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Dark Goddess Chronicles - Book Tour and Giveaway

1/3/2022

54 Comments

 
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Lethal Red Riding Hood
Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1
by Leonard & Anne Marie Wilson
Genre: Dark Fantasy 

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"First character crush ever! I just want to say that Keely is my girl!...my FAVORITE character out of this whole book...very cunning and intelligent. The perfect protagonist to Bloody Scarlet." ~ Jordan, book reviewer, editor, author, life-on-the-shelf.com

Bloody Scarlet, the skull collector of the Crimson Forest, is just a cautionary tale to keep children from wandering in and getting lost — isn’t she? Well something’s out there.

In a world dominated by a cruel Inquisition that sees demons and witches everywhere it turns, Keely just wants to make a dishonest living convincing the obscenely wealthy to part with their excess riches through guile and trickery.

When the Inquisition shows up to destroy her life anyway, Keely goes on the offensive rather than scurry back into the shadows. To set it up for a fall she lures the Inquisition into an invented race to find a heretical book of prophecy that may never have existed.

When Keely builds her lies on existing rumors, though, and points the hunt in the direction of the Crimson forest, a new player introduces herself to the high stakes con game as a deadly wild card.

Whether or not the woman in red is the real Bloody Scarlet, the closer Keely gets to the dark, twisted heart of the forest the more quickly things spiral out of control.



Goodreads * Amazon

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​Sabina pulled another dusty book off the nearest shelf and dropped it with a satisfying thud onto the table next to the growing pile. She opened it reverently, and carefully turned the brittle pages, to find more of the ancient, indecipherable text. Or, to put a finer point on it, the text was indecipherable to her, given her personal ignorance of the old imperial tongue, but this was the stuff: tome after tome that reeked of age and authority, each one a musty exemplar of what a fifteen-hundred-year-old holy text should be.
Behind Sabina, a light flared as her hostess lit a candle, then placed it on the table, and it was only then that Sabina realized how dark the cottage had become. Was night falling already?
“Where did you get these?” Sabina asked the woman excitedly. It was the first words either of them had spoken since Sabina had been invited in. Instantly entranced by the collection, Sabina had never even spared her hostess a second glance, and the woman had seemed in no hurry to break the spell.
“Oh, the usual places.” The woman answered in the hushed tones of a librarian—though there was no one else about for her voice to disturb—before gliding off again into the gloom. “Salvaged from the deepest pits of despair, wrestled from out of the darkest nightmares. That sort of thing.”
“That’s…usual, is it?” Sabina asked. Finally taking an active interest in her hostess, Sabina peered into the darkness, but could see no more of her now than a shadowy silhouette as she moved about, pulling a book off a shelf here, sliding one onto a shelf there.
“Where else?” The woman still whispered, though her voice carried like a bell in the cold silence of the library. “Seriena trains up women to read and to write so that when they die and she drags their souls screaming down into the pit, she can chain them up in dank little cells to make books for her for all eternity. When they’re not being poked with red hot needles, of course. That would make them jump and smudge the words.”
“Oh,” Sabina said, not knowing what other answer she could give to that story.
“Books are evil, dear. Poison. They’re how Seriena spreads her hate and her venom to every corner of the land.”
“And yet you surround yourself with so many…” Sabina observed, trying against all her natural urges to not sound judgmental.
“Oh, these aren’t mine,” the woman whispered. “These are for you. That’s what you came looking for, isn’t it? Forbidden knowledge? Power at any cost?”
“Who are you?” Sabina asked, shivering suddenly. She found herself whispering in imitation of the woman.
“Oh, I know Seriena has this whole ‘sweetness and light’ thing going,” the woman continued. “But that’s just a mask for the rubes. Helloooo? Inquisition? You think she doesn’t condone their methods? She’s no better than the rest of us.”
“I think I’d better go,” Sabina whispered nervously. “My brother’s looking for me.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “Show yourself out. Sometimes the power’s not worth the price, is it?”
“Sometimes,” Sabina agreed, a note of uncertainty creeping into her note of uncertainty. But she stood up slowly and started edging toward the door. “You’re the witch, aren’t you?”
The woman laughed loudly, the suddenness of it startling in the quiet darkness. “I’ve been called a witch,” she murmured finally. “I’m not.”
“Then what are you?” Sabina asked earnestly.
“Famished,” the woman answered with a thoughtful nod. “And perhaps a bit melodramatic. It’s hard to be sure, though. Is this Tuesday?”
“I…no,” Sabina shook her head, now at least as perplexed as she was nervous.
“Pity.” The woman sighed wistfully. “I have a theory about days of the week, you know. Melodrama is so much easier to recognize on a Tuesday. But look, we’re not here to talk about me, are we? This is all about…you.” The woman finally stepped into the candlelight, and for a moment there was something unnervingly familiar about her manic grin. Then she leaned over and blew out the candle with one quick puff of breath and the room plunged into utter darkness.

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Gingerdread
Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 2 

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“Beautiful atmosphere with a touch of macabre with an unreliable narrative done magnificently…if you have any love of horror and suspense, add this to your list.” ~ Catherine Bowser, ARC Reader

Hell is a Bakery


Jordan hadn’t wished his stepmother, Eva, dead. A little something involving spiders would have served vengeance quite nicely.

Still, he hadn’t exactly grieved when they said she’d died in the fire. A protective big brother will only forgive so many sins against his sister.

Even if Eva had been alive, though, what business would she have begging for his help now—a year later? And how insane was he to even consider offering help, much less seek out where her voice was coming from on such a miserable dark night?

As heir presumptive to the barony and a soon-to-be knight in training, Jordan refuses to let fear stop him from seeking answers to impossible questions.

But when the questions keep piling up, each darker and more dreadful than the last, only one thing becomes crystal clear: he’ll never look at an oven the same way again.



**Only .99 cents until Jan 8th!!
Goodreads * Amazon

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​He peered cautiously in through the window there. Beyond lay a smallish room, half-intact but stripped of furnishings, marred by soot and smoke and by a year of partial exposure to the elements. In the dark it had seemed dreadfully sinister. In the morning it just felt abandoned and forlorn. No crying, pleas, or pounding came from within. He wanted to tell himself he’d dreamed the whole episode, but the charred timber lying freshly shattered on the floor said otherwise.
Rather than climb through the window—which looked structurally unsafe—Jordan retraced his steps around to the doorway and through the old house. Whatever the room had been before the fire, he didn’t recognize it. This would have been servants’ territory and nowhere he had ever ventured. With the scent of damp and decay filling his nostrils, he moved slowly, carefully, so as not to cause any further shifting of the ruin. He also moved as quietly as he was able so as not to disturb anything that might be lurking. Locating the wall, he circled it again, hoping sunlight would reveal something that candle light hadn’t. It didn’t.
Jordan had longed to find some way to quiet his conscience that didn’t involve drawing attention to himself again, but soon it would be breakfast, and lessons would come after that whether he’d eaten or not. Before he could return here again it would almost certainly be dark.
His mind raced down all the possible paths he might find himself on if he walked away not knowing. It didn’t like any of them one bit. He weighed them against what could go wrong if he didn’t just walk away. It didn’t make him feel any better.
How on earth had anyone decided that he was the brave one? But somehow now that everyone thought he was, he was terrified of letting on that he wasn’t.
He pressed his ear to the wall again, ready to flinch away and run. Nothing. He closed his eyes. He drew a deep breath. He realized he was stalling. He rapped quietly on the wall. He rapped again a little louder.
“Hello?” The voice came small, tentative.
“Eva?” he finally managed to squeak, emboldened by the morning light.
“Jordan? Jordan, please don’t go.”
He started to say he’d just run to get help, but could he? Maybe if he came up with the right lie. Maybe. “I…I’m not leaving,” he said finally. “How can I help?”
“It’s so dark. I can’t see. The door is stuck.”
“Eva, I don’t see any door,” he said, starting to feel a little better, bolder. A weight had lifted when he focused on her fear instead of his.
“What?! No! It’s here. Right here.” The distinct rattling of a doorknob could be heard through the wall.
“Rap on the door,” he said. “There, by the knob.” He heard it. “Keep rapping.” With his ear to the wall, he kept listening, moving around until he’d pinpointed the spot. He drove his knuckles into the plaster there, creating a noticeable dent, then he went looking for a makeshift tool.
He found it in the form of a jagged piece of stonework that had fractured from the wall. With it, he began to gouge at the plaster in earnest. It crumbled away quickly and easily but revealed only solid brick behind.
Jordan honestly couldn’t say whether he was disappointed or relieved, but it was too late to walk away--even for breakfast. It was too late to walk away even if he missed lessons and they sent a search party. If that happened and they didn’t hear Eva it would mean the willow switch. If they did hear her, though, then he could pass the whole thing off to the grown-ups. He’d have to risk it.
“Jordan?”
“It’s just a wall!” he called back. “I still can’t see…” His voice trailed off, and he hurried once more around the wall, inspecting it, his confusion giving way to suspicion.
“Hold on,” he said when he got back to where he started, and he began hacking away at the plaster again until he found the vertical seam where red brick met gray stone. Then he tore at it the other direction until he found another seam.
Brickwork less than a yard wide lay between him and his stepmother. Someone had bricked up a doorway and plastered over it. Jordan’s stomach tied itself in all sorts of new knots as that fact sank in, then got dragged to new depths as he studied the soot on the remaining plaster. There was no possible way that the door hadn’t been sealed off before the fire. His knees gave way to fear and horror, and he started retching on the spot, trying to turn out the contents of an empty stomach.

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Ear Wyrm
Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 3 

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A Dragon Is Forever

Meilani always wanted to be a monster hunter for the Inquisition. She was good at it, too, until the first time she came face-to-face with real monsters. Now she’s alone with her nightmares on the road she paved with all those good intentions.

Then one tiny glimmer of redemption finally offers itself—a chance to safeguard a little girl with a very familiar ambition—only to lead her further down the rabbit hole. The journey leaves them stranded in a tangled web of time with a deadly rogue’s gallery of psychopaths and other monsters.

Hanging over it all, a once comfortingly familiar song exhorts them relentlessly, inescapably to push ever deeper into a night that never ends, even as something at the center of the web stirs restlessly on its gleaming hoard of possibilities. Here, now, and always, there be dragons.



Goodreads * Amazon


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​Catching up to the girl didn’t take long given her short strides. “Where are you even going?”
The girl looked up and gave a small, relieved smile at the sight of Meilani. “Do you hear that?” she asked, gesturing ahead as she paused again in the swirling snow.
Rather than peer into the darkness ahead, Meilani peered nervously into the darkness behind, watching for any sign of a lumbering shadow, but still she cocked her head and listened. With sounds muffled by the snow and away from the cluster of taverns they’d left behind, the night had fallen nearly silent. In truth Meilani could hear nothing more than her own breathing, the background whisper of falling snow, and the song carrying more distinctly now from the opera house. She tried listening to that, but could make out nothing beyond its innocuous and traditional solstice celebration of rebirth.

When will the night be done
With the returning of the sun
A new year to have begun
Sing laetatio

Finally, Meilani shook her head. “What am I supposed to hear?”
“You can’t hear the song?” the girl pressed.
“Just ‘Arise Again, Begin Anew’ coming from Icehall,” Meilani said. “Nothing sinister.”
“Look at Icehall,” the girl insisted.
Meilani glanced obligingly ahead but she already knew she couldn’t see it from her memory of the dark street. The opera house was an impressive, soaring thing full of glass and light—a beacon in the dark night. It couldn’t be missed. It just wasn’t there yet. “If I come close enough to see it with you and everything looks fine, will you come back to the tavern with me?”
“It’s right down there,” the girl insisted, ignoring the question. “Straight shot. Right in front of us.”
“Have you ever seen Icehall at night?” Meilani sighed. “There’s no missing it. It’s still behind…” She waved an arm in frustration off down the street. “Stuff.”
“You can’t miss it,” the girl agreed, though clearly growing impatient herself, “until everyone’s gone home for the night. It was two in the morning last clock I heard. The opera’s closed and empty.”
“Can’t be,” Meilani protested. “I can hear them singing.”
“So can I,” the girl assured her slowly and deliberately. “All that stuff you’re trying so hard to forget? It broke something in you. It broke something in me, too. I’ve seen a lot of the same nightmares. Once you see them, there’s no going back. Your head stops screening them out just because they’re unthinkable.”
“Worked that out yourself, did you?” Meilani arched an incredulous eyebrow.
“Sister Adalva did,” the girl said, unfazed. “You should start reading her.”
“Pretending for one moment that we’ve got an opera house singing while it’s empty, how is this worse than being stalked by a giant shadow?” By this point Meilani could feel the comfortable embrace of the alcohol completely unwinding. “You think an opera house is going to get up and start following us?”
“The opera house has been doing this every night for weeks,” the girl said crossly. “Also, it’s killing people.”

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Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson met when she showed up on his doorstep where they quickly bonded over nearly everything, including their shared love of writing. Two years later they were married and collaborating on nearly everything, including writing as freelancers for role-playing games.
Leonard came to storytelling first through Dungeons & Dragons, then on to other role-playing games. Immediately after earning a degree in writing, he began freelancing, writing adventures for the RPG industry. While he was never a prolific author, the internet still seems to regard a couple of his works as classics of their type ("The Ghost of Mistmoor" in Dungeon magazine, and "The Heart Blade" in Pendragon's Blood and Lust adventure anthology). Coincidentally, those same two adventures are what paid for their wedding rings and honeymoon.
Ann was a gamer girl in her own right when they met, and she retains an "old school" pedigree longer than anyone who's ever accused her of being a poser. She wrote stories for fun, but thanks to the careless words of a particularly unfortunate English teacher, never got around to pursuing her ambitions of publishing before she met Leonard. That didn't stop her from finishing her first novel-length manuscript before he finished his.
They launched their own imprint, Lost in the Wood Press, just in time to have it as a steady project to ride out the COVID lockdown, and are loving the complete creative freedom that comes with self-publishing.


Website * Website * Facebook * Facebook * Twitter
Instagram * Instagram * Amazon * Amazon * Goodreads * Goodreads


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54 Comments
Rita Wray
1/3/2022 11:22:00 am

Sounds great, thank you for sharing.

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wendy hutton
1/3/2022 12:30:01 pm

this sounds like an interesting book, thanks

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Beyond Comps
1/3/2022 01:25:32 pm

Great cover!

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Leonard Wilson link
1/4/2022 01:29:14 pm

Thanks! The first cover (for Lethal Red Riding Hood) was actually a Christmas present to ourselves--sort of a lark. We weren't really committed to self-publishing until we saw what Peter came up with for us. Then we knew we had to get serious about the whole thing. You don't commission a cover like that and then just walk away.

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Christina Gould
1/3/2022 02:31:54 pm

I love the beautiful cover and the excerpt. Thanks for the giveaway!

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Ann Marie Wilson link
1/6/2022 12:07:03 pm

Thanks! We are so happy to have caught your eye. Good luck on the giveaway.

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bn100
1/3/2022 02:46:33 pm

nice excerpt

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Ann Marie Wilson link
1/6/2022 12:06:10 pm

Thanks! It can be hard deciding which part of the story to excerpt -- sort of like picking your favorite child.

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Sherry
1/3/2022 04:49:08 pm

I love the covers and the excerpts.

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Ann Marie Wilson link
1/6/2022 12:04:16 pm

Thank! As Leonard has mentioned in other comments, we are truly thrilled with Peter, our cover designer, and are hoping for a long collaboration with him putting just the right image on our covers.

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Danielle Day
1/3/2022 08:34:09 pm

I like it!

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Terri Quick
1/3/2022 09:08:26 pm

Sounds like a good read

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Ann Marie Wilson link
1/6/2022 12:02:43 pm

Glad it caught your eye! Was there anything in particular that caught your interest?

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Bea LaRocca
1/3/2022 11:47:29 pm

I love the covers, synopses and excerpt, this sounds like an awesome book and series, excellent adaptations of some of my favorite fairy tales. Thank you for sharing your bio and books' details and for offering a giveaway, I am looking forward to reading all of these stories

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Ann Marie Wilson link
1/6/2022 12:01:09 pm

Hi, Bea! We're hoping you have as much fun reading as we had writing. Deciding to do horror stories that riff on classic fairy tales and fairy tale elements gave us a trove of riches for inspiration.

Let us know how you like our "ripped from the [fairy tale] headlines" approach to world building.

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Kari B
1/4/2022 05:37:21 am

Sounds like an exciting fantasy world to read about, with some intriguing characters.

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Leonard Wilson link
1/4/2022 01:23:17 pm

We hope you have as much fun reading about them as we have writing them!

Much of the credit for character development on our team goes to Ann Marie. For a long time I'd been the senior partner, with more experience under my belt from freelance writing and my B.A., but she's the one who really drove home to me that story grows out of character, not the other way around. Until she did that, I was struggling to keep up a novel-length narrative. Once she got that through my thick skull, the characters practically started writing the stories themselves.

I knew we were onto something when I found myself wanting to write more stories in the setting just so I could find out what the people there were up to myself.

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Marcy Meyer
1/4/2022 07:11:12 am

The titles and covers are great. Very unique.

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Leonard Wilson link
1/4/2022 01:07:56 pm

Thank you! We love our cover designer, Peter, and I pride myself on titles.

Some authors clearly write a story then ask themselves, "Now what's a good name for this?" as a sort of an afterthought.

In our books, the title isn't just some afterthought or a marketing concern. It's the single most important phrase in the book--a load-bearing pillar that supports the entire story and guides us as we write.

As soon as I have a basic concept for a story, I'm looking for just the right words to embody the theme I'm trying to capture, then the specific details begin to coalesce around the name. There's not a story in the series that would be what it is without the name.

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Jon Heil
1/4/2022 10:34:01 am

Hope the Dragon doesn't chomp over everyone

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Leonard Wilson link
1/4/2022 12:51:03 pm

I doubt it's too much of a spoiler to reassure you it won't, because one of the wonderful things about dragons is the many, exciting options for mayhem they have available. Chomping everyone would be boring when you could so easily roast, rend, and crush, and [redacted].

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Wendy Jensen
1/5/2022 01:53:52 pm

The book details sound like quite the read.

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Leonard Wilson link
1/7/2022 01:18:36 am

Thanks, Wendy. We do everything we can to deliver a wild roller coaster ride.

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sarah s
1/7/2022 10:36:43 am

How did you come up with this idea to write a book about?

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Leonard Wilson link
1/7/2022 02:51:14 pm

The Dark Goddess Chronicles actually started out as a plan to a write a series of adventures for Dungeons & Dragons before we realized we didn't want to write those any more. We'd always tried to write adventures that broke the traditional limits and expectations of the game anyway--to tell exciting stories that could still stand on their own even if you took away all the dice and the number crunching and the rules gimmicks--and this series is where we just decided if we're working that hard anyway, let's tell whatever stories we want and not try to make them fit in with someone else's published rules.

So we took the original set of fairy-tale villains and the original titles from those adventures ideas, added our own protagonists, and let the sparks fly between them.

I think that origin story has a lot to do with how we really hit our stride as collaborators, too. While one of us will do the actual putting words-on-the-page to keep a consistent voice, we'll basically bring each other "adventure proposals" that have a strong opening, a strong theme, a few important characters, and no preconceptions about how its all going to play out. Then we'll discover what happens together by talking through the characters and setting while we watch the stories develop, very much like we'd go through the collaborative improv at a gaming table.

In the end I think it's fair to say we never have "an idea" for a story. We find a million little ideas one at a time, and introduce them to each other to see how they'll react.

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Julie Lundstrom
1/7/2022 11:25:30 pm

Love the cover of this book.

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Elaine G
1/8/2022 12:10:54 pm

Thanks for sharing the excerpts. These sound great.

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Nancy
1/9/2022 01:10:11 pm

These books sound like interesting twisted and turned riffs.on classic fairy tales with fairy tale elements. They would be interesting to read.

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Jennifer Mckelvey-Galindo
1/10/2022 08:10:29 pm

You had me with the cover with dragons. But the fact my daughter's name MEILANI is in your book really seals the deal for me!

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Leonard Wilson link
1/11/2022 04:45:07 pm

It is an EXCELLENT name. :)

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Karin
1/12/2022 06:53:18 am

Interesting excerpts

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Ken Ohl
1/15/2022 04:40:10 am

These books look intriguing

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Mya Goss
1/15/2022 08:21:40 am

The covers are seriously stunning!!

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Leonard Wilson link
1/16/2022 04:14:11 pm

Thanks! We hope you'll enjoy the insides just as much. :)

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wen budro
1/25/2022 03:47:11 pm

This looks like a great read. The book details are intriguing.

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beth shepherd
1/28/2022 06:44:09 pm

This looks like a great read.

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David Hollingsworth
1/28/2022 06:53:56 pm

This sounds like a really creepy book.

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Leonard Wilson link
1/30/2022 09:44:38 pm

But in a good way, we hope. :)

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David Basile
1/28/2022 07:35:52 pm

Welcome to there nightmares sounds good

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Ann Fantom
1/28/2022 08:33:41 pm

This sounds like an interesting book and I also like the cover.

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Christy R.
1/29/2022 03:56:36 am

The book details sound like this would be an interesting read. Best of luck with the publication.

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Debbi Wellenstein
1/29/2022 11:43:42 am

I enjoyed the excerpts. Thanks for the giveaway!

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Kelly D
1/29/2022 02:37:20 pm

The book sounds great, very suspenseful.

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angela heerde
1/31/2022 09:59:24 pm

I like book details

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jose rosado
2/1/2022 08:46:37 am

What do you think of the book details? Do you have any questions for the author?


A very good blurb

THX

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LYNN CLAYTON
2/1/2022 06:52:35 pm

i.like.this

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Daniel M
2/2/2022 02:31:38 pm

like the cover

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Renata
2/2/2022 09:25:39 pm

Sounds good!

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Lacey Bundschuh
2/2/2022 10:37:30 pm

Kewlness

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Francine A
2/3/2022 04:09:12 pm

The book series sounds great and I love the covers

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Jen Reed
2/3/2022 05:02:07 pm

The books look good.

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Judy Gregory
2/3/2022 06:55:56 pm

How do you "flesh out" your ideas?

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Leonard Wiolson
2/3/2022 09:59:50 pm

Good question, Judy.

Authors spend a lot of time arguing back and forth among themselves about the practical benefits of outlining a book before they start writing vs. the freedom of making it all up as you go. We don't really do either one.

Increasingly Ann Marie and I find ourselves leaning into the improv storytelling techniques we've both spent our lives practicing as game masters of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games.

What that means is we come up with a premise, a theme, and title. We flesh out the key players and their motivations. We draft opening scenes until we find one that really speaks to us. We brainstorm menus of elements that might make fun additions to the story. Then we turn our characters loose and watch to see what they do.

All of this works together to keep our stories cohesive without forcing our authorial agendas on the characters. Those many years of experience with storytelling improv where we never knew what the heroes of our story were going to do next have taught us a lot about how to keep an audience immersed and interested through it all--eager to find out what happens next--while gently herding the story toward a fulfilling conclusion.

When you get to the part in our books where we catch you completely by surprise, it's probably because we caught ourselves by surprise too. But it's not really random, either. It's just the culmination of character, theme, circumstance, and other story pressures relentlessly converging on each other. The story becomes what the story chooses to be, and the story ends once everything collides in a way we find satisfying.

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Sand
2/3/2022 09:26:48 pm

Sounds like a great book!

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