Debunking myths on genetics and DNA

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

New Apocalypse Weird book release: Genesis, by Stefan Bolz



Apocalypse Weird is still in full publishing mode, with April featuring two new book releases: Medium Talent, by Forbes West (featured on the blog last week), and Genesis, by Stefan Bolz, author of The Three Feathers and The Fourth Sage.
This is the story of the very beginning of an apocalyptic event as seen through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old girl. Nothing could have prepared her for what is about to happen and she has to face some seriously tough stuff before the end. During the thirty-six hours of terror that turn Kasey Byrne's life upside down and strip her of everything dear to her, something inside her awakens. It is gift and curse alike for it can destroy her or turn her into the most powerful weapon against the evil that has reached the shores of our world.
Stefan is here today to tell us more about the book. Welcome, Stefan!

EEG: Tell us about the inspiration behind Genesis.

SB: It all started when Nick Cole sent me the document describing Apocalypse Weird. The apocalyptic event popped into my head almost immediately. It was something I had thought about for a while (what, you don't think about the apocalypse in your free time? ;-). I wanted to have something happen that was scary and would most likely leave people in emotional shock. I've taken a lot of screenwriting classes over the years and one of the many techniques in those classes is called, "The innocent is brought to slaughter." You can find it in many novels and movies as a story archetype. I would probably be pretty scared if I'd wake up on the beach in the morning and see hundreds, if not thousands of dolphins in shallow waters, refusing to swim back out to sea and dying in front of my very eyes.

The story developed from there, almost in real time as the event unfolded minute by minute. I came to think of it as a supernatural episode of 24. Except Chloe O'Brian is the main character. "Damnit, Chloe!" :-)

EEG: Can you introduce each one of the main characters in just a few words?

SB: Kasey Byrne is the main character. The night of her 18th birthday, which is also summer solstice, is when the end begins... Until then, she was just a regular teenager who loved baseball and surfing and life in general.

Jack Reeves is her love interest. He's a nice guy who will be having a very rough time in the book. We writers are evil, wouldn't you agree? We do all kinds of stuff to our main characters and then we wonder why they don't invite us to their graduation party. I've read this fantasy series a while back called "Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind. I believe it was in the second book where the reader finds a torture scene that lasts some forty pages. This somehow stuck with me. And now, poor Jack Reeves, a really nice guy from Albuquerque, who just met this really nice gal who's into baseball and surfing and life in general, is getting a first-hand experience of what it means to be tortured by a shape shifter demon who looks like his mom.

Aarika and Blair are two guys who join up with Kasey later on in the book. They are funny at times, scared to death at others, and generally really brave in the face of overwhelming evil.

Jennifer Wang is a warrior in a doctor's outfit who is giving our gang a serious education on weapons and where to point them.

Can an amulet be a character in a book?

Douglas McNamara is an awesome character who started in a small side role (he only had to say "I'm sorry" three times and stumble along the water while bleeding profusely) but then he convinced the producers to possibly have a whole novel written just for him. Lucky bastard.

Ember, member of the 88 and the evil shape shifter demon bitch from hell (one of the character's description, not mine!!)

A bunch of the hands who do the dirty work for her.

Blood Riders (I'm too scared to talk about them).

A red ship. Really scary. Blood dripping sails, seriously???

A two-door, sky blue, 1975 Jeep Wrangler SRT-8 with a HEMI crate 5.7 liter engine, five-inch suspension lift, 3/4 roll cage and Cobra Daytona front seats.

EEG: Can you give us a sneak preview of the rest of the series?

SB: I have 3 books planned in this series. Whether or not the second and third gets green lit, depends on how well Genesis is doing (hint, hint, Cough-Reviews-Cough). But book 2 is already forming in my head, and so is book 3. Then there is the story of Douglas McNamara that might be awesome. And then there are a few crossroads in Genesis where it intertwines with other Apocalypse Weird locales. One is Texas, the other I'm not yet sure about. There are 18 hours in Jennifer Wang's life that are completely unaccounted for (and her ambulance was parked right smack in the middle of a thinnie, so who knows what could have happened. But knowing her, it must have been really cool)

P.S. The White Dragon is not what you expect her/him/it to be.

EEG: I have no doubt the book will do extremely well. :-)

To kick-off things in great style, Stefan has a lunch party planned for today on Facebook. Don't forget to sign up so you can win lots of freebies and other goodies!

Apocalypse Weird Books:


The Dark Knight by Nick Cole continues the story begun in The Red King as survivors band together to build a modern-day castle against a tide of dark forces overrunning Southern California. While Frank and Holiday struggle for power, Ash ventures into the night to rescue a lost special needs adult who has unknowingly glimpsed a horrifying future: a future where man is on the verge of extinction and a new predator rules the planet. The Apocalypse Weird is beginning, and it might just be something bigger than anyone ever imagined ... or feared.

Scorched by fire and the longest drought in recorded history, survivors flee the Land of Enchantment to escape a mutated flu virus that turns ordinary people into mass-murderers. In E. E. Giorgi’s Immunity, few resilient scientists remain, gathered in one of the last national laboratories still working on a vaccine. Then the disease starts spreading within the soldiers guarding the laboratory, bloody carnage reigns. Immunologist Anu Sharma pairs up with computer geek David Ashberg to find a cure and escape the massacre. Outbreak meets World War Z in the deserts of Apocalypse Weird.

The Thing meets The Core in Jennifer Ellis’s Reversal, where the isolated International Polar Research Station on Ellesmere Island becomes an incredibly dangerous assignment for Sasha Wood. Stalked by killer polar bears, Sasha and her partner, Soren, search for their missing colleagues in the frozen tundra as their compass reveals an incredible truth: a magnetic pole reversal—fabled and feared in the scientific community for years—has occurred. The North Pole is now the South and vice versa. Psychotic scientists and giant methane-venting craters are just the beginning of a terrible and strange new reality.

Chris Pourteau’s The Serenity Strain finds Houston, Texas, at the epicenter of an apocalypse both natural and unnatural. Three hurricanes wreak unprecedented devastation on the Texas Gulf Coast. Amidst the anarchy left in the wake of the storms, six prisoners—the genetically altered test subjects for a viral strain known as Serenity—escape the state prison in Huntsville. Their hunger for murder and destruction gorges itself on society's survivors. One being of immense power and wanton appetites, a member of the demonic 88 named Id, arrives to oversee the destruction of mankind and morality. The Stand meets 28 Days Later in this epic tale of genetic manipulation gone awry.

Lord of the Flies meets Mad Max in Texocalypse Now by Michael Bunker and Nick Cole. It’s a gritty tale of survival set in the post-Apocalyptic West Texas Badlands. Packs of feral, cannibalistic humans called “hordes” and other psychotic groups threaten a band of children led by Ellis, a boy barely a man. Ellis and the children make a home for themselves in a hidden valley atop a mysterious mesa. But when a member of the 88, a Man in Black simply known as Mayhem, arrives in the Badlands, Ellis and his small “family” of orphans are forced underground to survive.

The apocalypse comes to the south with Kim WellsHoodoopocalypse. Kalfu, the ultimate evil-twin and Voodoo Loa of the afterworld and crossroads kicks off his plans for possession of the Southern Mississippi corridor. Dark half of Papa Legba, Kalfu sets off events that cripple New Orleans, tries to take control of the over 9 million visitors to the Big Easy a year, and seeds his Hoodoo mafia, the Guédé, across Louisiana and the world. If the fire, category HUGE hurricane spawned by magical means, and roving mobs of mayhem-inducing zombi astrals don’t get you, the angry goddess and nuclear meltdown might. Laissez the End Times Roulez, y’all.

The aliens have come to end the world with Eric Tozzi's Phoenix Lights. On March 13, 1997, the incident now known as the Phoenix Lights left thousands of witnesses at a loss to explain the sudden appearance of the massive V-shaped craft that hovered in the skies above Phoenix that day. Now, eighteen years later, the Vs have returned. Bargains will be made with an intelligence beyond our grasp deep within a super-secret government blacksite. Can a crew of TV UFO Busters find out the truth about the visitors or are they going to get far more than they ever bargained for? Whereas once they were blind, now they will see. Welcome to the invasion. Welcome to the Apocalypse Weird.

Three years after the great storm destroyed the planet, three years after the demonic undead rose up to hunt the survivors, Wendy Wicker scavenges and steals in the deadly ruins of Florida to keep her adopted family alive. In his book Medium Talent, Forbes West imagines a post-apocalyptic Key West that is plagued by hunger and ruled by an amoral bureaucracy, a life of crime is the only way to live. After Wendy betrays a couple of passengers she was to take north on board her fishing boat, her life takes an strange turn and she must confront some dark secrets as to what really happened the night the world ended, while surviving the monstrous creatures that infest the waters around her hometown and the never ending threat of an evil woman that cannot die...

An homage to Ernest Hemingway’s To Have or Have Not and George Romero’s Living Dead series of films, let Apocalypse Weird take you on a fast paced voyage through the dead Florida Keys and into an violent noir tale filled with time travel, black magic, suppressed memories and what life is really like after the end of the world.

Friday, April 10, 2015

New Apocalypse Weird release: Medium Talent by Forbes West


April just rolled in with two new Apocalypse Weird releases. Up next is Forbes West's Medium Talent:
Three years after the great storm destroyed the planet, three years after the demonic undead rose up to hunt the survivors, Wendy Wicker scavenges and steals in the deadly ruins of Florida to keep her adopted family alive. In a post-apocalyptic Key West that is plagued by hunger and ruled by an amoral bureaucracy, a life of crime is the only way to live. After Wendy betrays a couple of passengers she was to take north on board her fishing boat, her life takes an strange turn and she must confront some dark secrets as to what really happened the night the world ended, while surviving the monstrous creatures that infest the waters around her hometown and the never ending threat of an evil woman that cannot die...  
An homage to Ernest Hemingway’s To Have or Have Not and George Romero’s Living Dead series of films, let Apocalypse Weird take you on a fast paced voyage through the dead Florida Keys and into an violent noir tale filled with time travel, black magic, suppressed memories and what life is really like after the end of the world. 

 Forbes is here today to tell us more about is AW new release. Welcome, Forbes!

EEG: Tell us about the inspiration behind Medium Talent.

FW: Key West itself was the main inspiration. It's an odd place, really- at the end of the world, so to speak as the last stop on the overseas highway stretching all the way from Miami. There's odd contradictions floating all around- one part of Key West is that it's touristy as hell, a frat boy heaven, full of tourists clogging the main drag. But there's this sort of bohemian flair in the corners, a sort of odd energy in the place from all the history and from the outcasts and the screwballs who couldn't make it in the normal habitats of the U.S.A. that have drifted in over the years. The atmosphere just breeds the imagination and I wanted to do for the longest time a book set in Key West (and a book about the end of the world and the great post-apocalyptic age that would come after) and I just put two and two together. Most of the post-apocalyptic stories you hear always are set in the deserts or the blown out cities with the same rough cast of characters and I wanted to see hell come to a place that would have been just a normal and decadent vacationland and a mysterious young woman stuck in the middle of it all.

Key West was famously the home of many writers and authors, including "Papa" Hemingway himself, and I wanted to use its connection to literary history. Hemingway's story, To Have or Have Not, was a huge inspiration for the book as he played with the town's contradictions long before I did in this story and crafted a realistic adventure story about poverty and crime. I thought it'd be a hell of a ride to read about life in a Key West that's barely survived the end times and what people there would have to do to survive in a life that's full of horrors from the sea and an oppressive bureaucracy running things into the ground.

EEG: Can you introduce each one of the main characters in just a few words?

FW: Wendy Wicker "The lead actress", so to speak. Boat captain. Criminal. Young and not who she thinks she is.
Tony Fire Fifty year old first mate of Wendy's boat, Medium Talent. Good and not smart.
Ernest Hemingway .....
The Brazen Head The main good guy.
Lenguas Largas The poor unfortunate undead with hideously stretched tongues.
Melanie Wicker The woman who cannot be killed.

EEG: Do you have a sequel in mind and if so, can you tell us a bit about it?

FW: Yes, I do. Called "Bad Dream Man", let's just say it's set in the 1930s and sort of like Dracula. Keep it that way.

EEG: Thanks so much, Forbes!

Below is a complete list of the Apocalypse Weird books published so far. Come back next week for a sneak preview of the next AW book, Genesis by Stefan Bolz.

Apocalypse Weird Books:

The Dark Knight by Nick Cole continues the story begun in The Red King as survivors band together to build a modern-day castle against a tide of dark forces overrunning Southern California. While Frank and Holiday struggle for power, Ash ventures into the night to rescue a lost special needs adult who has unknowingly glimpsed a horrifying future: a future where man is on the verge of extinction and a new predator rules the planet. The Apocalypse Weird is beginning, and it might just be something bigger than anyone ever imagined ... or feared.

Scorched by fire and the longest drought in recorded history, survivors flee the Land of Enchantment to escape a mutated flu virus that turns ordinary people into mass-murderers. In E. E. Giorgi’s Immunity, few resilient scientists remain, gathered in one of the last national laboratories still working on a vaccine. Then the disease starts spreading within the soldiers guarding the laboratory, bloody carnage reigns. Immunologist Anu Sharma pairs up with computer geek David Ashberg to find a cure and escape the massacre. Outbreak meets World War Z in the deserts of Apocalypse Weird.

The Thing meets The Core in Jennifer Ellis’s Reversal, where the isolated International Polar Research Station on Ellesmere Island becomes an incredibly dangerous assignment for Sasha Wood. Stalked by killer polar bears, Sasha and her partner, Soren, search for their missing colleagues in the frozen tundra as their compass reveals an incredible truth: a magnetic pole reversal—fabled and feared in the scientific community for years—has occurred. The North Pole is now the South and vice versa. Psychotic scientists and giant methane-venting craters are just the beginning of a terrible and strange new reality.

Chris Pourteau’s The Serenity Strain finds Houston, Texas, at the epicenter of an apocalypse both natural and unnatural. Three hurricanes wreak unprecedented devastation on the Texas Gulf Coast. Amidst the anarchy left in the wake of the storms, six prisoners—the genetically altered test subjects for a viral strain known as Serenity—escape the state prison in Huntsville. Their hunger for murder and destruction gorges itself on society's survivors. One being of immense power and wanton appetites, a member of the demonic 88 named Id, arrives to oversee the destruction of mankind and morality. The Stand meets 28 Days Later in this epic tale of genetic manipulation gone awry.

Lord of the Flies meets Mad Max in Texocalypse Now by Michael Bunker and Nick Cole. It’s a gritty tale of survival set in the post-Apocalyptic West Texas Badlands. Packs of feral, cannibalistic humans called “hordes” and other psychotic groups threaten a band of children led by Ellis, a boy barely a man. Ellis and the children make a home for themselves in a hidden valley atop a mysterious mesa. But when a member of the 88, a Man in Black simply known as Mayhem, arrives in the Badlands, Ellis and his small “family” of orphans are forced underground to survive.

The apocalypse comes to the south with Kim WellsHoodoopocalypse. Kalfu, the ultimate evil-twin and Voodoo Loa of the afterworld and crossroads kicks off his plans for possession of the Southern Mississippi corridor. Dark half of Papa Legba, Kalfu sets off events that cripple New Orleans, tries to take control of the over 9 million visitors to the Big Easy a year, and seeds his Hoodoo mafia, the Guédé, across Louisiana and the world. If the fire, category HUGE hurricane spawned by magical means, and roving mobs of mayhem-inducing zombi astrals don’t get you, the angry goddess and nuclear meltdown might. Laissez the End Times Roulez, y’all.

The aliens have come to end the world with Eric Tozzi's Phoenix Lights. On March 13, 1997, the incident now known as the Phoenix Lights left thousands of witnesses at a loss to explain the sudden appearance of the massive V-shaped craft that hovered in the skies above Phoenix that day. Now, eighteen years later, the Vs have returned. Bargains will be made with an intelligence beyond our grasp deep within a super-secret government blacksite. Can a crew of TV UFO Busters find out the truth about the visitors or are they going to get far more than they ever bargained for? Whereas once they were blind, now they will see. Welcome to the invasion. Welcome to the Apocalypse Weird.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Book Release: Dragon of the Stars by bestselling author Alex Cavanaugh


Today my author friend Alex Cavanaugh, bestselling author of Cassa Storm, has a new book release -- Dragon of the Stars. He's celebrating with a fantastic scavenger hunt. Read below to participate! 

SCAVENGER HUNT! Comment to win an autographed copy of Dragon of the Stars, tons of bookmarks & postcards, and a $20.00 iTunes gift card–where is Mini-Alex? Visit Alex for a list of the participants. (Open through April 11 – winner announced April 13 at Alex’s blog.)

Available today!
Dragon of the Stars
By Alex J. Cavanaugh
Science Fiction – Space Opera/Adventure/Military
Print ISBN 9781939844064 EBook ISBN 9781939844057
What Are the Kargrandes? http://whatarethekargrandes.com/

The ship of legends…

The future is set for Lt. Commander Aden Pendar, son of a Hyrathian Duke. Poised to secure his own command and marriage to the queen’s daughter, he’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals.

But when the Alliance denies Hyrath’s claim on the planet of Kavil and declares war on their world, Aden finds his plans in disarray. Entrenched in battle and told he won’t make captain, Aden’s world begins to collapse. How will he salvage his career and future during Hyrath’s darkest hour?

One chance remains–the Dragon. Lost many years prior, the legendary ship’s unique weapon is Hyrath’s only hope. Can Aden find the Dragon, save his people, and prove he’s capable of commanding his own ship?

Purchase:
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Stars-Alex-J-Cavanaugh-ebook/dp/B00S0DPUYU/

Alex J. Cavanaugh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and works in web design, graphics, and technical editing. A fan of all things science fiction, his interests range from books and movies to music and games. Online he is the Ninja Captain and founder of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. He’s the author of Amazon Best-Sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm.



Thursday, April 2, 2015

Akaela is finally here and I'm looking for reviewers: do you love YA dystopian fiction?


*** Read below to find out how to get a free copy of Akaela, my new YA dystopian. ***

Last year I started a new project. I wanted to try a new genre that's very popular right now, YA dystopian, and a few months later I'm proud to announce that Akaela is complete and ready to be shipped to reviewers. Here's the blurb:
Fifteen-year-old Akaela doesn't know what fear is. She was built this way. But in a world where survival is no longer of the fittest, being fearless can become a deadly curse.

Proud and steeped in tradition, Akaela's people, the Mayakes, are dying. While they carry implanted nanobots and sophisticated chips to compensate for their crippled and diseased bodies, these enhancements come at a price. Aging technology and a lack of resources make them vulnerable to their enemies and on the brink of extinction. As the elders cling blindly to the past, the only hope Akaela and her 16-year-old brother Athel have to save their own people is to challenge the system or die trying.
You can read the prologue here.

As I always do with every new launch, I'm happy to gift the book to readers willing to post an honest review on Amazon on release day. Are you that reader? Then please sign up for my newsletter and in about a week I'll send an email on how to get your free copy. Oh, and you get a free story right after you sign up. ;-)

Link to sign up: http://eepurl.com/SPCvT