Farewell to a Grand Lady | #52weeks52stories

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ 4 Comments

Changing gears for this week’s entry to pay tribute to someone very special.

Dorothy Reevers

We said goodbye to a grand lady last week. A woman of old world style, grace, and polite manners. For most of the thirty-six years I’d known her, she was fastidious… meticulous, always doing things the proper way.

She was my mother-in-law, Dorothy Reevers.

When you first met Dorothy, you knew she was a different breed, formed from a mold broken long ago.

Dorothy’s creole features were obvious—fair, mulatto skin, thick, dark hair, and almond-shaped eyes. But when she spoke it left many confused. While her own French-Creole mother barely spoke enough English to manage the household, Dorothy had no European lilt, West Indian pidgin or Louisiana geechie in her speech. She and her older brother, James, spoke with perfect diction and enunciation. And neither spoke a word of French. Their father, Elijah forbade it, believing their…

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Critiquing: Giving and Getting the Gold

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

A Writer's Path

by Josh Langston

So, what goes into a critique? What is it that makes it useful, or not? For openers, try to be positive. That doesn’t mean sugar-coating. It means finding something you can focus on in order to start on a positive note, even if most of the piece being reviewed needs work. Then you can move toward the areas that you found confusing or which bumped you out of the fictive dream.

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“The Merrow of Lake Michigan” by Claire O. Fahey

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

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The Merrow of Lake Michigan

by Claire O. Fahey

Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery & Suspense/Time Travel

Joey Fagan is certain of only two things. The mayor of Chicago will be assassinated at the end of the week, and she is stuck in the year 1893. What she doesn’t know is how she landed 100 years back in time, or why Peter Hastings, the man trying to help her, shares some eerie similarities to her dead husband.
When Joey, perhaps unwisely, revealed the year of her origins it didn’t sit well with her host. Her effort to convince him by predicting the mayor’s murder only made matters worse. Now her sanity is in question, and everything she does puts it further into doubt. One of the few bright spots in the whole situation is William, Peter’s five year-old son, but he is a stark reminder that she left a son of her own back in 1993.
Stuck in the past and desperate to return to her own Chicago, Joey stumbles her way through a time when women had a barely audible voice, and very few options. Armed with nothing but her wits, Joey must navigate the rigid waters of the Victorian era while she tries to prevent a murder and find her way home.

Restoring Deleted Photos to Your Android Phone

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ 1 Comment

Those selfies at your favorite place, photos with families and friends, the auspicious moments and days of celebration all captured on our little Android phone. But what happens when you accidentally delete a precious photo or a whole photo album? Is that it? Would you continue to curse yourself or call yourself silly for deleting a photo? Well, you don’t have to do any of these as you can recover deleted photos from your android phone and we’ll show you how with these apps.

Before going into the details, there are some things you should keep in mind when you accidentally delete important photos or any file at that. First, disconnect from all internet connections as you don’t want any app or operating system update overrides your files. If this happens, you can’t recover your files again. Similarly, resist taking new media files as they can equally override your deleted files. This is because, when files are deleted, they don’t automatically disappear; the system earmarks the ‘spot’ they are occupying as ready to be occupied by a new file. Get it?

Click on link below to continue

Apps To The Rescue

“Judgment Road (Torpedo Ink)” by Christine Feehan

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

Judgment Road (Torpedo Ink)

by Christine Feehan

Genre: Paranormal Romance

An outlaw motorcycle club sets up shop next door to Sea Haven in the dangerously sexy new series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan.

A brutal education in a Russian training facility for assassins has taught this group of men one thing:

It’s a long road to redemption.

JUDGMENT ROAD

As the enforcer of the Torpedo Ink motorcycle club, Reaper lives for riding and fighting. He’s a stone-cold killer who turns his wrath on those who deserve it. Feelings are a weakness he can’t afford–until a gorgeous bartender gets under his skin…

Near Sea Haven, the small town of Caspar has given Anya Rafferty a new lease on life. And she’s desperate to hold on to her job at the biker bar, even if the scariest member of the club seems to have it out for her. But Reaper’s imposing presence and smoldering looks just ratchet up the heat.

Anya’s touch is everything Reaper doesn’t want–and it brands him to the bone. But when her secrets catch up to her, Reaper will have to choose between Anya and his club–his heart and his soul.

Army of Authors Blog Tour | Angel Leya

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

Hi, I’m Angel Leya, and I write clean young adult stories with (at least) a touch of magic and romance. My latest story is Running Toward Illumia, Astrea’s tale of finding herself while running from the one thing she wants most: To find her sense of belonging.

Astrea’s lived in the Mist all her life, and she loves it there. In fact, she’d do just about anything to feel like she fits in with her Rudan people, even hunt a unicorn to feed her starving tribe.

Illumia is the first city beyond the Mist, just past the Dragon Range. Astrea’s come up with 10 reasons to never go to Illumia. I’ll let her tell you more.

***

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10. They don’t have fog.

Who needs sunshine? I’m a Mist girl. Great for concealing movement, comfortable like an old blanket, and you never have to worry about dry skin.

9. They don’t all have red hair.

That’s why this tribe is here, despite being sent to the fog to die. And why we call ourselves the Rudan, rather than the Banned.

Wish my hair was redder. And I could use a few more freckles. But I’m one of the Rudan, I swear. I’d be dead if I wasn’t.

8. They’re weak.

Fog weeds out the weak. And if the fog doesn’t, the Lynx, ogres, or Rudan will. Illumians live the easy life. They have no reason to be strong.

7. They’re not very welcoming.

The Rudan take in anyone who can survive the fog. Illumians kicked us out (or at least my parents, but children of the Banned are no less welcome).

6. Illumians are idiots.

Everyone says so.

5. Big government.

I know all five of my council members, and they earned their spot. Like Seneca, first huntress—my mentor. Illumians probably have no idea who runs their council.

4. The journey’s dangerous.

Even if you can navigate the fog, streams filled with flesh-eating fish, and ogre-infested swamps, there’s the dragon range. There’s one pass, guarded by Illumians. The rest is mountain. Treacherous, dragon-housing mountains. No other way around it. Going to Illumia is a fool’s errand.

3. My family’s not there.

If you think getting one person into Illumia is hard, try five. Two brothers, plus Mamaa and Pawpaw.

Course, the whole tribe’s basically family. I’d want to take them all.

Except maybe Mavin. He’s a jerk. (Kidding. Sort of.)

2. I can never come back.

Going to Illumia is a one-way trip. Illumians and dragons ensure that.

1. I don’t want to.

Do I need any other reason?

***

Thanks for reading! If you’d like more, click for an excerpt from Banned, Part 1 of Running Toward Illumia.

Get all 4 parts of Running Toward Illumia today:

Banned (free!)
Lost (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)
Drenched (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)
Marked (On Sale for 99¢ through 2/15/18)

“The Origin of Others (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 2016)” by Toni Morrison

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

Origin of Others cover

The Origin of Others (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 2016)

by Toni Morrison

Genre: African-American/Criticism & Theory/Discrimination & Racism

What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

Army of Authors Blog Tour | Chris Turner

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 ~ Felicia Denise ~ Leave a comment

Human vs Alien

A pilot stranded on a faraway planet, Timelost. An alien seeking symbiosis. Timelost cover

Visceral alien battles, planetary wars. Experience the adventure…along with edge-of-the-seat SF audio in this Star Wars meets Alien thriller.

In 2014, I started sequencing original SFF to audio using the Booktrack free studio tool, and it offered up a unique, creative experience. I was amazed at how the placement of some well-crafted audio, synced by word, sentence or paragraph could make a story come alive—in the same way a soundtrack makes a movie come alive. To date, I have produced a few dozen, text-and-audio renditions of my stories, drawing on the wide variety of sound clips from the Booktrack audio library.

The Timelost, my most recent production, is a gritty, dystopian foray into the macabre.

The world-building was intense, as I tried to incorporate elements of ‘galactic empire’, the theme of ‘a few struggling against many’, and extraordinary alien adversaries. I also wanted to develop the concept that an ordinary person, the pilot Miko, when plunged into a hostile, colonized, or uncolonized world with chilling advanced alien technology, could become a hero. And not just by circumstance.

The movie Prometheus, even though I had seen it after writing The Timelost, deeply moved me and confirmed my fascination with a SciFi, man-vs-alien conflict. Human and alien genesis theories intertwine as the characters scramble to survive many bizarre and unexpected hostile encounters. The story took on overtones of fantasy horror as it gained momentum, with elements not dissimilar to the Cthulhu mythos a la Lovecraft and the imaginative works of R.E. Howard.

I invite you to enter Miko’s distorted world in The Timelost. The Booktrack text-and-audio based format thrusts the reader into the terrifying unknown of planets of deep space.

Booktrack: http://bit.ly/2EhEfFH