Saturday, July 22, 2017

If You Use Bookfunnel, Here's a Giveaway You Might Enjoy.

In the past, I have told you about a group giveaway hosted by author Anne R. Tan through Instafreebie. This month, Anne is hosting a similar giveaway featured on Book Funnel. Book Funnel is a unique site where readers establish an account through which authors can safely send you direct uploads to your eReader device. There are 27 mystery and thriller novels available for download at no cost.

The giveaway runs from July 21 through the 31st and can be found at this link. I don't have a book in this promo, but I am watching it closely to gauge for future value.


Friday, July 14, 2017

My Progress and Deals For You

  Just a quick note this month to bring you up to date on my progress. I am currently about a quarter to a third of the way through the manuscript for Where Angels Fear, the prequel to On the Side of the Angel. Once I finish that, I will send parts of it around to a few of the other authors involved in the Bartering Angel project for revisions. While they have the manuscript, I will begin work compiling the audiobook version of 8 Tales of Noir.
  When I get the notes back from the other authors I will make corrections, additions, and adjustments to the manuscript and it will be ready for beta readers. By the way, drop me a note if you'd like to be on the beta team for that story.
  Once the betas have had their say, it will be time to send out Advanced Reader Copies, so also let me know if you'd like to be on that ARC team. Hopefully those will be ready sometime in September.

Also...

  This weekend is RenĂ©e Pawlish's monthly promo. You can pick up a lot of great mystery and thriller reads for just 99¢ by visiting reneepawlish.com/promo right now.


Friday, July 7, 2017

Audiobook Review: Revelation by Carter Wilson

At a small New York college, two roommates set out to create a religious cult as a social experiment. Soon, however, things take a malevolent turn when the burgeoning Church’s chosen messiah turns out to be a socio-pathological lunatic. Waking to find himself trapped in a sort of dungeon cell like that of John of Patmos, with only a typewriter, a spider, and the rotting corpse of his former roommate for companionship, Harden Campbell sets to work writing his book of Revelation.

Set over a quarter century ago, Carter Wilson’s novel, Revelation, was only published last year, but it could easily have been set in contemporary times. The story toggles between third-person point of view and first as some of the examination of the action puts us in the position of observer, while other chapters are from the perspective of a manuscript being written by the captive, Harden.

Carter Wilson
There are three main characters, our part-time narrator, Harden; his roommate turned tormenter, Coyote; and Coyote’s girlfriend, Emma. The story takes us from Harden’s first meeting with Coyote all the way to a contrived conclusion in which the triangle of Harden, Coyote, and Emma come together to realize Coyote’s penultimate coup de grace, unless a miracle or Deus ex Machina intervenes.

My review is based on the audio version, which I received in exchange for my honest review, and to be honest, I’m not sure how I felt about the choice of narrator, Timothy McKean. It’s not that he did a bad job. On the contrary, he helped give life to the characters and added a sense of reality to the tension, and in the end that’s really all one can ask of a voice actor. But there is a slight Keanu Reeves-like immaturity to the quality of his tone. Another coming-of-age/college-experience story that wasn’t also about a murderous messianic sadist would probably be right in his wheelhouse.

Timothy McKean
As for the story, I have to confess, I have a particular fondness for thrillers which twist the conventions of religion into something distorted and horrifying. The best parts of this story for me were, in fact, the aspects showing how a charismatic sociopath could easily convince enough vulnerable and weak-willed neophytes to follow his promises of lasting happiness and self-improvement. From my perspective, Jim Jones, L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, and Paul of Tarsus are all just variations of a theme representing a template from which Wylie “Coyote” Martin was drawn.

Revelation is a successful thriller the same way that the first season of The Following was a success. We believe that a sociopath with access to vulnerable minds and a fortune in expendable cash could create the illusion that he has a message about the purpose of life. But why wouldn’t we believe that? After all, Joel Osteen and Tony Robbins are real people, and we’ve seen what they have done with the starter recipe. All we have to then do is toss in a little Charles Manson and some Kellyanne Conway. Voila!

Available on Amazon and Audible