Pulse - Book Tour and Giveaway

​In the year 2040, a mysterious creature is unleashed at the world's biggest music festival…

Pulse
Book One
by B.A. Bellec
Genre: Dystopian SciFi Horror

In the year 2040, a mysterious creature is unleashed at the world's biggest music festival…

“Bellec's descriptions are phenomenal, brutal, and heart-stopping. There were parts that made my skin crawl, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. . . I needed more!”
- Jessica Scurlock, Author of the Pretty Lies Series & Pulse Beta Reader

Pulse is a plot-driven multi-POV dystopian sci-fi horror thriller set in 2040, centered around a corporation, a creature, and a music festival. Think Fyre Festival, Black Mirror, and X-Files combined. The story deals with themes of capitalism, consumerism, business, politics, pandemics, climate change, activism, and technology while bouncing between a diverse group of characters sure to entertain almost anyone. The book is already being praised for its fantastic use of horror, engaging world-building, and genre-bending approach utilizing some screenplay-like formatting. This is the first entry in a new series with the sequel well underway.

B.A. Bellec writes with a unique, modern, minimalistic voice. He is the author of Someone's Story, his award-winning debut novel called a masterpiece by multiple reviewers. Never afraid of a challenge, Bellec switched genres to bring you this dark vision that simmered in his mind for years.

Awards:
IAN Book of the Year Finalist Horror (Nov 2022)
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree (Apr 2022)
The Wishing Shelf Adult Fiction Finalist (Apr 2022)
Literary Titan Seal (Jan 2022)
Reader Views Seal (Dec 2021)
Readers’ Favorite Seal (Dec 2021)


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**Check out the author’s music on Youtube that is either inspired or tied to his novels!**

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Pulse
Book Two
by B.A. Bellec
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic SciFi Horror 

The fate of humanity rests in the hands of a few.

Pulse: Book Two is the conclusion of B.A. Bellec’s dystopian sci-fi horror duology. This time around we are tapping into iconic stories like The Stand, Station Eleven, Cloud Atlas, Contact, and The Road to add elite and ambitious scale. Our chaotic journey picks up moments after the first book ends with action from the second you start turning the pages, but if you thought you knew where the story was going, leave your expectations at the door and ask yourself this one question: how would an autonomous droid defeat a monster?


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Someone’s Story
by B.A. Bellec
Genre: YA Coming of Age 

In his literary debut, B.A. Bellec writes an endearing coming-of-age tale about a group of weirdos that find and save each other from the dark depths of their minds. Someone’s Story is literally Someone’s story, as in a first-person narrative of a teenager that calls himself Someone. As he struggles to find a new footing in a new space, we encounter the many ups and downs of modern teenage life, the difficulties that adjusting to adult feelings brings, and a few tear-jerking surprises along the way.

Littered with music, mental health, friendship, loss, meditation, advice, pop culture, and even inspiring an EP, there is so much nostalgia, inspiration, and depth here it is hard to absorb it all. Cozy up somewhere warm and enjoy!

Awards:
Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Young Adult Book of the Year (March 2021)
B.R.A.G Medallion Honoree (Apr 2022)
Readers’ Favorite Young Adult Book of the Year Finalist (Sep 2021)
Next Generation Indie Book Awards YA 17+ Finalist (May 2021)
Literary Titan Seal (April 2021)
The Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon (Feb 2021)
Shelf Unbound Notable Indie (Dec 2020)
Readers’ Favorite 5 Star Seal (July 2020)


Amazon * Bookbub * Goodreads

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​Bryan “B.A.” Bellec’s debut novel, Someone’s Story, won the Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Literary Award for Young Adult Book of the Year. Someone’s Story is a coming-of-age novel about teen mental health. One of the aspects that makes Bellec’s projects unique is he includes musicians in his novels and then he actually produces the songs as his book goes through the editing stages. You can find that music on his YouTube channel. His second novel, Pulse, was released in 2021 and has been receiving strong reviews. That novel is a genre flip with dark dystopian sci-fi horror peppering the pages. Pulse is the start of a new fictional universe Bellec will write in for years to come! 


Website * Youtube * Facebook * X * Instagram * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads
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Collaboration and Writing: How Producing Songs Made Me A Better Writer!

Much of what we do as writers is a solitary effort. Then we get to the end of the writing process and suddenly the rug is pulled. No longer is writing this solitary activity. Now, as you put the finishing touches on your manuscript, you MUST collaborate.

Tasks like editing, beta reading, cover design, formatting, and marketing. They are all skills needed to produce a finished book, but you may not have them all. That’s okay. That is where collaboration comes in. Find your weak spots and partner with people who are experts. Whenever I collaborate, I always have two very simple goals:

1 – What is the core task we are trying to complete?
Whenever a collaboration starts, make sure the core task is clearly defined and stays on track. If the task is editing, don’t get sidetracked with formatting or graphics. Stick to editing and find a partner who is an expert editor.

2 – What can I learn from this person?
Once you have that core task defined and your expert picked, try to evaluate yourself during the entire process. What can you learn? For me, I know editing is a weak spot. Thus, I try really hard to find matches to fill my various editing holes. I also know I will never be a master of the technical side of spelling and grammar, and that is okay. Each time I go into an editing contract, I try to learn a few more things that will make my next editing contract go smoother.

I have a very interesting example to show you why and how collaboration makes you an infinitely better writer. Last year, I was invited to participate in an indie author project, The Anatomy of Fear. Twelve of us got together, each writing a short story with fear and a body part as the starting place. We used an online chat room (Slack/Discord/Teams) to keep everyone in touch and we also did beta reading in pods within the group. It was a fantastic way to develop our stories and because we used crowdfunding; we had the budget to add a master editor, an audiobook narrator, and an artist to help with custom drawings for each story. All of those were collaboration points to learn from, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you know nothing about me, you may not be aware that not only do I write novels, but I also write songs that are usually tied to the novels I am working on at that time. Why do I do that? I love music and I often find myself writing a character that is a musician. When I was creating my first novel, I had a character singing in a talent show and I wrote a few songs while I was going through the editing process as if I was that character.

My editing is particularly slow. I usually spend an entire year in the beta and editing stage. Wanting to make those songs be more than just words on a page and knowing I couldn’t sing, I went about finding a partner who could be the voice I was looking for. I spent a month looking for the right fit to bring my idea to life and match the narrative vision I had. We ended up doing 5 songs together over the next few years. I call myself a music producer and what makes me a producer? It’s vision. I can hear the final song before it is done, and I keep the creation process tied to the novel. Collaborating with musicians made me a better writer as I learned how to structure songs, which is not all that different than planning out a chapter. I also learned tons of collaborative skills mainly on how to take and receive feedback which is an extremely important skill.

Those were my early days. Let’s fast forward to today to give you a better insight into what a few years of growth looks like when it comes to song production. So during The Anatomy of Fear I had that same inevitable moment of editing downtime where the first draft of my story was done, but the beta group was still organizing. It was too early to start editing. Rather than sitting idle, I decided to write a song. My short story didn’t have music or a musician in it. That meant that this song wouldn’t be tied specifically to my story, but I still wanted it to work with the project. I continued our theme of exploring fear. In pretty short order I landed on the topic of imposter syndrome. Many of us writers get this feeling so I thought first and foremost it would probably connect with the bulk of the group I was working with.

Where my skills as a writer have leveled up, I wrote my song in just a few weeks, but just like a book, the first draft is never the final draft. I had collaborated with someone the prior year on a cover song. I really wanted to make an original with them. I thought this new idea was the perfect fit. I reached out to them and for the next month, we went back and forth rewriting the song. During this time, the anthology project had begun beta reading. The goals I set were achieved. I collaborated to write a song about fear while also not overanalyzing my first draft from the anthology.

Once the song was recorded, I set out with a new task, I wanted to make a special video. I found an animator on Fiverr who had recently done a lyric video that got to a million views. Perfect! Another collaborator. We got together to gather a rough outline for the imagery and style I was looking for. We kept progressing with our anthology editing and I would check in with the video partner here and there. That was a few months back.

Here is the final product:

 Once the video was done, I registered the song with SOCAN which protects original Canadian songwriting, uploaded my awesome YouTube video, and sent the music files to DistroKid which handles the release on all major platforms. None of those things were on my radar four years ago. Not only have I learned a little more about those backend tasks, but my ability to find better partners and collaborators has increased exponentially. To build a bonfire you need to start with a spark and those early songs were the sparks that have helped me grow this inferno!

The Anatomy of Fear is a short story anthology that explores the borders between fear and fantasy through fiction. Penned by 12 independent authors, this anthology brings together different thoughts, experiences, and perspectives to answer one question. What do we fear?

Just for fun, H.L. Tinsley (who was one of the masterminds behind The Anatomy of Fear) told me she liked the poem Invictus. I saw it was old enough to fall into the public domain, so I went about producing a musical version of that poem as a gift to her.

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
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​Aug 23
kickoff at Silver Dagger Book Tours
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❧Defining Ways❧
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