Indie Spotlight on Carl Ashmore

Hey everyone,

Earlier this year, I read a book on my Kindle App by fellow "Indie Author" Carl Ashmore, a great guy from the UK. The book is called The Time Hunters, and it was awesome! It is a very enjoyable tale, reminiscent of something CS Lewis or JK Rowling would write, about 2 kids staying with their uncle, who just happens to have a time machine. The kids join their uncle, as well as a couple of other famous characters from history/mythology to search for The Golden Fleece and avoid the evil time travellers.

Carl has graciously answered a couple of interview questions at the bottom of this post, but first, check out this excerpt from The Time Hunters (available on the Kindle, and on the Nook!):

Here’s a brief excerpt from ‘The Time Hunters’:

Becky pulled her dressing gown close and followed him to the rear lawns. She watched horrified as Joe turned a left and stopped at a familiar outbuilding. Joining him, she shot him an angry look. ‘You haven’t broken into Uncle Percy’s laboratory, have you? He said it was out of bounds. If you have, I’ll thump your face so hard it swells like a - ’

‘Quiet,’ Joe barked. ‘Listen…’ He pressed a finger to his lips.

For once, Becky did as he said. The rain was fading now but even through the moaning wind she could hear muffled voices. She grew intrigued.

‘Look round the corner,’ Joe whispered, pointing to the edge of the wall.

Becky hesitated and then slowly peered round.

‘Can you see? Are they still there?’

Becky didn’t respond. Mesmerised by the astonishing sight before her, she didn’t hear his words.

Will was crouched on the waterlogged grass, beside him, a large sandy-coloured animal in a heavy sleep, its chest moving up and down in a slow, consistent rhythm. Uncle Percy stood over them, soaked and exhausted. He held a pair of pliers jubilantly in his hand. The pliers contained a fat, yellowing tooth.

‘Good girl,’ Will breathed, softly patting the creature’s back.

‘Milly should be out for about half an hour,’ Uncle Percy said. ‘What do you say to a nice cup of tea, William? I believe we’ve earned it.’

Will laid the animal’s head lightly on the grass. ‘I deem we have.’

Becky’s head spun like a top. She felt confused and bewildered. Not to see Uncle Percy up at this time of night - she half-expected this would be when he did his inventing. No, looking at the sleeping animal, she knew it shouldn’t be alive at all. She’d seen one before at the Natural History Museum in London. But that was only a life-like reconstruction and not the genuine article.

A Sabre-tooth tiger lay sedated on the lawn of Bowen Hall. A very large, very real Sabre-tooth tiger.

Here, Carl answers a few questions:

What or who inspired you to write ‘The Time Hunters’?

The idea was the inspiration. In 2005, I had an idea about a teenage girl who discovers her uncle is a time traveller and becomes embroiled in a murder mystery and search through time for the Golden Fleece.

The more I considered the possibilities of fusing legend with history, myth with reality, the more it excited me. I reached a point the story had to exist outside my head and so began to write.

However, two years ago, my dad died suddenly and eleven months later my beautiful daughter, Alice, was born. These events sharpened my focus– initially as a way of dealing with grief (‘The Time Hunters’ contains a strong surrogate parent/child relationship) and as a story for Alice to enjoy in the future.

Why did you choose to write for children?

I would never want to write anything else. Writing for children allows me to explore the most fundamental themes - courage, honour, decency, identity, whilst also stretching my imagination to its limits.

In ‘The Time Hunters’ I visit Ancient Greece, Victorian England, Ice Age Kansas and Jurassic London; my characters include Will Scarlet, Jason and the Argonauts, a vegetarian Minotaur and a Megalosaurus called Harold.

Writing for adults could never offer such opportunity for fun. Besides, I’m a big kid so technically I write for an adult audience too.

What are your future writing ambitions?

I have currently writing the ‘Time Hunters’ sequel called ‘The Time Hunters and the Box of Eternity.’ This time the story takes my characters to the eighteenth century Caribbean, so there’ll be plenty of pirates, foaming grog, enormous sea serpents, zombie sharks and Pandora’s Box in the form of Blackbeard’s Treasure Chest!

Carl can be reached directly at carlashmore@mailcity.com.

Next stop in the William Meikle Blog Stop

Hello, voracious readers! Today, we have indie author William (Willie) Meikle stopping by the blog to plug his novel, The Invasion. Willie actually has written a plethora of novels, but The Invasion is definitely his biggie. In fact, as he posted yesterday, it's a bit prophetic! Things that he wrote about seem to be happening for real!

Willie submitted a short story for the Learn Me Good blog to feature. If you're a lover of puns and wordplay, then be sure to look sharp at the end of the story.

Also, Willie is giving away a FREE KINDLE!! See his website for all the details, but in short, he will pick one name at the end of February to receive a free Kindle, already loaded with several of his works. All you have to do to be entered is leave a comment here on this blog post.

At the Trial of the Loathsome Slime
by William Meikle

The slime was truly ugly, the ugliest thing ever seen on Earth, uglier even than a bowl of rhubarb and custard left to congeal for a few days then coated with chocolate sauce, which it resembled most.

That afternoon it was held in a box of clear plastic, a six foot cube against whose walls it slithered and splattered with dismaying regularity. The trails of yellow mucous left behind when it retracted boiled violently before finally hardening into brown crayons etched on the inside walls. It had been calculated that the plastic would last fifteen minutes, more than enough for the court to reach a verdict.

Scenes were flashed across the holo-vid in heart-stopping sharpness: the return of the deep space probe, the sudden growth of jelly on its surface as the slime discovered it liked oxygen, the slime escaping from the research lab by the simple expedient of melting its way through everything in its path, the slime snuggling up to a dog and devouring half of it before moving on, the slime melting its way into and through a the servo-motors of a cross-town aerobus, and, finally, the high point of the prosecutor’s case, the slime pouring over the Multivac port, the casing and chips and melted copper fusing into a blob before themselves being consumed. The camera drew back to show the slime sitting contentedly at an intersection, small pustules bubbling on what passed for its skin.

The jury gave a long sigh as the prosecutor rumbled back to the niche with the parting words, “The prosecution rests, M’Lord.”

The room was hushed, a quiet broken only by the splashing of new ridges on the walls of the slime’s cage.

An aperture opened beside the vocalizer and a lack rectangle of cloth was placed on top of a weary grey wig.

The vocaliser adopted a stern bass register as it intoned the verdict. This menace to Earth’s security was to be destroyed. Analysis had shown that only by breaking the slime into its constituent cells could its effects be neutralised.

Therefore the court judged that the slime was to be taken from the courtroom to the Virginia Mountains on the planet Blue Ridge, where it would be poured through a micropore sieve until it was dead.

“And may Multivac have mercy on its circuits.”

There was no one present at the demise of the slime, which was a pity, because proof of its great intelligence emerged at the last second as its cells communicated with each other in one last message in an attempt to cheer itself up on the way to oblivion…

“Well! This is another fine mesh you’ve gotten us into.”


END

William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com

Author spotlight on Judi Coltman

Happy Saturday, everyone! I don't know about you, but this has been the longest week ever! It's pretty pathetic, really, too, because it was our first FULL week back since the 2-week break, and now we have a 3-day weekend! But we NEED it!

Today, I turn your attention to Judi Coltman, whose book, Is it Just Me, or is Everyone a Little Nuts? is a humorous look at marriage, parenting and aging. Short chapters written in an Erma Bombeck style look at the day to day occurrences in life through the quirky filter of a peri-menopausal woman. What happens when a simple Halloween costume morphs into a nationwide movement? Why does "look" mean different things to different genders and who's right? Was it wrong to offer to bring popcorn to the 4th grade puberty movie?

Judi's bio reads:Raised in an affluent suburb of Detroit, Judi Coltman grew up in a female heavy household with an urban sense of "normal."

Coltman attended Michigan State University, majoring in Journalism until a professor requested she switch majors - "Apparently making a story better with added features isn't acceptable in the news world," Coltman laments.

With a BA in English from Northern Illinois University, Coltman has written for local, regional and national publications.

Most recently, Coltman has been writing a weekly blog called, "My Life in a Nutshell," from where her book material was born.

Coltman lives in northern Illinois and is working on her second book.

Judi provided me with an excerpt from her book and asked that I share it here.

One Word is Worth a Thousand Meanings

The English language is one of the most difficult languages for anyone not raised speaking the language to fully comprehend. What with words that are spelled the same, pronounced the same yet have vastly different meanings. . .words like, well “Like,” it’s a wonder we can understand each other at all. I can like (as in enjoy) something (Facebook encourages me to like lots of things) or something can be like. . .as in math: Are the amounts like? We've all seen the homonyms like (meaning, "as in") read and read. Or lie and lie. However, it has been my experience that perhaps the complicated meaning surrounding the simplest words is more of a problem for the average American - specifically the average American male. . .with the name Moondoggy.

I learned early in my marriage that the male of my particular family species tend toward the extremely literal when they speak and are not capable of stepping back to see the deeper meaning of even simple words unless prodded and, yes sometimes even shamed. It's not a fault exactly, it's more like (meaning, "comparable to") a handicap. The sad part is that they don't seem to understand WHY the entire population of females in their lives think it's a problem. Pity. Take, for example, the word LOOK.

My sister-in-law, who likes to be thought of as Queen of the Universe (and we allow her that moniker only because she can dispense professional medical advice to us for free) lost her beloved Portuguese Water Dog, Kelsey, last summer after a long and love-filled life. My brother-in-law, her husband, would rather chew broken glass than to have a pet but tolerated having a dog all of those years for his daughters. Tolerated. Rarely did he refer to Kelsey as anything more than, "dog" and "it." The truth is, he believes the best pets are ceramic (an opinion held by my own Moondoggy as well.). So, when Kelsey died, in deference to his heartbroken women, my brother-in-law didn't say much and reserved his "Happy Dance" for private moments in his man cave.

Several weeks after Kelsey was gone, Queen of the Universe announced that she was going to look at Golden-doodle puppies. Brother-in-law grunted but didn't say much. Queen made this trek to "look" at the puppies four times. FOUR TIMES! When she announced that she had, in fact, fallen in love with a puppy and made a deposit - Brother-in-law’s head spun around three times and he spat," I thought you were only going to LOOK!" Now I ask you, if you are looking, (meaning, "observing") at your better half going to look (meaning, "bond") at something four times, do you think she WON'T eventually come home with a something? How many times did he "look" at a 2009 Corvette before ordering one and do you think for one moment that the Queen of the Universe thought he was "just looking" without the intent to purchase?

So it should come as no shock that I witnessed the following story unfold at the annual family Christmas last weekend.

My sainted, cat-loving other sister-in-law had just recovered from a fairly traumatic fall fraught with invasive surgeries, obstructions, nose tubes and other horrors not for the faint of heart. And stoically, she made it through. Sainted Sister-in-Law did all of this without the comfort of her two beloved cats who had both passed on to the great scratching post in the sky within the past two years. Now, my other brother-in-law, is not a fan of cats, but had been a good sport with Sainted Sister-in-Law’s cats. After all, Sainted Sister-in-Law and the cats were a package deal. As her recovery progressed, Sainted Sister found herself yearning to get out and about. Other Brother-in-Law suggested it might cheer Sainted Sister up if she were to go to the SPCA and look at cats. She thought that was both thoughtful and sensitive of Other Brother (and, I might add, worth several hundred valuable Husband Points redeemable at moments of poor judgment) and took him up on the suggestion.

Over dinner that evening, an excited and re-energized Sainted Sister informed Other Brother that she had found three cats and one dog that she connected with and even asked if he would care to go back and help her select a pet. Other Brother’s eyes bulged out of his head meeting the lenses of his glasses and he spat, "I thought you were just going to LOOK, not bring one home!"

Can you imagine? I mean really, why not just offer a chocoholic a Godiva and then take it away, risking certain maiming? I am pretty sure that when Other Brother decided to look at SLR cameras, Sainted Sister knew it meant he was going to BUY one (which he did - a really expensive one!)

Funny thing about the simple words like (meaning, "for example") Look-- you can take them at face value or you just might find yourself looking (meaning, "eating your words") into the furry face of a brand new family member and it might be a smart move to like (meaning, "pretend to be thrilled by") it.

Visit Judi Coltman's website here: www.judicoltman.com
Her blog can be found here: jcoltman.blogspot.com

And look for Is it Me, or is Everyone a Little Nuts? in paperback and on the Kindle.

Book spotlight! The Crystal Facade

This weekend, I am turning the spotlight on another indie author -- Debra Martin. Debra has co-written a book called The Crystal Facade, which is available on the Kindle and other electronic book readers.

The Crystal Facade is Book 2 in the Rule of Otharia series. Royal Otharian twins Darius and Dyla Telkur have a big problem: they know too much. While fleeing from a telekinetic assassin in a failed coup to seize the Telkur throne, they defied a centuries old quarantine order and traveled to the strange planet called Earth where they made a shocking discovery that native Otharians are living and working on the forbidden planet. While there, the twins run afoul of a criminal overlord who bears a striking resemblance to their own beloved Grand Duke, the most powerful man on Otharia. Simply returning to their home world doesn't end the twins’ troubles, because there are people at home who know the secret too, a secret so powerful it could topple the hierarchy of the royalty itself.

When Dyla's dream visions of the London crime boss portend an imminent threat to her family, she has no choice but to secretly return to Earth and seek answers. Who is this crime boss, what’s his connection to Otharia and why does he look like the Grand Duke? What the twins don't realize is that they're walking into a conspiracy that involves a centuries old interplanetary diamond smuggling operation between the two planets. Crystals as they are called on Otharia fuel their PSI powers and controlling the flow of crystals is the ultimate power.

Assassins on both planets are on the move, and their target is the elimination of the Telkur twins. Everything is connected, but time is running out. Darius and Dyla must unravel the mystery and discover the identity of the malevolent mastermind trying to destroy them before Dyla's worst nightmare comes true.

Debra Martin is a science fiction and fantasy author who started writing with co-author, David W Small in 2006. Writing with a co-author is challenging in itself, but when 1 author lives on the East Coast and 1 lives on the West Coast, the challenges are a bit more daunting, but because we live in an electronic world of email, Instant Messenger and Skype, the partnership is totally workable.

They have 2 science fiction novels, "Quest for Nobility" and "Crystal Facade" of the RULE OF OTHARIA trilogy available for sale as well as two novellas "The Right Path" and "Path to War" in the DARK FUTURE series.

You can read more about and by Debra at her Amazon Author page.

Blog Tour for J.C. Phelps

As many of you know, I am part of the "Independent Author" tour that is sweeping the nation. Well, if not sweeping, at least we are doing some light dusting.

Today, I am showing some support for my fellow indie by hosting one whistle-stop on her world-wide blog tour. J.C. Phelps is promoting her novel, Color Me Grey, which is the first in a series about a girl named Alexis Stanton.

Here is the back cover blurb:

Meet Alexis Stanton, a 5' 4" petite young woman with a yen for adventure. She grew up as a tomboy wishing she could have all the adventures boys could have. She has since decided that being a boy instead of a girl has its advantages, but being a woman is much better. Raised in a family with money, she was able to pick and choose her education. She had been schooled in everything from being a lady to courses with Special Forces instructors. Her desire for adventure and her boredom with her current employment and a strange 'HELP WANTED' ad causes her to quit. She finds that job she could "just die for"... and it looks like she just might!


Check out Color Me Grey, in both paperback, AND on the Kindle!