And Now for a Few Updates on My Work in The Coming Months
I'm going to be polishing Water Like Crimson Sorrow some more today, which means you'll be seeing it out on the market in another month or two. For fans of ELBF when it was a self-titled book, this will be the 2nd half of that book and will feature it's very own well-deserved cover. Once that's out, I will be submitting book 3 (which will be the first new book for you folks that read the first ELBF before we split it) Cool Green Waters. CGW features quite a bit more about three characters that had less focus in the first book. Mateo, Zero and Michael become far more interesting and detailed here and we also get a bit more about Raven and Katja, of course! Expect a lot of action, suspense, dark happenings and some elements that are a little more on the sexy side of things (Mateo happens to run an S/M club) as well.
I have a wee bit of book four to work with too, but it will be a bit before it's ready. That book, titled Hollow Black Corners of the Soul will hopefully be completed in the next year or two, so don't worry! I also have a few ideas in mind for book five which also features some surprising return characters. By the way we'll be calling this series Shades of Midnight, rather apt considering each title features a color, eh?
I will have a short in the JEA horror collection Rejected for Content and will again be taking part in a collaborative 666 project, this one, called Lycanthroship, will feature werewolves and is set shortly after WWII. Both of these books should be working toward completion and are hoped to be out this Fall.
Apocrypha is still in the works, with Robert Lyons working on his, I might just put together a few more for that too. I also have a couple of other books to work on finishing up like Other Dangers, Jodie, one that's barely developed called The Farm and another which will have dark, posssibly YA fantasy themes and doesn't have a title yet. Long story short there will be a great deal more to expect in the coming years and I do hope you'll enjoy them all as they do. In the meantime, please look into my 3 latest releases below:
Wendy Won't Go Collector's Edition and Time of Tides Collector's Edition from JEA!
Talented authors, Amanda M. Lyons and Mark Woods, team up for an unprecedented collector's editions of their debut works, with never before seen bonus stories.
Wendy Won't Go
Billy and Sara are living a life of fear. Every day and every night since Sara was small they have been haunted by a terrible apparition. She is cold and she is cruel, strange and frightening. Her name is Wendy, and no matter where they go and no matter what they do, Wendy Won't Go.
What if Global Warming wasn't just down to Climate Change? What if it was down to something else?
As the worst storm of all time hits the entire globe and as all across the world rivers burst their banks and the oceans start to rise, one family take to the Norfolk Broads to try and escape the floods. Little do they know their nightmare is just beginning...because as they are about to find out, nowhere is safe!
What would you do to save the life of your child? Anything? This short about a woman's life turned juxtaposed horror explores just what anything means when your child's fate is held by an insidious creature. Here we learn that love flows like blood.
Ever wonder what would happen to all the pets and livestock of the world during a zombie apocalypse? Mark Woods did in this short about a dairy farm gone array in the worst possible way.
She remembers blood.
A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss.
Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms.
Lungs starved for air, heart leaping in her chest and her feet like pinions pushing her across the desert, she moves. It will never be enough. She will always fail. He is the wind, feathers and strange sounds wrap around her as she moves on, terrible laughter mocking her in the full bright light of the moon.
-from 'Love Like Blood' a story in Wendy Won't Go: Collector's Editon new from JEA!
Kindle $2.99
Time of Tides Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LWDMSP4
Wendy Won't Go Kindle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LWDMH28
WWG Collector's Print : https://www.createspace.com/4895131
Time of Tides Collector's Print: https://www.createspace.com/4895199
Wendy Won't Go and Time of Tides Collector's Editions to be Released!
If you're a big fan of literary horror and you really enjoyed Wendy Won't Go I'm sure you'll enjoy the new collector's edition coming out very soon from JEA! What makes it so special? While WWG got an ebook release in December of last year it was not released in paperback to the disappointment of some of my readers. Well now it will be out in paperback and it comes with both Mark Woods' enormously successful Time of Tides and a bonus story called Love Like Blood which I've always seen as another side of the coin or sister story to WWG. Time of Tides will also be getting a special Collector's Edition with WWG and a bonus story called Dairy of the Dead to make his edition just as collectible for horror fans! New to paperback for $9.99 and in a special collector's edition for ebook for $2.99 starting tomorrow :) Great literary horror stories from two of JEAs great authors! Keep a look out for the release and links tomorrow!
Love Like Blood, Fighting for Love When All Seems Hopeless
We must play our lives like soldiers in the field
The life is short, I'm running faster all the time
Strength and beauty destined to decay
So cut the rose in full bloom
Till the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood, a love like blood
Everyday through all frustration and despair
Love and hate fight with burning hearts
Till legends live and man is God again
And self-preservation rules the day no more
Oh, we must dream of promised lands and fields
That's never fade in season
As we move towards no end we learn to die
Red tears are shed on gray
COLEMAN, JEREMY / FERGUSON, PAUL / RAVEN, PAUL VINCENT / WALKER, KEVIN
I knew the title for my short story must have come from something I'd heard or read but I didn't actually realize that there would end up being a sort of parallel to the meaning of the song and the message of the story. Love Like Blood is still in progress but I have enough done and know enough about how it will end to find this interesting. Love Like Blood is a story about a Skinwalker (the picture I thought of most for my interpretation is above but feel free to picture him anyway you like) and a woman who makes a bargain with it to try and save what she holds dear. Determined to fight for what she's lost she endures a lot of hardships, involves herself in horrible acts and literally thrives on the barest knowledge that there is something left to hope for, something worth fighting to keep.
Love Like Blood also has a few parallels to Wendy Won't Go in that they both have a lot to say about endurance through adversity, the terrible weight of loss and the human heart's desire to fight for what belongs to it. There are differences between the two however. Wendy Won't Go is a larger story because it needed detail to express the enormity of the tale but Love Like Blood is much more streamlined and imagery based in order to express the protagonists focus and skewed way of thinking. The streamlines style has made it just as challenging to write as WWG despite it only being about half it's size.
Looking over the stories I've written for Apocrypha quite a few of them really are about the sort of things that concern parents. Am I good enough at this? Am I strong enough to endure if things don't go the way I expect them to? What would I do if something happened to my children? Why did this happen to us and how will we survive as a family? Most of the ideas for these stories came to me while I was pregnant with Sasha and shortly after she was born and I suppose that has a lot to do with it.