Strength

Dani, in Songbird, has not had an easy life, but possibly one of the hardest things she has to do in the book has nothing to do with her family. I don't want to spoil anything for those reading, but let's just say that when Dani is forced to choose, she's strong enough to make the right choice...even though you want to cry for her!

Get busy reading and go find out what I'm talking about. I'd love to hear other readers thoughts on Dani's decision in chapter 11.

Songbird...and the torture of being in love, and knowing it isn't returned.

"Deflect. Deflect before he realizes that is the one thing you wanted more than anything. I prayed for something to come to mind, anything that I could say to end the sickening silence, but nothing came and I watched the smile slide away, the quiet between us reflected in his face."

One of the best parts of Songbird is that just about everyone can understand Dani's pain when it comes to this. How many of you have had a crush, or been in love, knowing your feelings aren't returned they way you want? Angela does such a great job of taking those emotions we've all felt and using them to let readers really connect with Dani.

More about Angela Fristoe...

While you guys are reading Songbird, check out Angela's blogs to learn more about her, her writing, and what she's reading.

www.angelafristoe.com
www.angelafristoe.blogspot.com

New Book!

Alright, everyone, we're moving out of the realm of the magical and paranormal to a book that is all too realistic. Songbird, by Angela Fristoe, is a heartbreaking, but soul warming story of Dani Mays. There is no magical realism, no angels or demons this time, just the real life kind of monsters and the scars they leave behind.

Songbird
There are defining moments in life when everything changes. For Dani Mays, it was the day she witnessed her father kill her brother. Now seventeen years-old, she still hasn’t put it behind her. After Jace’s death, she bounced between her alcoholic mother and foster homes, until she found a permanent place. And a reason to want to stay: Reece Tyler. He’s her best friend, yet Dani wants more from Reece. Faced with losing Reece, Dani struggles to define his place in her life and escape the influence her memories of her brother’s death have over her choices. Even as she weaves the pieces of her heart back together, the past becomes more than a memory when a former foster brother reappears and Dani begins receiving threatening phone calls.


Get your copy today, and read along with me in Paperback or Kindle or in any of the popular ebook formats on Smashwords. 

Interview with Suki Michelle and Carlyle Clark

For all of you that have read, or are currently reading The Apocalypse Gene, here is a little more info about the authors and how the book was written. Thanks to Suki and Carlyle for taking the time to answer my questions and share more about themselves and their work with us!

1. What was the inspiration for The Apocalypse Gene? How did the two of you develop the idea together? 

Actually, that’s the trickiest question because the inspiration comes from all of the revelations in the story, so even hinting at it is basically a big giveaway. But, what we can say is the story was shaped by our idea that at the end of the day—love it, hate it, or don’t care one way or the other about it—you will not be able to say you’ve read anything similar or that you “saw what was coming next.”

 

And that jives with how we developed the story, which was to recognize that at each crux of the story we came to, the first few ideas we came up with were just rehashes of the way other stories had handled similar situations, so we made sure to keep going until we found something fresh. That took a lot of brainstorming and, let’s just say, “passionate discussions.”

2. When you came up with the reason for the Pandemic, what made you decide to go with a familiar disease like cancer and twist it into something even more frightening, rather than taking the more common approach of inventing a disease? 

We actually struggled with this because we knew it may be off-putting to some people to have a real disease like cancer addressed in our book. At least one reviewer actually said something along the lines that “cancer shouldn't be in speculative fiction”. In the end, we decided that we respectfully disagree that speculative fiction is a literary “second class” citizen.

  

3. The hospice Olivya lives and works in lends a very grim slant to the book from page one. Was it difficult to write about so much sickness and death without letting the book get too depressing? (You balanced it well by the way!)

Thank you for the compliment. Suki works as a medical transcriptionist and I’ve worked—and still work—in various forms of security, we were,, perhaps a little more at home in situations that others would call grim. By the time we were through brainstorming and actually started writing, it was actually very natural to portray the world that way, and we’ve both found that despite how grim situations are in our personal lives we still find humor; we made sure to include a healthy dose of that as well.

 

 4. The virtual school Olivya and Mikah attend was an interesting touch. Did the current obsession for social networking in today's society inspire this element? 

To some extent it did. It seems the natural progression, especially with the current trend toward homeschooling, that that by the time our novel takes place there would be an established Virtual School system, and then when the Pandemic strikes it would be upgraded to the level it is in our novel.

 

 5.  How did the two of you write the book together? What was the process and balance of work like? 

We brainstormed in the gist of the novel. Then I would come up with different plotting ideas and Suki and I would debate them; when we finally agreed, generally I would write the 1^st draft of a chapter and Suki the 2^nd, though some chapters we did it the other way around. Then as we were going forward we were in a constant state of revision until we were happy with the whole shebang.

 

6. Do either of you have interesting tricks or rituals when you write? 

Hmm, Suki generally writes with an obese calico in her lap, and I sometimes work my way through scenes by doing a one-man show and acting out all the parts—it gets really weird when I do the non-human ones—and living in fear someone will videotape me through the window and put it on YouTube.

  

7. Who are your favorite authors? 

We both love Guy Gavriel Kay. Suki’s a huge Stephen King fan too.

 

 8. Can you tell us about any future projects? 

 We’d love to.

 

I am finishing up a crime thriller that will be out around the end of summer beginning of fall currently called, The Black Song Inside.

 

Suki and I are working on several speculative fiction projects, including a novel and a series of novellas.

 

We will also be releasing a novel that is a series of interconnected speculative novellas that spin the gamut from sci-fi to horror to folklore to fantasy to magical realism,  with recurring characters set in the magical town of Redemption, Arkansas during the Great Depression. Sort of like what Stephen King does with his mythical town of Castle Rock, Maine.

 

It’s called: REDEMPTION'S LAMENT: Book One of The Redemption Revelations

A question of Avatars

In The Apocalypse Gene, Mikah and Olivya create avatars that look exactly like themselves. They use these avatars to go to virtual school, do virtual shopping and hanging out, and fulfill other aspects of daily life that no longer exists offline in their world. This provoked an interesting question for me. If the majority of daily interactions with other people only existed in a virtual setting, would people create avatars that really looked like themselves in a effort to show people who they really are, or would the desire to become who you want to be-or someone you think is better-win out in the end? Leave a comment and tell me what you would do...

Review of The Apocalypse Gene

Some people love the paranormal powers of psychics and auras. Others are devoted science fiction fans. Still other readers fall to the lure of fantasy, angels, demons, and gods. And who doesn’t like a good action adventure? The Apocalypse Gene is a book that takes elements of paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy, and action adventure and weaves them into a tale that readers of all these individual genres can enjoy.

Olivya sees auras, something she has always tried to control and keep from interfering in her day to day life, which happens to consist of caring for the dying souls spending their final days in her family’s hospice. Who would want to see the vibrant colors of death and diseases? Olivya’s abilities lend a very vivid and artistic element to the story. I enjoyed the descriptions of emotions through color, the bright yellows for lighter emotions and dark variants of reds and greens for those that were more sinister. Seeing the world through Olivya’s eyes was a new and interesting experience.

Mikah is a mystery to Olivya in so many ways, but the reader quickly learns that there is a reason for his secretive nature. Bringing a mythical slant to the book is Mikah’s demigod heritage and not-quite-human abilities. His story also connects the death Olivya is surrounded by every day with worlds beyond imagination and monsters of alien background. The combination of these two characters twists classically separate genres into one story very well. The sci-fi was balanced well by the more mythical side of angels and demigods. Even the futuristic society were all “normal” life is carried out in an online reality contrasted very nicely with the everyday malignancy of cancer run amok.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the incorporation of the familiar with the unfamiliar. Many of us have heard of auras, but have you ever thought of using psychic power to do battle? And who doesn’t have an avatar of some kind in today’s world, but have you ever considered what you would say to a miniature version of yourself suddenly come alive? The Apocalypse Gene never felt too out of the realm of reality, even with Adversarii and Xeraf-Yim, because there was plenty about this society you could relate to still.

Overall, this was an entertaining book that had interesting characters and a well thought out plot. I never knew what was coming next, but I looked forward to finding out. The endings of books are a big deal maker or deal breaker for me. If the ending is awful despite the rest of the book being good, it’s most likely I won’t read anything else by the author because I hate putting in a lot of time with a book only to be disappointed. The Apocalypse Gene definitely came through on the ending. I felt like all my questions were answered, it was exciting, I was kept guessing right up to the end, and it was nice and dramatic. You won’t be disappointed at the end.

One thing I didn’t particularly connect with in the book was the heavy used of slang and hyphenated future names for things. I found these very distracting while reading and felt like it took away from the writing. Similarly, the Ayvilo character was my least favorite in the book. Her constant sarcasm and generally bratty attitude and constant slang usage did not help me connect with her. I found her to be obnoxious rather than funny, and a distraction at times. My only other complaint was that while the romance between Olivya and Mikah was sweet, it wasn’t as compelling for me as it could have been. It seemed to be based too much on looks for Olivya’s part. If the “outsider” connection between them had been used as a stronger pull for them to be together I think it would have struck me more profoundly.

As a whole, the book was a very interesting read. I loved the separate genres combined in such a fun, yet dark, way. The creativity of the story was very compelling and the artistic and vivid descriptions pulled me in time and again while reading. The Apocalypse Gene was an entertaining read that will make you laugh and threaten to make you cry when you’re convinced nothing is going to work out. And the end will pull all the myth, science, and emotion together beautifully.

Would I recommend The Apocalypse Gene? Yes, you’ll enjoy it!

Who would I recommend this book to? Anyone willing to give crossed genres a try, and YA readers who want a slightly dark, but a generally sweet book with a great ending. 

Go get your own copy today 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Apocalypse-Gene-ebook/dp/B005WZZS82/ref%3dsr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319052254&sr=1-2

 

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105427

 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-apocalypse-gene-suki-michelle/1105811186?ean=2940013286634&itm=1&usri=the+apocalypse+gene++nook