Back to Normal...?

Whew, what a whirlwind week. Author singing at the St George UT Barnes and Nobel on Monday. Discussion on Getting the Most From Every Page at the Washington, UT library on Tuesday. All-day writing workshops on Friday, and getting all the author displays made, finished, and ready for the Book Expo on the 25th, it's time to get back to writing.
As promised, my Bigfoot footprint cast sat on my table. One 6'8" visitor  compared his size 18 shoe to the barefoot cast, his shoe was only an inch or two shorter.
The next two projects on the storyboard (thanks Mikey Brooks) are 36 Tzaddikim, and book two in the Almost Human series RETALIATION.
Completed a giveaway on Goodreads for ten autographed copies of my latest book, Deliciously Dark Tales. Winners hail from as far east as New York, and as far west as Utah. If you are not familiar with Goodreads.com, and you enjoy reading and seeing what others are reading, check it out. It's free, and you can find many interesting new books, genres, and authors from other reader's recommendations.
With the St George Book Festival in the rear view, life is back to normal, for me, if anyone would call a writer's life normal.

Bigfoot footprint cast photo, as promised

The cast of the bigfoot footprint from the garden is hardened. It's coming to life right out of my YA fiction book, Revelation.
Here is a photo of it. I will have it on display at my table during the St George Book Festival on October 20 at Barnes and Nobel in St George, and again at the book event on October 25 at the Children's Museum in St George.
Doesn't look that big?
Here's a comparison photo with my foot next to the cast. I wear an 11.5-12.5 depending on type of shoe (really sandal, I don't wear real shoes unless I must, but let's not get too technical)

Now that's a big foot! Not mine, the other one. And yes, I know the grass needs to be mowed. I am working on the second book in my Almost Human trilogy, Retaliation. It is scheduled to come out in Fall 2015, if I can just keep these pests out of the garden. On the upside, whatever left this print seems to get along with my chickens. None of them are missing, and Ala King, the Black Austrolorp appears to have accepted it, she hangs around the area of the footprints and clucks softly.

Nightingale is a complex young adult fiction fantasy set in St George, Utah. Farlatd created not only complex and believable characters, but an entire parallel race without disrupting the familiar flow of life as most people perceive it. I especially enjoyed the progression of his main character and the internal conflict that begins to seethe in this book and left me expectantly waiting to see how he is going to deal with it as time and the future progresses. Tough choices for a teen drawn from nothing into - oops, almost gave away too much there.

Farland's style makes the story flow delightfully through a tale that in less capable hands might have been difficult to accept, but the author carries the reader along without a hint of letting disbelief drop from it's suspension over a world so familiar yet so unseen.

I found myself taking a closer look at those innocent looking cars full of kids, but I don't remember seeing anything out of the ordinary... but then, I probably wouldn't.

Vampires in Zion?

Not that Zion, the national park. Having finished C. David Belt's book The Unwilling, I thought, hey, if there are vampires running around Utah in the north, they might be Hunting down in southern Utah as well.

But, even thought I kept a keen eye on the passersby, none seemed to be of vampiric ilk. There were incredible trails, stunning scenery and some serious physical exertion involved in my research into Zion's possible blood sucking population. Not even a mosquito. Just as well.

I did enjoy The Unwilling. Belt's vampires were more realistic than many recent renditions of the type. I found his characters heroic, horrible, flawed, murderous, compassionate (a vampire?) and endowed with personality. I was pleasantly shocked that Belt had...(nope, not gonna say that, it would give away too much of the story)

I found his treatment of a vampire in Utah in conjunction with the predominant religion in the state complex and intriguing, though at times references to certain church-specific ideas tended to set The Unwilling as LDS fiction. He handled the conflict between being a good vampire and a good Mormon with dexterity and aplomb, especially when he...(again, don't want to spoil the story for future readers, but I think you will find it intriguing).

I don't know if Belt is a former military pilot, but if not, he did some extensive research into military flying and it thunders through his writing. The Unwilling was a sad, exciting, romantic, energetic, intrigue-filled fun flight of fantasy into the experience of an unwilling vampire's adventures. The only one in six-thousand years.

 

Almost forgot, although I didn't detect any vampires in Zion, there are plenty of places for them to hide during the day, and the squirrels might just be taste testers for them. No, I didn't find out firsthand, but if you go to the park, don't let your children touch the furry little rodents.