiled underclothes.

 

The Prizes

Four $25 Book Entries: For each of the four books in the contest, you can enter to win $25 (up to $100 in giveaways!) Simply buy a copy of the book and email the proof of purchase for that book OR submit the first sentence of the fifth chapter for that book to ParanormalTurkey@gmail.com. Winners will be chosen randomly. Each person can submit one entry per book. Here are the links for each book:

And… if you buy all FOUR books, you are entered to win the Grand Prize!

 

The Grand Prize

One randomly selected reader who enters to win all four book prizes (Family Magic, Farsighted, Forbidden Mind and The Next Thing I Knew) will win the grand prize of $100.

So go on now and pick up a copy of these fantastic paranormal reads before the zombie turkey eats you!

What? Still around? Then enjoy these fun book trailers and Paranormal Turkey Tour trailer. (Then go buy the books.) Also, leave a comment and help your favorite blog host win a $50 prize!

 

Notes:

  • All winners will be chosen randomly using random.org.
  • Amazon links are provided, but books purchased through any online vendor will qualify with proof of purchase.

 

Nanowrimo: Or Write a Novel in a Month

Four years ago I tried the wacky adventure that is National Novel Writing Month: 1600 words a day for 30 days to a 50,000 word manuscript. I was right on target straight out of the blocks. And then — Thanksgiving, a friend’s baby, life. I didn’t finish. But I had a toe in the pool of creativity and my first introduction to an online creative community via the forums, message boards, encouraging emails all created to make sure people keep going. There is more advice during this month than perhaps the rest of the year combined because nearly everyone in the independent writing community is talking about, sweating toward, and churning out those precious words. Free books on writing and I’ve joined in by making my e book on writing, So You Want to Sell a Million Copies free until the end of the month.

This year I’m back, using it to work on a project based on real life events that have happened around my undergraduate women’s college becoming co-ed. Using third person point of view (she rather than I) the story begins as three friends have very different reactions to the news of men being admitted to their beloved campus and follows a diverse cast of characters including their spouses and children. We learn secrets from the past and how they impact whether on not Sibohan, Mary Alice, and Mae will be able to save the Peace that they know or whether their choices will destroy the semblance of relationship they have left.

It’s been ten years since I graduated (more actually) and I got the idea to work on this novel when there were very few submissions to a commemorative anthology project suggested to alumnae. While there weren’t a lot of people writing in about their recollections at Peace, there was (and still is) a lot being said about the changes on Facebook. I can’t wait to hear that their reactions to this fictionalized version of events, past and present.

Main building at Peace College

If you’ve ever considered writing a book, or short story, there’s no time like November and Nanowrimo. Not only is it cool sounding and you’ll have a built in excuse everyday to wander away from your regular life (or stay up into the wee hours meeting your word count) but you just might discover that this writing thing is for you.

Below is the opening to my project Saving Peace. I hope to finish up and edit in time for the holidays.

Comments welcome!

Chapter One

Unlike most calls bearing bad news the call came in the morning, during daylight, while the sun was still outside. But Sibohan was still asleep.  She let the phone continue to ring or rather buzz,, and it rang itself off the night stand and onto the floor, under her bed. The home phone had one handset in the kitchen. While calls began coming in, she slept solidly. Yet  again she wasn’t there for the others when they needed her most. It was as she sat in the makeup chair, having her hair and face prepped for the six o’ clock news that her assistant, Peggy, poked her head in.

“Did you review the notes?” Peggy asked.

Sibohan shrugged. She would wing it as she had been doing for the nearly ten years she anchored for the station. It was a miracle she had shot to straight in front of the camera so fast, everyone said, and yet unlike Oprah, she hadn’t progressed.

“Sure, a home intruder, police chief anniversary…” she waved her hand to indicate this was more of the same.

“You didn’t see the headlines?”

But the producer strode in, shouldering Peggy aside, waving in new pages, with instructions about the sponsors and the salient points they were supposed to avoid for the evening. The co-anchor arrived and it was time to go onto the set. She brushed the wrinkles out of her blouse.

The intro music started and Sibohan shuffled her papers, trying not to touch elbows with Dan, the newest (and youngest) in a series of male anchors using WRAL as a stop in on their way to syndicated networks. He did have a deep voice, she would give him that much. The previous guy Nathanwhatshisname had the face of a choir boy and the prepubescent voice to match. He had done well between twenty and thirtysomething white males, interesting. But twentysomethigns didn’t really make a channel’s ratings.

“A woman wakes to an intruder in her bed,  the city of Raleigh honors a police chief that’s served for nearly thirty years and the historic Peace College changes its name and begins to admit men. All of this and more at the top of the hour.”

Sibohan nearly fell off her chair. They held their frozen smiles in place and waited for the ON AIR sign to click off.

“What did you say?”

“I’ve got two tickets to STOMP at the convention center.” Nathan’s chiseled lips curved into what she was sure was a practiced smile – the kind she learned to avoid from frat boys at North Carolina State. The university where they had prowled as girls, when boredom of the all female campus was too much to turn away.

“No, the other part. On air.”

“We’re back! Camera two, Nate,” Peggy said. “Quiet on the set. Rolling.”

Even after all these years, those two phrases managed to send a shiver up her spine. Sibohan straightened in her seat with a posture her college theater professor would have been admired. It was one of the few things she hadn’t let slide over the years – that the studio wasn’t responsible for.

“After over a hundred years as a school for women, Peace College has decided to open her doors to admit men.” Sibohan hear her voice reading the prepared segment, probably by some student news intern, feverishly typing as updates came in through the day. She kept the car salesman smile on her face as she read the rest of the report: an all too familiar list of financial woes, a stalled economy, a new president. It was a testament to her training that she made it through the segment about her alma mater becoming William Peace University without stopping. Or someone, certainly her former roommates, would have though this a defect, a sign of how low she had sunk.

   William Peace University?

The rest of the show passed in an even faster haze than normal: the insipid details of life in the Triangle area were the least interesting they had ever been. She couldn’t wait to get off set and make some phone calls. As the sports report wound up, the sub commentator with one of the worst spray tans she had ever seen, Sibohan wanted to woop for joy that she had made it through another night. She did a quick exit, not even stopping back into the dressing room for her notes from Peggy. Instead she made a beeline for her car. Once inside she turned on the AC on full blast, wiping sweat from her upper lip while sliding out her Blackberry from its case. There they were: a deluge of missed calls from the others as well as email messages.

10, 33, 60 — Nothing But Numbers

Photo by Mykl Roventine

This month I had an event that comes only once a year —  my birthday.

As a Hind child growing up in the west, December 25th came and went in our house like most other days. Friends would call and ask what I got. While I fumbled for an answer, the conversation would move on to their substantial gifts. My birthday however was the one day in our house that we were able to choose a present, a cake, even on rare occasion, plan a party funded by our parents. As a child (and later as a college student) I learned to let my birthday slide because it was so early in the American school year that those kids who came to my birthday parties were not those I was friends with by that other great gift giving time: Christmas.

Moving to Qatar had somewhat the opposite effect as there was a national day that was celebrated on September 3rd. This holiday meant a three day weekend during which I’d dash to Bahrain for some festivities. Now we celebrate National Day on December 18th so it appeared I was robbed of the Labor Day like weekend in Doha. Except for this year: Eid Al Fitr came a few days just before, so we packed our bags, snatched up the baby, and went for a weekend getaway to Santorini, Greece.

I promised myself a digital fast as a way to clear my head, enjoy the trip, and also being with my family. I did what many thought would be impossible: left my Blackberry at home. All the flights for this trip were early morning, making my vow to stay away from the Internet relatively easy. The morning we flew out, I did scan my email as the nefarious Cyclopistic blinking red light beckoned me even at dawn.

Congrats on winning the SheWrites New Novelist competition, Mohana!!!!

Incredibly, there it was. One of those messages that you keep your antennae up for but I had to brush my teeth and get on with the more normal parts of real life.

Needless to say, getting into the airport lounge and onto a computer was immediately the next order of business. I read with astonishment that my project, the one that had been rejected 10 times by agents and editors because they “weren’t compelled by it,” or didn’t feel they could do it justice. While the no’s were increasing from polite to reverse compliments (you have a wealth of material) they were still dismissive.

Of course, being no rookie, I knew all about not taking rejection to heart and writing on. And I did — saving this manuscript that is a semi-autobiographical first novel onto the hard drive — starting a second novel based on questions I was thinking about life in Qatar and how people fall in love. Yet when SheWrites reminded me on Twitter that they were doing a contest for the first chapters of unpublished novels. Winners would have their material in front of agents and editors with critiques. I downloaded the chapter, sent it in with my photo, and there my husband was in Greece, reading my synposis and first 2000 words as one of five finalists.

The Help a book that purportedly was rejected sixty times is now opening as a film all around the United States. J.K. Rowling is perhaps one of the most lucrative examples of never giving up on your work or yourself but there are many, many others including Stephen King, whose wife fished out that nail bitter, Carrie, from the trashcan and said she’d help with writing the teenage girlishness he was unsure of.

A contest breathes life back into a story and indeed this writer. A good lesson in writing close to my birthday or indeed any time of year. If you’re an aspiring writer or a writer who need encouragement, dust off the keyboard, notebook, desk and get back in there.

After all, no one can read you if your work isn’t finished.