Meet YA Fiction author Lisa Orchards!

Lisa Orchard

YA Author

      We've been invited to the local school gym by Lisa so grab a drink and some popcorn and let's pick Lisa's brain about her books. Thank you all for stopping in. Lisa's giving away two ebooks to two lucky winners so be sure to get in on the contest at the bottom!

     Lisa Orchard grew up loving books. She was hooked on mysteries by the fifth grade and even wrote a few of her own. She knew she wanted to be a writer even then.  “The Super Spies and the High School Bomber” is the second book in the “Super Spies” series. Her first book was published in March of 2012 and it has received rave reviews.

  After graduating from Central Michigan University with a Marketing Degree she spent many years in the insurance industry, pining to express her creative side.  The decision to stay home with her children gave her the opportunity to follow her dream and become a writer. She currently resides in Rockford Michigan with her husband, Steve, and two wonderful boys. Currently, she’s working on the third novel that stars the same quirky teens. When she’s not writing she enjoys spending time with her family, running, hiking, and reading.

Reader’s Haven: Lisa, thank you for inviting us to the local school where the stories take place. Tell us a bit about yourself  that our readers might not know.

Lisa:  I’m a stay at home mom and I have two boys ages 8 and 6. They are my inspiration for everything.

Reader’s Haven: What made you want to become a writer?

Lisa: I’ve wanted to be a writer since the 5th grade. I was an avid reader of Nancy Drew and the Trixie Belden series, but I didn’t have the opportunity to pursue this dream until I was home with my kids. I love being a mom and volunteering in my kids classrooms and I’m hoping that my books take off so that I can continue to do that.

Reader’s Haven: From looking around at the sites, the books are a big hit for you! Please share a bit about your new release The Super Spies and the High School Bomber, without giving away any spoilers.

Lisa: It’s the second book in the Super Spies series and it starts off with a bang! Sarah and Lacey are still reeling from the fact that their parents have disappeared when their new school is bombed on the first day of school.  Fearing that Uncle Walt, who is a teacher, has been hurt in the blast they take it upon themselves to search for him. In doing so they run smack dab into trouble, and decide that it’s up to them to find the high school bomber. Here's a blurb and excerpt:

This book opens in a small town in Michigan where Sarah and her sister Lacey are now living with their Aunt and Uncle. Still reeling from the fact her parents have disappeared, Sarah starts the school year with her new friend Jackie Jenkins. When Sarah learns the school has been bombed, she’s filled with dread. Uncle Walt is a teacher, and he was in the school when the bomb exploded. Taking matters into her own hands, Sarah decides to search for him. The rest of the Super Spies are right behind her. When a fireman chases them away from the school, Sarah becomes suspicious. She decides to investigate. The FBI arrives on the scene. Sarah realizes this bombing could have even bigger implications. Searching for the bombers, Sarah is introduced to the world of terrorism. She fears that the bombing and her parents’ disappearance are connected and terrorists are involved. To make matters worse, the bombers are determined to finish the job. Can the Super Spies find the bombers before it’s too late?

Chapter One

A whoosh of roiling hot air lifted Sarah Cole and flung her against the kitchen wall like a fumbled football. At the same time, the windows burst into millions of pieces, showering everything with tiny shards of glass. Sarah crumpled to the floor, still clutching the phone. She lay there stunned, unable to inhale or exhale.

“Sarah! Sarah!” her younger sister, Lacey, screamed from the bathroom, where she’d been drying her hair.

The ringing in her ears was so intense, Sarah could barely hear her. Groaning, she opened her eyes and saw only red through her right one. Dread rippled through her body.

“Sarah! Sarah!” Lacey cried again.

Sarah dropped the phone, and put her hand up to her eye.

She fingered the area gently before pulling her hand away. Blood.

“Lacey,” she croaked, unable to manage more than that.

“Sarah! Where are you?”

“The kitchen,” Sarah said, finally able to breathe. She blinked her eyes twice and her vision cleared. Relief flooded her body and she wilted against the floor.

“Holy Moley!” Lacey shrieked.

Sarah jumped at the sound of her voice. She didn’t realize

Lacey had come up the stairs and into the kitchen. The ringing in her ears was almost gone.

“You’re bleeding!”

“No kidding,” Sarah said, covering her right eye with her hand and glaring at Lacey with her uncovered one. She brushed her shoulder length blonde hair away from her face and gasped at the blood running down her arm.

“We’ve got to get you to the hospital!” Lacey screamed in a voice edged with hysteria.

“Stop freaking out!” Sarah gave Lacey the old one-eyed glare again.

“Sarah, there’s blood everywhere,” her sister whimpered as she wrung her hands. She gazed around her. “What happened? Did our furnace blow up or something?”

“I don’t think so.” Sarah shook her head, dust particles and slivers of glass cascaded to the floor. She furrowed her brow and absentmindedly brushed off her clothes. “I think something exploded outside. Help me up.”

Lacey held out her hand to Sarah and pulled her into a sitting position.

Blinking, Sarah gazed around the kitchen. On most days it was a sunny room with pineapple wallpaper and pine cabinets. It was the most popular room in the house—everyone congregated there during the holidays.

Sarah blinked again. Dust floated through the air and glass littered the yellow linoleum floor. She groaned and turned her attention to her arm.

As she examined the blood running down it, another wave of panic flooded through her body. Sarah’s legs wobbled when she stood and she stumbled as she reached for a kitchen towel that lay on the counter. She used the soft cloth to blot her eye. When she pulled the towel away, she was shocked to see the amount of blood that had soaked into it. Sarah gulped, trying to swallow her fear as beads of sweat broke out on her forehead.

With unsteady feet, Sarah stumbled into the hall where a mirror hung.

She was afraid to look. Taking some deep breaths, she stared into the cracked mirror and noticed a cut in her eyebrow. The amount of blood that seeped from the cut was enormous compared to its small size.

Lacey walked past Sarah on her way to the den. The crunch of glass under her sister’s feet caught Sarah’s attention, and she sighed. Thank goodness we had our shoes on. A wave of relief washed over her body and she exhaled another deep sigh. The girls had been getting ready for school when the windows exploded and covered everything with glass.

“Sarah, come here! You’ve got to see this!” Lacey yelled.

Sarah whirled around and spotted her sister walking from the den—her eyes were round and full of shock.

“I think all the windows have been smashed. Come and look.”

Holding the towel against her cut, Sarah followed her into the den. “Holy crap!”

She gazed into the room. Shards of glass covered the furniture and the floor. The sun streamed through the window, shining on the jagged bits embedded in the carpet. It appeared as if tiny diamonds were buried within the fibers.

“What in the world happened?”

Sarah shook her head. “I have no idea.”

The shrill ring of the phone made Sarah jump. She dashed back to the kitchen and found the phone where she had dropped it earlier.

“Hello?”

“Sarah?”

“Jackie?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Jackie’s voice eased some of the tension in Sarah’s body. Jackie Jenkins was her best friend. They had met when Sarah and her sister moved in with their aunt and uncle three months earlier.

Sarah glanced down at her legs and for the first time saw tiny nicks where she had been hit by flying glass. She bent down and examined the cuts further. They were not deep, and were already clotting.

“All of our windows exploded! Do you know what’s going on?” Sarah asked.

“There was an explosion at the high school.”

Reader’s Haven: Do you write under a pen name?

Lisa: No
 
Reader’s Haven: What types of hero or heroine do you like best?

Lisa: I love a strong heroine and I absolutely love it when the underdog wins! So, I guess I love stories where the strong girl with the odds against her ends up persevering and winning in the end.

Reader’s Haven: Readers like to know what we do all day. Tell us about a typical day in your life as a writer.

Lisa: Well…my day starts by getting the kids ready for school and out to the bus. Once that’s accomplished I devote a couple of hours to social media and promoting my books. Then I write. I’m working on the third Super Spies book now and it’s almost done! I’m so excited!

Reader’s Haven: Congrats on doing the third book! Do your books have a common theme or are they all different?

Lisa: Well…that’s a tough question because all the books that I have out now are from my mystery series so they involve the same characters but they solve a different mystery in each book. I have another coming of age young adult novel I’m working on that will be different though. 

Reader’s Haven: How long does it take you to write and then edit a story?

Lisa: Hmmm…that’s a good question I would have to say about six to eight months. The first one took longer, but I had to develop the characters in that one; whereas I didn’t have to come up with the characters in the second and third because I already knew them.
 
Reader’s Haven: Do you have to be alone to write?

Lisa: No, I don’t but it is easier to write when my kids are in school. They tend to distract me.  They’re just so darn cute and funny! They’re at a fun age. 
 
Reader’s Haven:  It sounds like it and they have to be excited for you in their own way. How do you go about naming characters?

Lisa: Naming characters is hard because I’m very picky about the names…but once I get an idea of what the character looks like then it is easier.

Reader’s Haven: Is it easier to write about the characters if you find pictures of them before you write or do you write then find character pictures?

Lisa: It’s really funny but I don’t find pictures of my characters in magazines. I don’t want my characters to be model perfect. I kind of look at people I know or see and if one of their physical attributes captures my attention…then I jot it down and apply it to a particular character…so I get a picture in my mind what he/she looks like and then I do the same thing with personality characteristics.

Reader’s Haven: Do you have a favorite character in your series?

Lisa:  It’s hard to pick one! But I do have to say that I love the friendship between Sarah and Jackie. It’s effortless, and they are such complete opposites. I love it that they’re different personalities can mesh so well…they really balance each other out.

Reader’s Haven: How do you pick locations for your stories?

Lisa:  I pick places that I have good memories of or places I’d love to go.

Reader’s Haven: What are you working on now and what should readers be looking forward to from you in the future?

Lisa: I’m working on the third Super Spies book and a young adult coming of age novel. I’m excited about both of them!

Reader’s Haven: Where can readers find out more about you and your books?

Lisa: My website is listed below and here are my buy links:

“The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer”

 is now on sale for $.99!

Amazon 

Barnes and Noble 

  

The Super Spies and the High School Bomber

Amazon 

Barnes and Noble

My social media sites are below:

Website 

Facebook  

Twitter 

CONTEST:  Two copies of my second book, The Super Spies and the High School Bomber.  (The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer is on sale for $.99) 

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Introducing Steve Poling - Author of Human Wave, Time Travel & Steampunk Fiction

The Great Malvern train station is in Worchester,England. It dates back to the Victorian era and it is decorated in the style of that era because the year is 1881.

It is a midsummer evening and temperature is in the ‘70s with a chilly breeze. Across the station a family of tourists are waiting an eastward connection on the opposite platform.

A lad and his grandfather are walking past with the child pestering him for sweets. Down the platform a disreputable looking railway worker is eyeing the wallet that has fallen from the older man’s cloak. He is besooted from head to toe, smoking a cigarette and holding an electric torch in his hand. A railway guard eyes the worker suspiciously. At the dark end of the platform a padlocked nondescript door is set into the wall.

We are sitting on a railroad bench at the opposite end of the platform, watching as a large man picks up the wallet, talks to the railway worker and guard, then leaves with the railway worker.

Come join us as we chat with Steve! There's a giveaway - details below!

Reader’s Haven: Tell us a bit about yourself that our readers might not know.

Steve: That’s a hard question, because there’s a lot of obscure stuff your readers might not know. Like the fact that I won the chili cookoff at church this year when I tried to make a chili so hot it would only punish the judges, but instead they liked it enough to vote for it.

Perhaps a more pertinent answer might be that I minored in Philosophy as an undergraduate.

Reader’s Haven: What made you want to become a writer?

Steve: I read a lot. And sometimes when I’ve read someone I like, I think, “I wish I did that.” And other times I read something I don’t quite like and think, “I could have done better than that.”

Reader’s Haven: Please share a bit about your new release Finding Time without giving away any spoilers.

Steve: Years back I wrote a time travel story about two researchers who go back and rescue a WW2 pilot who’s lost on a glacier in Greenland. It worked out so well that I wrote another where the same two researchers went to the Great Library of Alexandria. (Did I mention I love books?)

That worked so well I wrote a number of other stories where they go back and save stuff, and rescue people. Along the way a friend challenged me to write a Jack The Ripper story. Last year I realized that I could compile all these stories together into an arc wherein each of the stories fits together into a coherent whole. That became Finding Time.

On Amazon

Reader’s Haven: Do you write under a pen name?

Steve: Nope. I’m just Steve. What you see is what you get.

Reader’s Haven: What types of hero or heroine do you like best?

Steve: I like a hero who solves problems with her mind and mad skills. Though I see the occasional need for Sherlock Holmes to use baritsu to subdue a villain, I am more comfortable with the hero as puzzle-solver than with the hero as brawler.

Reader’s Haven: Tell us about a typical day in your life as a writer.

Steve: A perfect writing day for me starts after everyone has gone to bed and I have a few hours alone to write down what I’ve planned, and be surprised by how that differs from what I planned, then plan the next day’s writing. And a perfect writing day requires that I have been writing regularly every day for the last few days beforehand.

Reader’s Haven: Do your books have a common theme or are they all different?

Steve: I write about Sherlock Holmes’ brother Mycroft. The Aristotelian was a straight murder mystery, but my work in progress, "Steamship To Kashmir" is steampunk. But I find myself easily distracted by writing projects like "Finding Time". Keep me away from distracting shiny objects.

Reader’s Haven: How long does it take you to write and then edit a story?

Steve: I write on longer projects in fits and starts. This is bad. I shouldn’t say this.  I should say that I dash off 2000 words per day and churn out an 8k story in four days. That would be a lie. A few weeks ago I was really motivated by a story idea and I churned out a 4,700 word story in one 14 hour marathon session then spent about that many hours in the next week cleaning it up.

Reader’s Haven: Do you have to be alone to write?

Steve: Not really.

Reader’s Haven: How do you go about naming characters?

Steve: It depends upon the culture of the character. I had some fun in Aristotelian coming up with goofball British names like Cruikshank, and Grosvenor. I like to find a roster of names from the culture and time period of a story, e.g. signatories of the London Baptist Confession of Faith, or the Declaration of Independence, then shuffle first and last names to get a pool of candidates, then I pick the most fitting candidate. The more obscure the roster, the better.

Reader’s Haven: Is it easier to write about the characters if you find pictures of them before you write or do you write then find character pictures?

Steve: I have these interesting conversations with my illustrator about who my characters look like. I hear that Louis L’Amour would write while imagining John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart playing the part of the protagonist. In Steamship to Kashmir, I have a character who looks just like the Bollywood actor, Salman Khan.

Reader’s Haven: How do you pick locations for your stories?

Steve: For Finding Time I just imagined some big mystery of history where people or things were lost, and I would then tell a story around retrieving it. One exception is a story that came about from a remark by my illustrator, that she’d like to depict King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. So, I contrived something to get lost in a time-machine accident for them to retrieve.

Reader’s Haven: What are you working on now and what should readers be looking forward to from you in the future?

Steve: I’ve mentioned Steamship To Kashmir. That’s a steampunk story about Mycroft Holmes that explains why he doesn’t want to go out and chase criminals with his little brother Sherlock. (He’s too tired from chasing around on secret missions for the Diogenes Club.) The steamship is an airship powered by Baron Nemo’s nuclear reactor. My daughter the nuclear engineer just rolls her eyes and shakes her head at it. Since Kashmir is in the British Raj, the middle of the novel will have a Bollywood feel to it. I have a genie in the bottle story and a chicken-fried C’thulhu story that I should try to sell. And an asteroid mining story that I want to finish.

Reader’s Haven: Where can readers find out more about you and your books? 

Steve: You’re best bet is going to my Amazon Author page, but you can also find a nice collection of links to me compiled at the Independent Author Network. My fevered ravings can be read on my blog:
The Archives of The Diogenes Club.

I try to write what’s called Human Wave fiction. I don’t like dystopian stories, and I think writing should inspire the reader to get up and make the world better. Make it better for himself or herself by creating wealth, and make it better for others.

Though you’ll see a pretty girl on the cover of Finding Time, there’s no cussin’, no spittin’, an’ no gettin’ nekkid in the stories. So, you won’t have to hide it from your tweenaged kids. I don’t think it’s YA because I only have two teenaged characters.

I’ll be pleased to give away a Ecopy of Finding Time to two Readers. Enter through the Rafflecopter below. Thanks for stopping by and good luck!

Finding Time

In 2280 EarthGov is desperate when aliens destroy their first colony. They’ll even comb through the wreckage of the aliens’ UFO that crashed in 1947—where one man claims he’s found a time machine. Now the race is on to scour history for the treasures and talents EarthGov needs. 

Sid Feynman just wants a government grant. His hopes for a quiet academic life are dashed when EarthGov thrusts the beautiful historian Nell Playfair upon him and expects Sid to actually use the time machine.

Soon Sid and Nell are rocketing across light-years of interstellar space and millennia of history—seeking that which is lost and finding time.

Enjoy the Book Trailer

About the Author:
Steve Poling was born, raised and lives in West Michigan with his wife and kids. He uses his training in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science as a C++/C# poet by day while writing Subversive Fiction by night. Steve has an abiding interest in philosophy and potato cannons. He writes SF, crime fiction, an occasional fractured fairy tale, and steampunk. His current writing project is a steampunk novel, Steamship to Kashmir--provided he isn't distracted by something new & shiny.

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Meet John A. A. Logan, Author of Psychological Thrillers

      We're hanging out with John A.A. Logan this week near Loch Ness, in Scotland, the location of his psychological thriller; "The Survival of Thomas Ford". It's cold this time of year so we have extra blankets and will build a fire to sit by as John chats with us.
      John is featuring a contest and one lucky winner will receive a kindle version - see details below. Deanna and I have plenty of hot chocolate to go around. So find a seat on a nearby log or rock and join us in the dark, moonlit forest.

Reader’s Haven: Hi John! Thanks for inviting us to Scotland! Tell us a bit about yourself  that our readers might not know.

John: Thanks very much for inviting me to be here!

Well…I’ve been writing now for about 23 years. I decided to go “indie” after my second literary agent couldn’t find a publisher for my 5th novel, The Survival of Thomas Ford. My agent had had such high hopes for the book, and had convinced me too. His colleague at the agency had read The Survival of Thomas Ford and she told my agent it was the best novel she had read in the last four years. This was taken very seriously, as she had discovered Slumdog Millionaire as an unpublished manuscript, the book that had gone on to win 8 Oscars as a film in 2009. And yet, even with all this support, and despite my agent finding publishers in Scotland and London who said they loved The Survival of Thomas Ford, still no publisher would finally take the book. It was very disappointing. Although I’d sold short stories over the years, including to the big UK publishers like Picador and Vintage, where editors including John Fowles (The French Lieutenant’s Woman etc), and A L Kennedy, and Toby Litt, and Ali Smith, had all chosen my stories to be published when they were editors of anthologies, and this had meant I’d seen paperbacks with my stories in them go on to be sold in most countries of the world…still, I’d never had a novel published, never been given that chance.

     So, I decided to publish The Survival of Thomas Ford as a Kindle ebook.

     I went on to become a bestseller on Amazon…it won a Special Award in the E-festival of Words Best of the Independent eBooks Awards 2012…it was also Goodreads UK Kindle Forum Book of the Month and an Alliance of Independent Authors Book of the Month.

     Amazon has just put the first page of The Survival of Thomas Ford in the new UK video advert for the Kindle Paperwhite…you can see it being read onscreen from 3.00 to 3.06 in the UK product page video…that was a nice Christmas present!

     Otherwise, about me…I live in the Highlands of Scotland, and I love writing…films too!

Reader’s Haven: Wow! Congrats on all the awards. What made you want to become a writer?

John: I loved reading when I was at school, and I loved films too…anything with a story seemed to take possession of me. Stephen King was a big influence…Ray Bradbury…then I started reading all sorts of novels, anything I could get hold of, until suddenly, the idea came that maybe I could try to do this too. I suppose just loving novels and short stories I read so much made me naturally want to try to do it myself.

Reader’s Haven: Please share a bit about The Survival of Thomas Ford without giving away any spoilers.

John: The novel is a psychological thriller set in the Highlands of Scotland, near Loch Ness. Thomas Ford survives a car crash which has killed his wife. He is the only surviving witness who would be willing to identify the young, reckless driver who caused the crash. But the young driver has no intention of ever letting himself be identified. He would sooner see Thomas Ford dead than ever allow that to happen. The young driver’s father, a wealthy and powerful housing developer, is also a very important character in the book.
     So is the young driver’s girlfriend, Lorna, who is a cleaner at the local hospital where Thomas Ford recuperates after the crash. Some readers have mentioned a mystical dimension to the book in places, the forces of nature, or even perhaps unnatural forces, seeming to come into play at times, influencing the outcome of the situation as it develops. One reviewer suggested the novel might be “a study on the nature of the universe”(!)…though, of course, whatever levels or meanings readers see in the story…and it is always fascinating to hear what they have made of the book…first and foremost it just has to work as a good, tense story! As long as that basic structure and machinery is in place, then it is possible to have some fun filling in the in-betweens here and there…that’s when it can get mysterious too!  

     Anyway, in the end, The Survival of Thomas Ford becomes a race against time, to prevent a second young woman losing her life.

Reader’s Haven: Do you write under a pen name?

John: No, John A. A. Logan is my real name (including the initials!)

Reader’s Haven: What types of hero or heroine do you like best?

John: It’s probably true to say that flawed, human, sensitive, troubled main characters are the ones I like best…though often they are struggling to make more out of their lives than circumstances seem to be allowing.

Reader’s Haven: Tell us about a typical day in your life as a writer.

John: I usually have to get other tasks/responsibilities out of the way first, before I can focus on working on something new. Then I will tend to be quite disciplined and write a certain amount of words a day, not too many, not too few. At another stage, the day’s work might mean reading/editing work done on another day. And now there is online promotion to do sometimes…trying to reach new readers, writing interviews sometimes! 

Reader’s Haven: Do your books have a common theme or are they all different?

John: They’re VERY different. I have a 200-page collection of 10 short stories, Storm Damage, published on Kindle. Each story in that collection is very different from the next: one where a strange choice of astronaut is made for Scotland’s first Independent Space Mission to Mars; one set in a village just after World War One; one set in the African desert; another about a bombing mission over Dresden in World War Two which ends up in modern India…

    It’s the same with the novels…The Survival of Thomas Ford is a psychological thriller…in 2013 I’ll publish Agency Woman on Kindle, and that is a 400-page espionage thriller, though a quirky one…I have another three novels completed, which will go up on Kindle later:

    Starnegin’s Camp:set two thousand years ago in which an insane Emperor impregnates eighteen young women with his supposedly Divine seed, and sends them by ship to begin a colony on the other side of the world, where Starnegin, the new colony’s leader, has begun to act very strangely, disappearing into the forest alone every day, to do no-one knows what…

The Major: A novel about the blue collar tyre supply depot manager in a small Scottish city who is really a visitor from the cosmos, come to do mischief among the local community.

Rocks in the Head: A social-realist coming-of-age story…set in the late-20th century.

Reader’s Haven: How long does it take you to write and then edit a story?

John: It took me a year to write The Survival of Thomas Ford, then I edited the book for two years before sending it off to the literary agent in London who eventually represented the book. But then that agent wanted a few changes here and there which required further editing. Then the film consultant at that agency, the one who had discovered Slumdog Millionaire, had ideas for further editing, which resulted in her phoning me for 13 hours over an 8 week period(I kept count!)…so in that book’s case, a year to write, and then perhaps 3 years of editing…which is probably a bit extreme! Then again, my short story collection, Storm Damage, was much the same, 18 months to write, then a bit over 2 years to edit…

Reader’s Haven: Do you have to be alone to write?

John: Yes, I do. Alone, and in silence…I wear ear-plugs!

Reader’s Haven: How do you go about naming characters?

John: Usually a name just comes to me, in the flow of writing…later, I might have to change a name…especially just before publication, I have to think hard and make sure I’ve not subconsciously used a name that could be confused with any real person etc. The subconscious itself, though, that deep well within, is where the names come from usually…they just “appear” one day…

Reader’s Haven: How do you pick locations for your stories?

John: Again, I try not to pick anything! I try to get out of the way and let the subconscious do a good job of picking. Though I do tend to set novels in “the city”…without naming this city or saying too definitely where it is…though often much of the action occurs then outside “the city”…in the rural areas around it…forests…mountains…beaches…and more often than not, so far, these are locations in the north of Scotland…the Scottish Highlands…The Survival of Thomas Ford makes a lot of use of a forest location and this may be because I lived in a place like that, as a young child.

Reader’s Haven: What are you working on now and what should readers be looking forward to from you in the future?

John: I’m working on my 6th novel, which will go to my agent in London, and he will send it out to the London and Scottish publishers. He’s also currently approaching film producers about my novel, The Survival of Thomas Ford.

     My next e-book, though, will be that espionage thriller, Agency Woman…due out in early-to-mid 2013 on Amazon Kindle!

Reader’s Haven: Where can readers find out more about you and your books? 

John: On the following sites:

Website

The Survival of Thomas Ford - Amazon USA

The Survival of Thomas Ford - Amazon UK

Storm Damage - Amazon USA

Storm Damage - Amazon UK

(The Story of) The Survival of Thomas Ford Blog

The Authors Electric Collective Blog

Twitter: @JohnAALogan

Facebook 

****Contest****

Enter through the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win 

a Kindle copy of The Survival of Thomas Ford. Good luck! 

     Thanks very much for having me here, I enjoyed it, and All best to everyone for 2013!

THE SURVIVAL OF THOMAS FORD
      Thomas Ford is the only survivor of the car crash which killed his wife. He is also the only witness who would be willing to identify the young, reckless driver who caused the crash. But the driver has no intention of ever letting himself be identified, not to mention what his father’s intentions are…or those of his girlfriend, Lorna, the hospital cleaner.

      The young driver’s father is Jack McCallum, the powerful entrepreneur who has built a housing empire, McCallum Homes, on the high hills surrounding the city. Jack has his own dark secret to protect, as well as his business edifice to hold onto. There is no way in the world that Jack McCallum will ever let anything threaten the future of McCallum Homes.

      Robert Ferguson, the passenger who was with the young driver on the day of the crash, curses himself for ever getting into the car. He watches carefully to see what the universe will do about it all, and he thinks he can hear the gears and chambers of the universe’s engine, rolling terribly towards them, out of the future, and he knows he can’t cope with that, not even if he takes his medication.

      In the end, destiny will pull them all far out of the city, some of them to the moonlit hillside, where white butterflies and mysterious gas fill the air, and wild cats wrap themselves around cold trees. Jack McCallum’s trusted Polish foreman, Lanski, will recognise the place from the folklore-wilderness of his own childhood, a place where death can come stalking in the form of a white wolf, but perhaps also redemption can appear, for those like Thomas Ford who seek it.

      In any case, the young driver has it in mind to take his destiny into his own hands now, which will soon lead to the life of a second young woman hanging in the balance, awaiting salvation or destruction, perhaps only the Fates, or the wind that blows through the trees, know which.

Happy New Year Everyone 

from Deanna Jewel and Louise James!

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