Angela Roquet

October 5, 2013October 5, 2013 Monica La PortaLeave a comment

Happy Saturday, everybody. We are back to our Off the Beaten Path Blog Tour and Giveaway. Today, I am pleased to have on my blog a funny and generous indie author, Angela Roquet. Angela, who writes urban fantasy and paranormal, is one of the awesome seven who collaborated to Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal.

In her own words she is:

Angela Roquet is a great big weirdo.

She collects Danger Girl comic books, owls, skulls, & random craft supplies. She has an unhealthy obsession with television shows created by Joss Whedon & fantasizes about him directing television/film versions of her novels. Angela’s favorite book/movie is The Wizard of Oz. She likes a little coffee in her cream, & her favorite food is sushi.

Angela is a peace loving, tree hugging hippy who tries to buy organic & local as often as possible. She’s a fan of renewable energy sources, marriage equality, & religious tolerance. As long as whatever you’re doing isn’t hurting anyone, she’s a fan of you, too. Angela lives in Sedalia, Missouri with her husband & son. When she’s not swearing at the keyboard, she enjoys painting, goofing off with her family & friends, & reading books that raise eyebrows. You can find Angela online at www.angelaroquet.com

And now her answers to my questions:

1) The first horror book you read was…?

That’s a tough one. It was definitely one of R. L. Stein’s Goosebumps novels. I read a TON of those as a kid.

2) You discovered you were quite good at writing horror/paranormal/urban fantasy when…?

My Lana Harvey series was originally a short story, written spur of the moment for a contest. I had a good friend tell me that it was an awful short story… but an excellent introduction to a series. I had written horror and urban fantasy before, but that was really the moment I felt like I might actually be good at this.

3) As a reader, your favorite horror book is…?

I have to pick one??? Wow. Yeah. Hmmm. I’m going to go with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series. I can’t just single out one book in particular, but the first one of the series “Guilty Pleasures” definitely hooked me. Hamilton really encompasses a lot of different genres, but she has mastered horror for sure. That was on of the first Urban Fantasy series I picked up in college, and so began my quest for more!

4) What scares you…?

I’m not afraid of much. I don’t mind heights, I’ve had a pet ball python, and I have a tattoo of a spider on the back of my neck. I am a bit of a germaphobe though, so there’s that. lol

5) You usually write…?

Urban Fantasy is a pretty catchall term for what I write. My Lana Harvey series is my ongoing project, but I also have a YA zombie novel out now titled “Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend.”

6) What’s next…?

I’m currently in the middle of promoting “Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend.” I’ve organized a zombie themed prom in my hometown, which we’re calling the Prombie Apocalypse. So that’s been a lot of work, but it’s also been a lot of fun! My fourth Lana novel “Psychopomp” will be out in February 2014, and I’m working on another standalone title “Backwoods Armageddon” with my husband. In May, we’ll be presenting a marketing panel at the annual RT Booklovers Convention in New Orleans. I’m pretty good at biting off more than I can chew, but after the chaos wears off, I have no regrets. My writing career has been very rewarding.

Thanks for the interview! I’m really excited about our anthology, and I hope to work with you on more joint projects in the future!

Thank you, Angela! And likewise!

And finally, remember, for the chance to win awesome gifts, enter the Off the Beaten Path Giveaway!

Friday Snippet #51

October 4, 2013October 4, 2013 Monica La Portaa small excerpt from a na fantasy novel, a snippet from a novel every friday, amazon gift cards giveaway, current wip, digital art, fall foliage painting, friday snippet, horoor anthology giveaway, indie giveaway, notturno the fantsy novelLeave a comment

Right in the middle of Off the Beaten Path Giveaway, I’ve taken a break from the guest posts to enjoy a beautiful autumnal afternoon. Around the ridge, trees are reddening and orange leaves are falling. The air is crisp and the sky is terse.

Gaia is in the hands of the second and final proofreader. Elios and Marie’s Journey are both being edited. Gaia’s cover is almost done as well. For the first time after months, I don’t even remember how long it has passed since last time it happened, I am writing something new. Well, Notturno it’s one of those projects I started one year ago, but I never finished it, therefore it counts as new to me.

From Notturno, a NA fanstasy novel:

Dalia found the three of them more and more revolting as minutes passed. She shrank to the farthest corner of the cage, hoping they would leave her inside and never come close enough to touch her.

The woman who was now staring at her with unblinking black eyes, held a malevolent expression on her wrinkled face. She shook her head in mock disappointment. “By the end of your staying here with us, you’ll wish the mercs kept you.”

Dalia would have told her she was already of the same opinion, but she closed her mouth tight. Her new captors didn’t seem sound of mind, and she was already of the impression that anything she’d say or do would trigger their bad tempers. She shivered under the woman’s scrutiny.

“What are we going to do with you?” The woman stepped back and tilted her head one side and then the other.

“Let her work for us.” Dant joined her, and they stood side by side, looking at Dalia.

Lars walked close by and then passed them, heading straight to the cage. “That’s a great idea, methink.”

Dant seemed to think about it for a moment, and then smashed his open palm with a fisted hand. “She could work in my bedchamber.”

Dalia was now uncontrollably shaking.

“Yes! Can she work in my bedchamber too, Catal?” Lars took the woman’s hands in his and jumped up and down, like an overgrown child.

The woman, Catal, slowly shook her head, the beads at the end of her tresses noisily clinking against each other. “You never take care of things. What if you break this one? She looks too scrawny.”

“We’ll take good care of her. We’ll even walk her outside—” Dant’s hands slid up to the woman’s elbows.

Catal forcefully loosened his hold on her arms. “She is a nocturnal. Remember?”

Jason T. Graves

October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 Monica La Portaamazon gift cards giveaway, horror anthology, horror shorts anthology, indie authors anthology, off the beaten path giveaway, paranormal anthology, paranormal shorts anthologyLeave a comment

The week is still young and there is lots of time to enter a great giveaway sponsored by awesome indies. Let’s meet and greet another one of the aforementioned awesome seven:

Jason T. Graves is the creative mind behind the horror anthology Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal.

This is what he has to say about himself:

Jason T. Graves lives in North Carolina with his family and a menagerie of small, domestic animals. He takes his coffee black, and, when he is not conducting mysterious, mad-scientist experiments with his students, he writes mysterious and beautiful fiction.

Many years ago, he was punched, only once and very lightly, by Muhammad Ali.

Jason, whose blog has an awesome name, is the author of several paranormal and urban fantasy novels.

Blood Roses (The Noctivagas Chronicle)

Vampires aren’t real… right? If they were, Madeline and Marissa Owen would certainly be suspects: bone-white and night-loving—with a proclivity for super-rare steaks—the identical twins are poster-girls for the undead.
As if looking like teen-aged vampires didn’t cause enough drama, trouble erupts into their lives following a disastrous street fight and a brush with the law by Madeline’s sister. The girls are forced to move from the diverse city of Austin, Texas to the quaint township of Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania—a move clearly designed to bore the aggressive, MMA fighter Marissa into an early grave. However, their new lives prove to be anything but boring, as a series of shocking upheavals, unearthed lies, and outright dangers keep them thinking… and running for their lives. Ancient books, coded manuscripts, and evil enemies emerge, challenging the unique skills and inner-strengths of the girls—but can even all of this chaos prepare them for the arrival of real vampires?
Facing threats from multiple quarters, the girls must rely on each other to keep ahead of the rising storm … or be swept away by it.

Morning Stars (Book Two of The Noctivagas Chonicle)

Vampires are real, as Marissa is delighted to discover, until she finds that drinking blood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And so it goes … Madeline uncovers new mysteries and makes new friends, while Marissa makes a mess of her life and doesn’t stop to wonder what’s going wrong. Two “normal” teenage identical twin girls are learning of and coming to terms with their destiny, their powers and their calling.

On the Bridge: the Complete Gretchen Thyrd Novella

Gretchen Thyrd stands on the threshold: of adulthood, of independence, of love, of madness…
Gretchen is definitely not an average teenage girl. A free-spirited orphan with two foster moms, she spends many of her days rescuing and nurturing injured birds and animals, including some that are a bit otherworldly. Her pleasant life is turned upside down when a friendly ‘tree spirit’ faces a life-threatening crisis–a crisis that requires a potentially sacrificial commitment from Gretchen. Soon afterwards, she is visited by a mysterious and seriously ugly childman and three bone-white and beautiful vampire wannabes decked out in black leather and deadly attitude.
Whom should she trust? As the net of their conflicting interests constricts around her, she is unexpectedly plucked from their grasp by a man whose intentions may be the darkest of them all. In the end, she finds herself running from everything she has ever known, into an uncertain future, bearing the fate of her beloved ‘tree spirit,’ as well as her own survival, by the thinnest of threads.

For a chance to win awesome gifts, enter the Off the Beaten Path Giveaway

Debra R. Johnson

October 2, 2013 Monica La Porta2 Comments

To celebrate the release of the horror/paranormal anthology Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal, we, the co-authors of this exciting project, are having both a giveaway and a blog tour. I am pleased to have several of my fellow anthologists visiting my blog this week, and they have all agreed to answer a few questions about them. Without further ado, here is my first guest: Debra R. Johnson, the author of the horror novel, After – Part One (The Phoenix Curse).

In her words:

Debra Johnson was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on July 20th, 1976.

Ever since the long ago angsty days of horrible high school poetry and prose, Debra has dreamed of becoming a published author.

She found out that dreams do not have the power alone to achieve goals, that ideas in your head are simply ideas in your head, and no one is going to come along and ask you about your ideas. They’re going to ask you about the work you’ve already done, the books you’ve already written. They’ll want the proof that you believe in your dream, that you believe in yourself.

It wasn’t until Debra moved to Grand Prairie, TX, did she start to remember her dreams. Finally, at the age of 36 she challenged herself to write a complete book, never actually believing she could finish it.

Five months later, and the first draft was complete.

During the publishing process, she was excited and knew she would probably cry once everything was done. No one warned her she might throw-up. Also, it was not just simplistic tears of picturesque joy. It was ugly, puffy faced, red-eyed crying with snot. Lots of snot. It was gross.

Warning: Achieving your dreams can sometimes be messy.

After – Part One (The Phoenix Curse) blurb:

The world is no longer safe, no longer thriving. It has been inherited by the diseased.
The red mist spread and humanity was infected. There was no stopping the curse once it started and the world’s population was reduced to mindless beasts. Creatures that hungered and raged for the taste of pure, uninfected flesh.
Few of those remain.
Ali is not one of them.

And now my questions:

1) The first horror book you read was…?

I don’t exactly remember which horror book I picked up first, but it had to be one of Stephen King’s books. My favorite were Pet Cemetery and It.
I remember being alone in my room when I was reading Pet Cemetery and I had to stop because it was just getting way too creepy for me.

2) You discovered you were quite good at writing horror/paranormal/urban fantasy when…?

I get a lot of inspiration from my dreams and some of those can have some off the wall plots that I don’t think I could come up with awake. It makes for some unusual stories and I just try to tap into that whenever I can.

3) As a reader, your favorite horror book is…?

It really does stand the test of time for me. I read this way back when I was still a teenager and there are some scenes that stand out in my mind still today.

4) What scares you…?

Even though I love me some good paranormal stories, that generally isn’t what scares me. As a secular thinker, I fear home invasions, fires during the nighttime and… uh… tornadoes I grew up in Oklahoma, so my most common recurring nightmares are of tornadoes.

5) You usually write…?

I like to write about different worlds, or what our world would be after an apocalypse. Whether it be based in paranormal, fantasy or dystopia, I really like to explore the recesses of my imagination that lead me beyond the normal and everyday life that we all know.

6) What’s next…?

There are just so many possibilities. My second installment in The Phoenix Curse is releasing at the end of October, so that will free me up for NaNoWriMo. I have so many stories ideas backed up, I might just have to drop them all in a hat and see what I pull out!

Remember, for the chance to win awesome gifts, enter the Off the Beaten Path Giveaway

Off the Beaten Path: The Giveaway!

September 30, 2013October 1, 2013 Monica La Portaamazon gift cards giveaway, horror anthology, horror books giveaway, horror shorts, indie authors anthology, off the beaten path, paranormal anthology, paranormal shorts5 Comments

Before the summer, Jason T. Graves asked several indie authors if they were interested in collaborating to a horror/paranormal anthology. I was one of the lucky indies who were asked and having never written in those two genres, I immediately said yes. Fast forward a few months later and Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal was published.

Beside yours truly, who had serious fun writing a paranormal short, these are the intrepid writers who co-authored the anthology:

Sharon Sant, author of Sky Song and The New Moon
Angela Roquet, author of the Lana Harvey series and Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend
D. R. Johnson, author of The Phoenix Curse saga
Jason Graves, author of On the Bridge, Blood Roses, and Morning Stars
Chip Putnam, author of The Reason Why Grandmothers Should Not Be Allowed To Read Vampire Novels and Prairie Zombies

To win Amazon gift cards and books, try your luck and enter the Off the Beaten Path Giveaway!

Sunny Inside

September 28, 2013 Monica La Portachromotherapy to fight the blues, digital drawing, digital oil painting, feel good image, fresh paint drawing, whimsical landscape2 Comments

I don’t think it has ever rained so much in Redmond. The water is pouring down as if giants have decided to wash away the trees to redecorate the backyard. But it will pass. For now, have something colorful to look at.

Friday Snippet #50

September 27, 2013September 27, 2013 Monica La Porta#FridaySnippets, a snippet from a novel every friday, digital art, indie author life, nanowrimo inspired digital art, small excerpt from a dystopian YA novel, whimsical paintingLeave a comment

I have neglected my Friday Snippets long enough, but here is number fifty in all its literary splendor.

From Marie’s Journey, the fourth installment in The Ginecean Chronicles:

“Sit on the stool and give me your left arm.” The order was given with a tired tone. The old woman must have gone through myriads of branding. She turned to her right to open a big tome lying on a low table.

Marie sat as told, but before completing the task and raising her arm, she asked, “What’s your name?”

The older woman raised her eyes from the book and looked over the brazier. Surprise was soon replaced by interest in her wary gaze. “Why do you want to know? Nobody’s ever asked before.”

“So you won’t forget about me.” Marie kept her eyes on her.

The older woman tilted her head by the side, the orange-red coals illuminated the lower part of her face and her uneven teeth shone unexpectedly white when a grin spread through her face. “They call me Mala.”

“Marie.” She raised her arm then and watched as Mala chose between several branding tools neatly arranged on a low table on her left.

Blurb Time for Gaia

September 20, 2013 Monica La Portablurbs, indie life, indie publishing, new adult novel blurb, science fiction romance blurb2 Comments

I was going to call this post a Friday Snippet, but then I reconsidered and decided to be honest about the content of today’s blogging endeavor. Gaia is ready for proofreading and I am having abandonment issues. Plus, I had to write Gaia’s blurb, which for an author is the equivalent of giving birth without epidural, a long and painful affair. After several hours of deep cogitation, this is what I could manage. I expect to work on it some more, but that is always the case with anything I do.

Gaia & Elios

While vacationing in Greece, Gaia locks eyes with a stranger, twice. Two years later, back in Rome, she should be enjoying college life, instead, the memories of his lapis lazuli eyes and Mona Lisa smile still haunt her. Gaia longs to meet him again and unwittingly sabotage her romantic life by refusing to move on. Only her anthropological studies about the mysterious Etruscans make her feel alive. A chance to breathe new air is presented to her when she wins full scholarship to study abroad at the University of Washington. In rainy Seattle, Gaia finally meets the man of her dreams, but he proves to be… otherworldly. Meanwhile, in her field of studies, what starts as an interesting archeological finding about a six-fingered human image, soon evolves in the discovery of the millennium, but not where Earth is concerned.

The Priest: Fifth Day of Promotion

September 15, 2013 Monica La Portafinal day of a free promotion, indie life, indie promotion, indie publishing, kdp select free days results, promotion of a dystopian novel, the priest first free promotion4 Comments

Five days of asking, begging, cajoling people into downloading The Priest for free have ended. Free promotion isn’t for the faints of heart, but my final numbers* are worth the 24/7 tour de force, which started with the planning of the promo and lasted for almost four weeks. Eventually, 4500 copies of my book were downloaded in five days. During those days, The Priest reached top 100 bestsellers and maintained that position for almost a day. It was first in Dystopian and second in Adventure, and stayed on the podium in both categories for the last three days of the promotion. It reached first position in Science Fiction/Adventure on Amazon.it, and second and third on Amazon.de and Amazon.ca. Four 5* reviews were left on Amazon, and Pax and Prince, currently $5.99, sold several copies. As suggested by my betters, The Priest will be temporarily $0.99 to ride the tail of the promotion, and I already saw the benefit of such strategy. Now, it’s back to writing and editing.