Around the Web Wednesday…

This is all over Facebook this morning and, therefore, the web in general, but I thought it worth repeating.

And you know what is super cool about books? You can read them on your computer or phone or new kindle’s (also announced today) – it doesn’t get much cooler than that! These are exciting times – I know I’m gushing but I am super in love with ebook technology!!

Ooooo, while you are at it, have you bought your copy of After The Virus yet? No? Click on some links – right there on the right hand side of the page – thank you much-ly!

Around The Web: After The Virus, etc.

Only two items (that I know of) of note this week, as I have been doing more writing than web surfing, which is good of me, but makes a bit of a boring post (with only a couple of links).
  • Michelle over at Michelle’s Book Blog took a read of After The Virus this week and ranked it 4-stars! Hopefully her readers enjoy it as much as she did!
  • Also my great proofreader, Diana Cox, (who, BTW, found a multitude of things in what I thought was a really clean final draft, plus her rates are crazy reasonable) was kind enough to request After The Virus as one of her featured books on her web site. Thanks Diana!
Hope you are having a great week!
FYI – !!Beginning next week!! – Flash Fiction Fridays and then, alternating somewhat random weeks, Short Story Saturday – accumulating in the release of After the Virus in POD (print on demand) and then the launch of Harbinger!

Around The Web: After The Virus, etc.

If you are a writer and not reading these blogs you are crazy (okay, that’s a bit extreme seeing as time is a limited resource, but still check these out):

Around The Web: After The Virus, etc.

Oops, this was supposed to go live yesterday!!
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Instead of doing individual posts, I’ve decided to do a link round up every Wednesday (if I have collected enough links to warrant a round up!!) So, since I last posted about my novel, After The Virus, (buy and sample links found on the right hand side bar) here is what has happened around the web!

Other links of interest:
  • Want to know all about ISBN’s? Author Michelle Demers has written a 6 part series for self-publishers on this very topic. Here’s PART ONE.
  • Ever wonder what it would be like to be a female detective in a small town? Well, Suzie Ivy is the Bad Luck Detective and she blogs about her crazy (and funny) experiences. I’ve got her on RSS and am loving her posts.

After the Virus — Another New Review!

This review is copied and pasted from Patrick D’Orazio’s Blog and can also be found on Amazon & Goodreads.

WARNING – spoilers ahead

 

4 out of 5 stars

Quite a few post apocalyptic novels have attempted to inject love and romance into their pages. Some do it by cramming it into a high action, gore splattered story, while others let it flow more gradually into the mix, letting it germinate based on circumstances surrounding the characters-people pushed together and sharing the horrors that surround one another, so they come together to push back the nightmares. Meghan Ciana Doidge is one of the few storytellers who pushes the love story up front and center with After The Virus. There are a couple of other books I have read that have the relationship between two main characters stand as the key element, but this is the first that I would categorize as a true romance tale.

This story surrounds the two main characters, Rhiannon and Will, as they live their separate lives after the apocalypse…if you can call it living-especially for Rhiannon, who begins the story captured and put into what amounts to a baby mill. Over 99% of the world’s population has died, and the barbaric pockets of survivors are lead by men who need as many healthy women to breed as possible. But Rhiannon is special. She is an actress and a world class beauty that has caught the eye of the local boss, who wants her all to himself. She escapes, but throughout the rest of the story is pursued by the boss’s men, who are intent on bringing her back to him. Will, on the other hand, is a man who has chosen to live his life alone, in a small, remote town where he dutifully takes to the task of cleaning out the dead bodies and restocking the stores and and maintaining the hotel. But Will just wants to be left alone, which creates friction when other survivors come across his little Shangri La who are looking for a place to stay. He eludes danger with them, and on one of his trips to find more supplies, comes across a mute nine year old girl he dubs Snickers (that was what she was eating when he finds her) and though she is skittish, brings her back to his place to live with him. Rhiannon, who manages to escape her captors, stumbles across Will’s town and finds herself reluctantly feeling that this new place could be home. Of course, due to the character’s actions and the other desperate survivors that surround them, things do not go at all well for them. Will and Rhiannon are thrust into the wider world, with other survivors, desperate for heroes, latching on to Will. Rhiannon gets captured again, and Will realizes that he has a greater responsibility in the world than he had hoped or wanted, but will accept, if it will allow him to save the woman he is falling in love with.

The story flows very well and I liked the characters the author developed. Snickers and the dog B.B. allow Will and Rhiannon to focus their efforts on something more than their awkward, fumbling steps toward the realization that they belong together, and draw them closer throughout the story. Some would call this a zombie story, but more to the point, it is an apocalyptic love tale with a smattering of infected creatures that perhaps resemble zombies, though they are a side point altogether. As the author states clearly, this is a story that pays homage to other author’s tales, including one of my favorite books of all time, The Stand. It is about people living, loving, and struggling after the world has crumbled; trying to put the pieces back together and start again, which requires reluctant heroes and leaders, and symbols of hope that can stand against the devastation that not only a virus can do, but what men can do to one another.

The areas of concern I had with this story were a couple of main distractions that I think took away slightly from the tale. First and foremost, the use of pronouns when it came to stating who was speaking and thinking were confusing. One character would be speaking or would be in action one paragraph, and the next would start out with “he” or “she” and would be referring to an entirely different character. This was consistent throughout the story, and while it is something I got used to and started to expect, it disrupted the story when I had to figure things out more than once. The other issue I had was with the nicknames given to various characters. I totally understand and appreciate them for characters that pass by in a story and become nothing more than minor details, but when they become key characters, and when their real names are learned, those nicknames need to evaporate, or at least used less liberally-it caused confusion, and in some cases didn’t make much sense. Especially when it is really only one person who creates the nickname and doesn’t necessarily speak it out loud, but just as a device to remember them, but in no time, everyone else is using it as well. This works when a few characters call Will “Tex”, but not so much when a character is dubbed “Stupid” early on in the tale, but even when his real name is provided that dismissive moniker is used up until the very end of the story.

Rest assured, these issues were not deterrence for me in reading or completing this book. It is a solid tale, with well fleshed out characters and a story that has a place in the PA pantheon as unique because it is a true love story. I know this is the author’s first book, and my gripes are minor issues that are a sideline to her ability to tell a tale. I look forward to checking out more of her work as it is released.

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As always, links to buy and/or  sample After The Virus can be found on the right hand side bar.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, Patrick!

Alternate Book Cover: After The Virus

So I have received some feedback that the current ebook cover I am using for After The Virus is a little dark (aka doesn’t “pop” enough) and not as genre specific as it could be, but I find that I’m a little concerned about making a change when I have already begun branding the book with this cover (see right-hand side bar).

Scott Fitzgerald Gray, after he read and reviewed the book, volunteered to mock up an alternate cover, because he wasn’t sure the current one sold the book strongly enough, and this (above) is what he came up with – I think there is something really visually compelling about the white background and etched background lettering and, obviously, the bloody handprint really does pop in this version, but I am also not too sure that I like it any better than the current darker version.

Is different better in this case?

I am, however, seriously toying with the idea of keeping the current cover for the ebook and using Scott’s version for the print version, for which I have actually gotten a few requests. Side note: I might try to have a POD version out for September/October.

Do you prefer the current cover or this new version? Why or why not? Feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

After The Virus – now on iBooks!

After The Virus is now available on iBooks.

$2.99 (allowing for currency conversions) on all six i-Tunes stores:

iTunes Canada

iTunes USA

iTunes UK

iTunes Germany

iTunes France

iTunes Australia

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So please select one of the above links to read this post-apocalyptic love story via iBooks.

Synopsis: After the virus decimates 99.9% of the world’s population, and all traces of humanity along with it, Rhiannon and Will are forced to move beyond their past fame, fortune, and personal demons to rescue a mute girl from the clutches of two warring cults.

Keywords: post-apocalyptic, dystopia, survival, zombies, suspense, thriller, horror, love

Categories: Horror, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Action-Adventure, Fiction

ENJOY!!

Around The Web Monday with After The Virus

Coming soon: iBooks!!

An Interview with Author Bryan R. Dennis

This post is part of a Blog Tour supporting Indie Authors and their self-published books. I hope you enjoy getting a little bit of insight into the writer’s mind & craft. If you like what you read, please consider supporting the author by checking out their work (links below).

Pitch us your book!

A self-deluded corporate loser encounters an eccentric woman from the desert who shows him another way of looking at life and at himself.

What compelled you to write this particular story?

I encountered a coyote on the way to work one morning. It stood on a hill in one of the last vacant lots of desert near central Las Vegas. From an aerial perspective, imagine a postage stamp of brown surrounded by an endless sea of clay-tile rooftops. That little square of brown was its home. Nearly every morning I used to see it there, chasing hares, transporting pups, sniffing around for grub. This time it was just standing still, watching the sun rise over the Strip. I never saw it again after that. The lot now lies beneath a subdivision of cheap, cookie-cutter tract homes, and the only wildlife left in that part of town are pigeons, cockroaches, and rats.

Did you stumble upon any interesting facts or trivia or insights while writing and/or researching your book? How did you incorporate this into your work?

I didn’t have to research much as I’ve lived in Las Vegas for over thirteen years, and four of those years were spent shuttling tourists around in a bus and limousine. While chatting with passengers I used to impart plenty of trivia and Vegas-related facts. Sometimes I got uncomfortable looks. Did you know that the Luxor is one of the most common places people commit suicide?

Pitch us your next book and/or project!

My next book, Saw a Rainbow, is a metaphysical thriller about an ancient general who wakes up as a homeless drunk, with partial amnesia, in modern Las Vegas. I love movies that mess with your mind: Inception, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Memento, Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you like those movies, you should enjoy my next book.

What are a few of your favourite things (books/movies/comics/hobbies, etc?)

I’ve mentioned some movies. I love books that make me see things differently — stories that whisk me away to strange mental landscapes. Books by authors like Haruki Murakami, Masanobu Fukouka, Douglas Adams, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, Anne Rice. I love prose that is economical yet colorful. I like coffee and wide open spaces.

Favourite cookie?

Rosettes. Though I’ve never had a cookie someone made for me that I didn’t like.

Where can we find more of you (website/blog/twitter/goodreads, etc.)?

Indie Snippets — where I help promote indie authors.
Bryan Dennis – Blog
Twitter
Facebook

Check out Bryan’s novel, An Epitaph for Coyote, here:

AMAZON US
AMAZON UK
SMASHWORDS

I have not had the opportunity (aka time) to read Bryan’s book, but his sample pages are awaiting me on my iPAD. Bryan’s novel, A Epitaph for a Coyote, has some great reviews including this one:

“This is an intelligent and at times very funny novel as unpredictable as life, and as memorable. The “message” is so cleverly presented as well-written and engaging fiction that one may find oneself rereading the last few chapters, again and again.” — Publisher’s Weekly

After the Virus — Kicks Serious Ass — Review!

After the Virus received a new review on Amazon.com  yesterday. I’ve copied & pasted from the Amazon.com page for After the Virus to share here:

4 out of 5 stars

Kicks serious ass, June 28, 2011

By Scott F Gray

This review is from: After the Virus (Kindle Edition)

Deftly mixing post-apocalyptic survivor thriller tropes with a wickedly morbid sense of humor, Meghan Ciana Doidge’s “After the Virus” manages to be both the funniest and most kick-ass action/adventure narrative I’ve read in ages. (Not exactly a spoiler, but skip this but if you like to be completely surprised when you read: “The Boss, completely focused on Snickers, turned to violently vault the girl across the room. Instead, he discovered the three-inch-heel of her previously so impractical shoe buried his throat, which was a bitch, as she’d aimed for his eye.”)

The novel tells the story of two survivors of a world-destroying biological plague — A-list actress Rhiannon, who finds herself the unwitting central figure in the plots of a maniacal fascist boss; and ex-pro quarterback Will, intent on living his life alone but looked to by a population of scattered survivors desperate for someone to lead them. The darkness of the story speaks to the trials of its characters and the strength of its setting (which will particularly resonate with any resident of Vancouver who’s ever asked “Could this city possibly be more unlivable?”) But at the same time, Doidge builds her narrative on a firm foundation of hope for the future, manifested in an 8-year-old girl known only as Snickers, who becomes the point of emotional entanglement connecting Will and Rhiannon as they’re dragged through the darkness and back out again.

BUY THE BOOK – Kindle USA
BUY THE BOOK – Kindle UK
BUY THE BOOK – ePUB via Goodreads

READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS