Lauren J.A. Bear Interview - Mother of Rome

Photo Content from Lauren

Lauren was born in Boston and raised in Long Beach, CA. After studying English at UCLA and Education at LMU, she taught middle-school Humanities for over a decade — and survived! She is a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity, and lives in Seattle with her husband and three young children. She likes crossword puzzles and being on or near the water without getting wet.

        

   

Greatest thing you learned at school.
Brevity and clarity! My eleventh-grade teacher at Long Beach Poly lived by this credo, and I passed it on to my own students when I was teaching middle school Humanities. It’s on par with the Ernest Hemingway/iceberg theory of writing, and it has always served me well.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
Absolutely every single note, post, email, fan art, handwritten letter I’ve received for Medusa’s Sisters. I read them all. Each one is beautiful and humbling (even the criticisms, lol). One reader told me of her plans to get a Stheno tattoo, and I was so touched I couldn’t stop crying!
Also, being invited to Comic-Cons has made me kinda cool with my kids and their friends. I have met the nicest people there!

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Read poetry. Take classes with poets. Stand near them and soak up their lyrical genius through osmosis. A poet’s attention to every word on the page – and the blank spaces, as well – will change the way you put together sentences as a prose writer. And collect words like Pokémon. I love discovering unusual, archaic, esoteric words. I keep a list on my phone.

Why is storytelling so important for all of us?
Connection! I think the pandemic reinforced the truth that we need each other. Especially in this world of screens and AI, genuine human communion is essential. And what is a story if not, what Kazuo Ishiguro says, a conversation between two humans saying, “Does it feel like this to you, too?”

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book?
I wrote a book about motherhood, but being a mother was definitely the greatest day-to-day distraction. I have three children, (currently) nine years old and younger, so every day is laundry and lunches, homework and tears and cuddles and sports.
They are my inspiration, but my goodness, they require a lot of attention!

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT MOTHER OF ROME

• ⦁ I am mortified to admit this now, but the original inspiration for Antho was Raquel from Vanderpump Rules. After Scandoval, I could no longer abide a doe-eyed passive character. She kept the physical characteristics, but otherwise evolved into a woman of independence and agency.
• Numitor’s three royal children are loosely based on my own. My daughter rests in the middle of the two boys, and I call her my “middle diamond.” Also, like Rhea, she has amazing hair.
• There is a Jane Eyre/”Reader, I married him” allusion hidden in the text. See if you can find it!
• I also included a Medusa’s Sisters/Gorgon reference.
• While the relationship between Numitor and Amulius is Hamlet-esque, I began to picture Amulius as Professor Snape because I was reading the Harry Potter books aloud to my kids while drafting the novel.
• I spent way too long calculating the distance/times a wolf could run on my ancient map of Latium to ensure my plotting was accurate.
• I would cast Pedro Pascal in every male role if I could – Leandros, Mars, and Tiberinus!
• I grew up on sword and sandal epics, but always felt the female characters were too one dimensional (whores or virgins). Writing Mother of Rome was my response to this egregious oversight.
• When Leandros tells Antho, “I will always love you more,” I was referencing the vows from my best friend’s wedding.
• Just like Antho and Rhea, my cousin and I are a year and days apart and our sons are a year and days apart.

What is the first job you have had?
In high school, I worked afterschool at a French/German bakery in the Bixby Knolls/Cal Heights neighborhood of Long Beach, California. I used to help design wedding cakes! I highly recommend anything and everything with cream cheese frosting.

What is your happiest childhood memory?
Family reunions on Martha’s Vineyard with my mom and brother. Watching classic Hollywood movies after everyone else went to bed with my dad.

If you had to go back in time and change one thing, if you HAD to, even if you had “no regrets” what would it be?
Oh, I would have loved myself far earlier! Girls are too hard on themselves in every way. Am I smart enough, am I capable, skinny, pretty? Bullsh*t. We are all enough, exactly the way we are.

First Love?
My college sweetheart, Dan Bear. He’s my husband now, my North Star and lifeline. I feel super lucky.

What is one unique thing are you afraid of?
I hate being in water where I can’t see the ground. My imagination is way too vivid. The oceans are terrifying. Squids? Sharks? Nope. Over 80% of the ocean is unexplored. That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home?
I think taxidermy is *so* weird. My best friend from childhood and I used to hang our bras from the antlers of her dad’s taxidermized deer head.

A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible.

The names Romulus and Remus may be immortalized in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons’ journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children.

But she did not die; she survived. And so does her story.

Beautiful, royal, rich: Rhea has it all—until her father loses his kingdom in a treacherous coup, and she is sent to the order of the Vestal Virgins to ensure she will never produce an heir.

Except when mortals scheme, gods laugh.

Rhea becomes pregnant, and human society turns against her. Abandoned, ostracized, and facing the gravest punishment, Rhea forges a dangerous deal with the divine, one that will forever change the trajectory of her life…and her beloved land.

To save her sons and reclaim their birthright, Rhea must summon nature’s mightiest force – a mother’s love – and fight.

All roads may lead to Rome, but they began with Rhea Silvia.

You can purchase Mother of Rome at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you LAUREN for making this giveaway possible.

Winner will receive a Copy of Mother of Rome by Lauren J.A. Bear.

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Sonya Lalli Interview - Jasmine and Jake Rock the Boat

Photo Content from Sonya Lalli

Sonya Lalli is a romance and women’s fiction author of Punjabi and Bengali heritage. Her debut novel The Matchmaker’s List was a Target Diverse Book Club Pick, and Sonya’s books have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, NPR, The Washington Post, Glamour and more. She also writes psychological thrillers as S.C. Lalli. Sonya lives in Vancouver with her husband and their mini goldendoodle, Joey.

Did you know Sonya writes psychological thrillers as S.C. Lalli? Check out sclalli.com to find out more about her bestselling debut, Are You Sara?

        

  

Greatest thing you learned at school.
Growing up I had always loved English class at school, but in Grade 12, I had a great creative writing teacher and that class was a dream come true. I had always enjoyed writing stories and had so many ideas for novels, but this was the class that encourage me to dive into the art of creative writing and really explore my ideas – plus I got graded for it! It doesn’t feel like learning when you’re having so much fun. My teacher was absolutely excellent – very thoughtful, kind, and encouraging. A few months after taking this class I tried writing my first novel. It wasn’t great, and it’s nothing compared to what I write now, but I think the confidence and joy which I got from that English class really put me toward the path of taking my writing seriously. I definitely don’t think I’d be where I am today

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
I really enjoy getting emails and DMs from people who have read my book telling me that they saw themselves in my characters, or that they loved my book, or some of the situations I put my characters in really resonated with their own experiences. It really makes me happy to know that my story may have made a small, positive difference in someone’s life, just like certain books I’ve read have touched mine.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Writing can be quite a lonely activity, so my advice would be to make sure you have a life OUTSIDE of writing. Live, laugh, love. Do things outside your comfort zone. Always remember to be kind. Travel. Take up a hobby. Having outside activities not only keeps you engaged (with both yourself and others), but also gives you fresh perspectives and new experiences that can translate into your writing.

Can you tell us when you started JASMINE AND JAKE ROCK THE BOAT, how that came about?
I went on an Alaskan cruise with my whole family when I was 18. It wasn’t a Seniors Cruise (like Jasmine ends up on) and there were people from all age groups - except for younger adults! My cousin, brother, and I were the only people in our age range. We all still had a great time but I guess the experience stayed with me. When I was thinking about topics for my next romance book, I thought it would be great to write a story in a setting I had experienced. So, that’s the situation I threw Jasmine and Jake into – except a bit more extreme as they’re the only ones under 50 on a Seniors Cruise.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?
It was a bit of a surprise to find out how similar I am to Jasmine. She’s so different from me as a person – we have different interests and I think she’s braver and bolder than I am. Also, a big part of her character development is grappling with how her family perceives her and her ‘bad girl’ reputation. Still, as I wrote the story, I found myself connecting more and more with Jasmine – there was so much more to her than I thought when I started writing!

Your Favorite Quotes/Scenes from JASMINE AND JAKE ROCK THE BOAT
First time Jasmine and Jake meet she thinks he’s her waiter:

You’re not so bad yourself.” I bit down on my thumb, my heart racing as I flicked my eyes towards the barista. I looked back at the waiter. “Um, are you going to get in trouble?”

“Do you want me to get in trouble?”

“No.” I giggled. “So why don’t you just–” I tickled my fingertips on the inside of his wrist “–take my order, so you don’t get fired, and then we can….”

I stopped talking when his face changed. Had I been out of the game that long and misread his signals?

“Excuse me?” he said crisply.

He was scowling at me, albeit sexily. I held my breath.

“Did you just ask me to take your order?”

Confused, I flicked my eyes down to his polo shirt. The same white polo shirt I’d seen on a dozen staffers since I boarded the ship. Squinting, I narrowed in on the Kensington Cruises logo on his left peck.

I blinked. It wasn’t there. In its place, was the creepy green alligator trademarked by Lacoste.

“Shit!” I gasped, my cheeks heating up. “Are you not a waiter?”

“No,” he said icily. “I am not. Do I look like a waiter?”

“What’s wrong with being a waiter?” I snapped, my temper flaring up at his snobbish tone. “Do you work on this cruise?”

“No!”

“So you’re just some rando hitting on me?” I asked.

The guy didn’t answer, looking me up and down like I was a piece of recycling he was about to discard, and suddenly, all his duck facing and flexing and smoldering didn’t make me want to jump him. It made me want to smack him in the face.

What is the first job you have had? 

Working retail at American Eagle

Best date you've ever had? 

Music festival, with my now husband!

What was your favorite subject when you were in school? 

English

At a movie theater which arm rest is yours? 

Right

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? 

Where’s my dog – usually at the foot of the bed, sometimes, next to me on my pillow

An impulsive decision to join an Alaskan cruise getaway brings the chance for an onboard romance in this new enemies-to-lovers romance from the author of A Holly Jolly Diwali.

Jasmine Randhawa likes everyone to think she has it all—great job, perfect Seattle apartment, and a handsome boyfriend. But she’s not as confident or successful as she seems, and her relationship is at a breaking point.

When Jasmine finds herself single and tagging along on her parents’ vacation, she’s not sure her life can get any farther off course. It's a nightmare for someone who's been so fiercely independent to find herself on a cruise full of family friends who’ve judged her since childhood. Things only get worse once the ship leaves the harbor and she realizes that this is a seniors’ cruise, and the only other person under fifty on the entire boat is her childhood acquaintance, cocky and successful Jake Dhillon.

Jasmine and Jake clash right away, with Jasmine smarting over how their South Asian community puts him on a pedestal as the perfect Indian son, whereas her reputation as a troublemaker precedes her. Except they can’t avoid each other forever during the ten-day cruise, and they soon recognize a surprising number of similarities, especially in how many secrets they’re keeping hidden from their families. Their restlessness seems to disappear whenever they’re together, but is this relationship strong enough to last on land?

You can purchase Jasmine and Jake Rock the Boat at the following Retailers:

        

1 Winner will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

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Christopher Laine Interview - Screens

Photo Content from Christopher Laine

Christopher Laine is a writer, software architect, and founder of several business and tech ventures.

He studied literature and writing at San Francisco State University. His interests include world mythology and religions, philosophy, science, cooking, and martial arts.

Originally from San Francisco, he is a world traveller who eventually settled in New Zealand with his partner Mary and two children.

"There's a lot to know about ourselves which art and literature, mythology and psychology have yet to teach us. I write from this perspective, that we are not at the end of our story as a species, but clearly just at its beginning."

        

  

Where were you born and where do you call home?
I was born and raised in and around San Francisco. About 18 years ago, my family and I bailed on SF and moved to Wellington, New Zealand, where my partner and I live to this day.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
Getting the chance to talk about Screens is a big one for me. It’s been a huge part of my life for 5 years, so finally getting to talk about it feels great. After that, making my book trailers with talented artists and an amazing filmmaker was huge fun for me.

What inspired you to pen your first novel?
I love to read, and I love to read strange, creative, edgy things, so that’s what I like to write. I wrote my first novel because I wanted to write something I’d love to read.

Tell us your latest news.
Not much to tell. I am busy promoting Screens, as well as planning my next book. I am an avoid gardener, so I’m rebuilding a garden for some friends, and I’m enjoying NZ summer as much as I can.

Can you tell us when you started SCREENS, how that came about?
Screens was the next of my Seven Coins Drowning series, each of the series focusing in on one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I was up to Sin #4.

I decided to write it in late 2015. I was back in San Francisco for a conference. It’d been a while since I’d been back to the states from New Zealand. I hadn’t really been back to my hometown since 2008 or so. I’d passed through, but not really hung out.

So, there I was on this Muni train, when I noticed something. Everyone on the train was on their mobile phones. I mean everybody. Train full of people, and only me and this older lady sitting by herself were not. Everyone else was gawking into a screen. Eyes glazed; mouths agape. While I watched them, a shudder went up my spine as my messed-up muse came calling with freaky inspiration.

It was existentially unnerving, that little epiphany I had right then. It was a personal epiphany, a stranger-in-a-strange-land dystopian epiphany. I was surrounded by zombies, junkies, all of them totally absorbed in their devices.

“They’re all doped to the gills,” the junkie kid in me chuckled. “Look at them, dude. Look at how much they look like you did back in the day with your tabs and your powder.” And that voice come slithering out of my past was not wrong. That junkie kid I was decided it was time to return, all in the name of what we were seeing. Everyone was completely high, totally hooked. This one guy’s hand was actually shaking.

That was the genesis of it, that little Muni moment. That was when I felt the pieces of my life coalescing around this story I wanted to tell.

What do you hope for readers to be thinking when they read your novel?
I hope they’re just looking around at our world today, seeing how we’ve sunk into this new way with our technology, an evolutionary cul-de-sac in which we have turned ourselves into addicts for our digital media. Our relationship to our screens has changed us, particularly in the last 10 years. We are very much sunk into a new ‘virtual’ world, which of course means a make-believe one. Not that there isn’t truth on the internet, but we live in an age where what we find online can be manipulated, twisted, turned, reshaped to meet this or that narrative. Plus, we have become obsessed with our devices and the content they provide. I simply want people to bear that in mind as they read, and hopefully get a sense of what the book is driving at on this subject.

Plus, I really hope people find the book scary, interesting, and fun.

What part of your characters did you enjoy writing the most?
I love dialog. I love humour, even grim humour. When I get a chance to inject humour and good, realistic dialog into my work, I am thrilled. One of my favourite parts of Screens this monologue by a bike messenger about these family parties he attends and the guy he meets at them. I laughed out loud as I wrote it. The character was based on a couple guys I knew back in the messenger scene in the late 80s / early 90s, so reading it aloud had me in stitches, mostly because that’s how messengers talked.

If you could introduce one of your characters to any character from another book, who would it be and why?
I’d introduce my character Prof. Willingston Willingston to Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow, simply because of their arcane knowledge and time machines and their interactions with the Hounds of Tindalos. I do love a good mad scientist, especially one fighting the Old Ones and the Lovecraftian forces of evil.

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book?
The Joe Job. I have a family to support, and bills to pay, so the day-to-day work I do to keeps us in food and home. However, it also kept me from dedicating myself to Screens. I am a solutions architect, so my job is pretty intense in the software world and requires a lot of thinking time from me. After a whole day of thinking hard about software design, sitting down to think hard for my book could often be a struggle.

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?
Everyone should take a long period of time off if they can. We get stuck in our workaday lives and it can feel like that’s all there is. Taking a goodly chunk of time off gives us a chance to reflect on our lives outside what we do to pay bills and / or get by. It gives us a chance to spiritually reconnect with what matters most to us. Life is short and knowing thyself is the key to really enjoying our short, crazy lives. As my late mother said to me once “Christopher, no one gets to the end and thinks ‘If only I’d worked more’.” Truer words were never spoken.

Best date you've ever had?
Oh, gosh. I’ve not dated in so long, it’s hard to remember dating. I’d say the best I can recall was meeting my date for dinner, and then both of us realising we were way more into dangerous things than either of us imagined. We ended up getting pretty out of control that night. It was amazing for the immediacy of the moment. We only went out that one time, and in many ways the ephemeral nature of that one night only made it especially poignant. We spoke again, but never got to go out again, and then they moved away. Ah well.

If you could go back in time to one point in your life, where would you go?
I’d go back and tell younger, 20-something me to relax, to calm down, to stop taking everything so seriously, and just enjoy life more. I am a pretty chill guy now, but younger me was an absolute mess. He could have used someone to explain to him that life is about living, not about fretting about it. I’d go back to San Francisco when I first moved out on my own and live it with less anxiety, be more connected with who I am and what matters to me, not what others expected or wanted.

What are 4 things you never leave home without?
This one is easy: My tattered but still intact Zo bag from the 90s, my canteen (yeah, I carry a canteen), my notebook for writing/drawing, my book or kindle.

Oh, and a pack of smokes.

First Heartbreak?
My first REAL heartbreak was in my early 20s. I’d had pain in breakups before, but those were all rather prosaic, the usual pain one feels when a relationship ends. It wasn’t until my 20s that I had my first crazy love. You know the one: That love where you’re obsessed with someone who is not obsessed with you. The one where you throw yourself too far into the game and end up getting addicted to the other person. She got bored of me and my obsession, and then bailed on me. I lay in bed for a couple months feeling woe and anguish and all that guff. That was when I realised one person can love another person TOO much, that love can be unhealthy if not tended carefully.

What decade during the last century would you have chosen to be a teenager?
I was a teenager in the early and mid 80s. I will say one thing. Any sugar-coating of the 80s as an ideal time to grow up, especially for teenagers, is a crock. It had its good moments, but it also had plenty of racism and sexism and homophobia and nerd-bashing. In Screens, I talk about what it was like growing up in suburbia back then, and it was no paradise if you were different than the classic white male jock / white female cheerleader type. People my age babble on about how awesome it was. Fuck that. I refuse to play the old person game and rose-colour my youth. It was good and bad, like any youth.

I think if I was to pick a time / place I’d have like to live, it’d be the late 50s / early 60s in major cities. That time and place would have been pretty cool, given my love of the counter-culture and avant garde. Early on, during the beatnik times, I bet it was pretty awesome. The counter culture was small and unheard of by most, which is when it is truly amazing. Once the 60s rolled into the Summer of Love, all the goodness would have been drained out. It was commercialised, turned into just another consumable. But in the beatnik days, the early days of that counter-culture and the civil rights movement, that would have been a bad ass time. I’m not romanticising it at all. I know it was grim in many ways, but it was a time and subculture of change in a society hell-bent on conformity and pushing dead-end social norms. People were into new ideas, poetry, art, literature, film. People saw the power of being artistic, intellectual. Plus, they were all super into espresso, which suits me just fine.

If you had to go back in time and change one thing, if you HAD to, even if you had “no regrets” what would it be?
Ha, well, that’s an interesting one. In Screens, I talk a lot about time travel, especially the idea that any change you make on the ‘timeline’ only splits the timeline in smaller and smaller timelines, more and more universes. If you travel to the past and change things, you end up splitting the universe into two universes: the universe where you changed things, and the universe where you didn’t. I posit the idea that you cannot change the past, only cause it to fissure into more and more universes, all with tiny variations. You can CHECK this out as part of my answer.

If I could do one thing differently, it would be to work less, and spend more time with loved ones, especially those who are gone now. We have no guarantees. Life is far more temporary than we tell ourselves. Be with the people you love while you can. Life doesn’t go on forever.

Where can readers find you?
You can check me out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Medium. My handle on all of them is ‘domingoladron’.

Better yet, biff over to my WEBSITE. I am trying to create a fun writer’s site, one which has content and stuff which helps give my audience that little bit more from my fiction

TEN QUOTES FROM SCREENS

• “By the summer of (2016), all posts on the internet, as well as all comments or queries to the Manuscript had been wiped from digital existence. Anyone known to have any association with these posts, the Manuscript, or even claiming to have communicated with one of its readers have disappeared or been killed under strange and suspicious circumstances.”
• “I'm a nobody who's long dead, an anonymous statistic on an obituary you'll never find. I'm John Doe, a white chalk line on a murder scene floor. I doubt you could even find a trace left of who and what I was, no matter how many times you asked Google or Siri or Echo to find me. I am untraceable, a departed soul across an anonymous VPN. I do not register on your monitor, your search screen, or your smartphone. 404: narrator not found.”
• “I sank into the dark intellectual life of San Francisco. It was the latter part of the 80s, and there was nothing one couldn't do in that haunted place. The 60s and 70s were long gone, so any hippies or swingers were rapidly bloating into middle age. San Francisco had fallen out of favour and was largely ignored by the world. It was the fucking best.”
• “Let me not hear THEM coming for me. The breathing. That awful breathing, it is everywhere.”
• “Look at you, Chumley. What are you addicted to? Maybe look at that mobile phone in your hand, that screen you’re gawking into. How much of your life is wrapped up in that digital bong hit? How many binged episodes a week does it take before you start calling it an addiction? A shit ton, apparently. How many likes and shares did your posts get this week, I wonder. You better go check.”
• “I will never recover from Daniel Vela. I will do my job, and I will hunt this killer with all the rest of the police, but I pray every night to my dying day that I never again see what I saw that night.
• Daniel Vela comes to me in the night as I sleep. It hunts me in my dreams, slavering blue from its rotten mouth, and eyes set ablaze in hellfire.”
• “Was going insane supposed to be so full of scientific jibber-jabber?”
• “We are, in due course, becoming a civilization of addicts. While many of my peers were quick to dismiss my concerns early on as scaremongering, with time, most have come to concur with my findings, if only in private. Our nation, and yes, our world, is slowly being consumed by a quickly rising state of perpetual and widespread addiction. I can see of no other way to categorize our current state.”
• “(The anarchist bookshop) was just how I remembered it. The place smelled like old newsprint and pretension. Something approximating music was lolling from overhead. Images of Emma Goldman, Leo Tolstoy and Che Guevara glared at me from the walls. Anarchist and communist pamphlets and books, all of them badly printed or poorly bound, lined shelves. The front wall was an orgy of fliers and pamphlets, photocopied manifestos, you name it, on the “struggle” and every variation thereof. Nearby was a book section on feminism, LGBT, misogyny and sexism. Across from it, there was a section on government conspiracies, Noam Chomsky, the Illuminati, corporate greed. Row after row of bookshelves greeted me with every lefty concept under the sun. If it had a liberal agenda behind it, it was in there. The place was every conservative’s nightmare, a Bakunin Barnes and Nobles. Everyone browsing looked pasty and pointedly vegan. Everything from anti-globalization meetings to radical poetry readings to save the freaking whales accosted me from all sides.”
• “Imagine the universe splintering again and again, each quantum-level decision tree branching to more and more branches. Imagine the universe not as a single thing, but as field of infinitely diverging sibling universes, all of them similar but for one quantum variant, and continuing to vary again and again from there. The cosmic constant is not a number, but fission, an ever-branching radiation of realities which flood away from one another, creating even more variance, even more diversity.”

Deleted Scene from SCREENS
I have one deleted scene in particular in mind. I loved the scene so much that though I removed it from the final published version of Screens, I later published it on MEDIUM.

The chapter is a story in and of itself, about an insane asylum spinning in an alternate reality. The lunatics have long since taken over the asylum (and we are led to believe why the asylum is trapped in this alternate universe), and now live in a horror show in this burnt, ruined madhouse which will tumble through time and space forever.

I loved the feeling of it, the allegorical nature of a madhouse lost in oblivion being run by psychopaths and delusionals. It struck me as a fitting piece for the rise of authoritarianism around the globe, and how people are dealing with the post-modern world in such a delusional and horrific way.

It was deleted from the book because it ended up being too jarring a transition in the novel. It worked on its own, but just didn’t work as a transition from one part of the book to the next. While I loved the writing, the piece itself just didn’t quite fit in as I’d hoped it would. As a writer, you have to accept this. You may love something you wrote, but that does not mean it’s meant for the novel for which you wrote it.

“You’ve found this, Chumley. Good for you. Now take my advice and put it back down. This manuscript isn’t meant for you. You don’t have the stomach.”

Sometime in 2016, dark web posts began appearing about a document known only as “the Manuscript.” Originally created with a manual typewriter and impossible to digitise, the Manuscript can only be read by those who can procure one of its precious few copies. It is said that the Manuscript contains horrific knowledge, and those who have read it have immediately disconnected from the internet, vanished off the digital grid, never to return.

In short order, all online posts regarding the Manuscript were gone without a trace. Everyone with any knowledge or connection to them has disappeared or been gruesomely murdered.

Something horrible is happening. Something unspeakable is coming.

And yet you can't seem to stop from staring at that television, that computer, that mobile phone. THEY have you, and for all your justifications and bravado, you never can turn away.

Why are you still looking?
THEY are watching you...

You can purchase Screens at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

Thank you CHRISTOPHER LAINE for making this giveaway possible.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of Screens: Seven Coins Drowning by Christopher Laine.

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Mammoth Film Festival™ - California Premiere - Zac Efron’s Ted Bundy Film

Photo Credit: Mammoth Film Festival

Mammoth Film Festival™ Sets California Premiere for Zac Efron’s Ted Bundy Film EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE
Foster the People front man Mark Foster and Actor/Director Scott Haze to receive the 2019 Contribution to the Arts Award at MammothFF TAKE 2.

Los Angeles, CA (February 7, 2019) ---The 2nd Annual Mammoth Film Festival™ will have the California premiere of EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE film starring Zac Efron as Ted Bundy, Lily Collins, Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich, and Jim Parsons. This marks the film’s second festival premiere after it made a splash at Sundance.

Directed by veteran documentarian Joe Berlinger, EXTREMELY WICKED tells the story of Ted Bundy through the lens of his longtime girlfriend (Collins) and her experience with one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. After initially receiving backlash for potentially romanticizing the notorious serial killer, Berlinger along with one of Bundy’s survivors, Kathy Kleiner Rubin, have stood by it, saying that Bundy’s eerie charm is what made him an unsuspecting, and now infamous, murderer.

“MammothFF TAKE 2” as its being helmed, will also host the World Premiere of the Scott Haze (Venom, Child of God) directed documentary, LEXINGTON AND VINE. The short doc follows Mark Fosterand indie pop band Foster the People on tour with their third studio album.

In addition to the screening, MammothFF is proud to honor and recognize Haze and Foster as creators, philanthropists, and artists with the 2019 Mammoth Film Festival ‘Contribution to the Arts’ Award which will be presented to them by Jennifer Morrison (Once Upon a Time) during the Closing Night Gala Awards Show.

Saturday, Day 3 of the Festival the 2nd Charity Celebrity Bowling Tournament presented by Mammoth Media Institute which will include names like Zac Efron, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Morrison, Xzibit, Kevin Dillon, Ashley Greene-Khoury and so many more exciting participants.

Mammoth Film Festival™ will be from February 7 - February 11, 2019 at Mammoth Lakes, CA. For more information or tickets visit: https://www.mammothfilmfestival.org

ABOUT MAMMOTH FILM FESTIVAL™
Mammoth Film Festival is an all media festival celebrating varieties of filmmakers, actors, directors, writers, producers and their work. Regal with the wonderful town of Mammoth Lakes, California as it's beautiful backdrop. The film and media showcase has a firm purpose for the exhibition, exploration, celebration and competition of boundless media. Founded by Actor and Filmmaker Tanner Beard, who serves as President, the festival had its launch in 2018. Tomik Mansoori and Theo Dumont are Co-Founders of the Festival with Actress Alexandra Chando serving as Festival Manager.

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The Watcher by Lisa Voisin Trailer Reveal

Millennia ago, he fell from heaven for her.
Can he face her without falling again?

Fascinated with ancient civilizations, seventeen-year-old Mia Crawford dreams of becoming an archaeologist. She also dreams of wings—soft and silent like snow—and somebody trying to steal them.

When a horrible creature appears out of thin air and attacks her, she knows Michael Fontaine is involved, though he claims to know nothing about it. Secretive and aloof, Michael evokes feelings in Mia that she doesn’t understand. Images of another time and place haunt her. She recognizes them—but not from any textbook.

You can purchase The Watcher at the following Retailers:

       

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Book Nerd Spotlight

A Canadian-born author, Lisa Voisin spent her childhood daydreaming and making up stories, but it was her love of reading and writing in her teens that drew her to Young Adult fiction.

When she's not writing, you'll find her meditating or hiking in the mountains to counter the side effects of drinking too much coffee.

She lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her fiance and their two cats.

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