Showing posts with label coming of age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coming of age. Show all posts

Lergion of the Damned: Excerpt

Legion of the Damned

Dreadland Chronicles Book III


The horrors of the past meet the brutality of the present as four young 
boys come of age while exploring a post apocalyptic world.




There should be others with him, he thought as he rolled over onto his back to find three women cowering in the opposite corner of the cage. Their clothes were torn and dirty, the result of the celebration his captors had thrown the night before, coming to the cage sitting far from the warming flames of the fire, taking each woman in turn back to the group where their screams vocalized the brutality that was visited upon them.

He had watched helplessly as each of the women was taken from the cage, powerless to do anything to help, consoling himself with the lone bottle of whiskey he’d found in his pack. 

One of them whimpered as Billie-Bob tried to sit up, fireworks of pain igniting within his head as his hand slipped in the liquid covering the floor of the cage. They were moving south as the morning sun breached the eastern horizon, spreading its warming glow across the countryside. His teeth chattered as he sat up, and he hugged himself to conserve what warmth remained in his body.

It was then he spotted the forth woman lying on her belly beside him. Her dress was torn, her bare back exposed to the elements as it rose and fell with shallow breaths. Her head was turned towards him, one arm covering half of her face as she chewed at her wrist. Blood stained her cheeks, crusting the tip of her nose as she worked diligently, gnawing at her own flesh. Her eyes burned with despair, unseeing, focused on a point somewhere that existed only in her mind. Blood flowed from beneath her arm, and Billie-Bob realized then that it was her blood that covered parts of his body.

He looked down at his blood covered arms, the shoulder of his shirt soaked through. He reached for her, wanting to stop her, but she shrank away from his hand as her gnawing intensified.

A gout of blood splattered against the wooden front of their prison, she had succeeded in severing the main artery in her wrist, enduring a pain he could only begin to imagine as she sought out the comfort death could provide. Her wrist fell away from her blood crusted lips as the waning light of her life fled from her eyes.

She had escaped the despair that awaited all of them, but in so doing had placed them in mortal danger. Billie-Bob had never been this close to someone when they died, and he watched in fascinated horror as a mottled gray color quickly spread across her exposed flesh. A growl came from deep within her chest as she pulled her arms under her body, and struggled to lift herself from the floor. Fabric tore as she pushed herself up, and her dress fell away from the mottled flesh of her body. He felt no desire at her nakedness, only revulsion, tempered with fear.

Ever so slowly she turned her head to look at him, her blood crusted lips pulled back to reveal bloodied teeth as she ran her tongue along them. The women in the corner behind him whined as the woman pushed herself up to her knees and turned to face them with cataract coated eyes.

To be continued! 

Read the first book in the series.

All Roads Lead To Terror

Click on cover for more info or to order!

Synopsis:

The horrors of the past meet the brutality of the present as four young boys come of age while exploring a post apocalyptic world.

On the day of his birth the dead walked and society crumbled. His mother took one look at him and pronounced him Meat. He survived, she didn't.

Fourteen years have passed and obscurity means survival in an increasingly dangerous world. For the survivors compound at Bremo Bluff that obscurity is threatened when a savage band abducts a group of children from the compound.

Accompanied by his three friends Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob, Meat embarks on a quest to rescue the children. A journey that will lead them into adulthood, with a brief detour through the Dreadlands, as they confront the harsh reality of a brutal world beyond the barriers that had served to protect them.

In the dead city of Richmond Meat and his friends will confront a savage cult of children who worship a creature of the night. These creatures, once considered the nightmare imaginings of a fevered mind, are now awake in a world where the population that once served as their food source has been severely reduced.

Awake and very, very, hungry.


Legion of the Damned will be available for pre-order 
beginning March 1st with a special pre-order price. 

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Writing what you don't know.

While writing the first book of the Dreadland Chronicles, coming of age in a post apocalyptic world, I was confronted with a small dilemma. Most of my fiction takes place around where I live, in Western Maryland, an area I’m intimately familiar with. Though sometimes I run across a place that surprises me right in my own back yard.

In All Roads Lead to Terror, book one in the Dreadland Chronicles my main character Meat, and his three closest friends, Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob travel to Richmond Virginia to rescues a group of young children who had been taken by a savage band of survivors.

I’ve been through Richmond several times, and when I was driving a truck I’ve delivered several loads to different businesses in that city. But I didn’t have the intimate knowledge needed to create a realistic setting for my characters. Realism in my fiction is very important to me, I believe it’s imperative that the reader feel like they’re actually at the location I describe. With that in mind I use real world settings as backdrops for my characters.

Faced with this dilemma I turned to Google Earth. The program contains a little gem called street view, where one can go down to street level and view 360 degree photographs of the actual street and buildings that lined it. That was how I learned Chef Mamusu’s Africanne Café was located across the street from an Enterprise rental store. The café was a small place, the main entrance right on the corner. A drive thru bank had been built directly behind the café with the entrance on one street and the exit on the street that ran perpendicular to it.

Something else happened while I was researching their path through Richmond. Two blocks down the street from that corner café stood a nondescript row of buildings. One in particular had been painted white. Above the single glass door the word hope had been written in black paint. Around it that same sentiment was repeated in a multitude of different languages.

It’s gone now. I’ve gone back to look, and the wall of the building that was once white has been repainted a drab brown. But when you stop and think about it, it’s strange really that given my mindset as I worked on the first book in the series, struggling to get the story just right. It’s important, at least to me, that the story be right. Hovering on the verge of just giving up and working on something else, that I should run across a message like that.

It was a message that not only gave me the desire to continue the series, but also offered up the answer every writer struggles to uncover as we write. The underlying theme that transforms the story from simply words on the page to a living thing that breaths with a life of its own. That message of hope has become the cornerstone of the foundation that the Dreadland Chronicles rests upon. Hope is what these four boys offer in a dangerous, post apocalyptic world.



All Roads Lead to Terror

Click on cover for more info or to order!

Synopsis:

On the day of his birth the dead walked and society crumbled. His mother took one look at him and pronounced him Meat. He survived, she didn't.

Fourteen years have passed and obscurity means survival in an increasingly dangerous world. For the survivors compound at Bremo Bluff that obscurity is threatened when a savage band abducts a group of children from the compound.

Accompanied by his three friends Window, Einstein, and Billie-Bob, Meat embarks on a quest to rescue the children. A journey that will lead them into adulthood, with a brief detour through the Dreadlands, as they confront the harsh reality of a brutal world beyond the barriers that had served to protect them.

In the dead city of Richmond, Meat and his friends will confront a savage cult of children who worship a creature of the night. These creatures, once considered the nightmare imaginings of a fevered mind, are now awake in a world where the population that once served as their food source has been severely reduced.

Awake and very, very, hungry.

Also available through these fine online retailers.

    Barnes & Noble  
   
    Kobo   


Fridays 5 wth Tanya Lisle

Tanya Lisle is a novelist from Vancouver, British Columbia. Publishing several novels annually, she writes in a variety of genres from young adult urban fantasy to post-apocalyptic science fiction and is currently working on several series. When she isn't writing, she is either working as a web developer or working on a variety of game projects.

1.) When did you first get serious about writing?

It was back in high school. A friend of mine asked me to write a backstory for a character she was working on for a comic and she liked it. It was so much fun that I just kept going with it after that and I haven't stopped.

2.) What is the hardest part for you about writing?

Editing. Drafts are fun until you have to start fixing them and you realize just how much doesn't make any sense the second time around. It's also when my editor delights in pointing out just how often I spell the same few words wrong or miss punctuation.


Click on the cover for more info or to order!

Synopsis: After losing three of Adrianna's brothers, Alice takes it upon herself to scour Wonderland to find them over the summer. She never thought it would be this difficult to find three boys who so obviously didn't belong there, but they continue to elude her search for them.

There's a new group of people in the plains that are most definitely not from Wonderland. Alice encounters Tiger Lily, a young woman determined to do whatever she needs to help her people as they escape the horrors of their homelands. Though Alice is hesitant to stop looking for Adrianna's brothers, Tiger Lily proves to be very persuasive and will have Alice's help whether she is willing or not.

3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

I was so nervous after I put the first book up. I hadn't done any marketing and it was such a strange little thing that I had no idea how anyone was going to respond to it. I was worried no one was going to like it, or that they were and they'd have high expectations for the next one. Luckily for me, most people responded pretty well.

4.) What is more important to you, story, or character? Why?

Character is definitely more important. A story is great, but even a fantastic story will fall apart if you aren't invested in the characters involved in it. And an interesting character can also hold up even the blandest and most nonsensical of plots.

5.) What is a typical day like in your world?

I get up, get ready, and go to my day job, where I am for most of the day. I'm not home until the evening, when I make myself something for dinner and take a bit of a break before heading to the computer and starting to work on whatever project I have assigned for the day. Sometimes that's writing, rewriting, or editing the next book. Sometimes it's programming for the game I've been working on. Sometimes it's the other parts of being an author, so writing blogs and updating social media accounts. It all just depends on the night.

Author links:

Website: http://tanyalisle.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TanyaLisle

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

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tanya-Lisle/e/B00OUKN1JS/

New Release: The Soul Shepher and the Threshold

Now available from M.V. Noerrac

Click on the cover for more info or to order.

Synopsis: 
The soul shepherd Michael, with young man's eyes the color of Crab Nebula, guides the dead to cross the threshold. For over a century, he has discharged this duty with blind obedience. Until he met thirteen-year old Noah. Struck by Noah's horrific fate, Michael makes a choice that sets him on a collision course with the very nature of a soul shepherd. Worse, it has awakened demons from his own past, and has forced him to confront a bitter irony - as a soul shepherd he is forbidden to cross the threshold. 

About the Author:

If you were on a 14-hour non-stop flight from Toronto to Anywhere-City, will you enjoy seating next to me? Let's see :-)

First, let's talk about books. I read an eclectic mix - from Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", to Bram Stoker's "Dracula", to Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". Second, TV shows. I can never get enough of The Big Bang Theory; and Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Third, food. Breakfast on weekends is my favourite meal - pile of pancake or French toast generously drizzled with maple syrup, peameal bacon, sunny-side-up egg.

What about age? Well, I grew up when Popeye, Road Runner, Tweetie Bird, and Superfriends were Saturday morning staples. When everyone I know, know the answer to, "Who you gonna call?"

Finally, like any self-respecting Torontonian I love the Raptors, Blue Jays, (and okay, The Toronto Maple Leafs).

So, fasten your seatbelt, eh?
 

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