The Asylum where obsession for music and books lives.
Thank you for having me! Those screams though... I’m Dyrk Ashton, former SAG/AFTRA actor and filmmaker, professor of film for the day job, and author of the Paternus epic urban fantasy trilogy. I live in NW Ohio and spend nearly all my time in front of a computer.
For those who follow SPFBO, Carol A. Park's name might be familiar. She had two books in the competitions in as many years - the first book in The Heretic Gods series, Banebringer last year; then Sweetblade, the prequel stand alone novel this year. And now it's time that you get a good look at the second book in the series, Cursebreaker's stunning cover!
Music Monday is a meme that was created by Drew from The Tattooed Book Geek. You pick a song and/or video and share it on Monday.
Congrats to D. N. Bryn for being an SPFBO5 semi-finalist!
I happily host David Jordan on the blog today, who recently published his anthology, titled The Echoing Green and Other Stories. He is going to tell you a bit about the anthology and how it came around, plus I'll share a little excerpt and you can download one of the short stories as well!
Tales from the Asylum is a new feature I came up with for SPFBO. I wanted to create a unique opportunity for the authors to show off their story telling skills by taking their characters and putting them in an asylum room to see how they would deal with the situation. A lot can happen in a closed space...
November is going to be a quiet (I mean boring) work month. I've nothing exciting planned, but I definitely will try to pay more attention to my own needs - meaning I've been so focused recently on working, reading, deadlines, pressure that I hardly left room for myself to relax. To just loose myself for a few hours in a game or do some colouring. So, that's my personal goal for the month, but no worries, I won't let you guys without some great content this month too!
October was mostly about catching up, and cram in as many things as possible before I headed to the UK toward the end of the month. I had a great time both in London and Bristol - article coming soon, I promise, unlike the WorldCon one... - and it charged me with energy and good feels. It was awesome to meet old friends and make new ones and I already can't wait for the next BristolCon.
But until I get myself together, take a look at what we were up to this past month. We are getting near the end of phase 1 in SPFBO and we are done with slush piling so we'll start announcing our semi-finalists real soon. But we also read some other great books too, and hosted awesome authors.
August went away in a blink of an eye and I'm both sad and happy about it. I had some great times, but I also got damned behind on EVERYTHING. September will be about trying to catch up to myself.
Music Monday is a meme that was created by Drew from The Tattooed Book Geek. You pick a song and/or video and share it on Monday.
We decided to eliminate 5 more books before we start announcing our semi-finalists, so the next time you hear from us, we'll bring good news! But before we can make anyone happy - or more anxious - first we have to be the harbringers of bad news. I know, I know, the job sucks, but hey, someone has to do it, and we signed up for it willingly (well, some of us did, I was talked into it by Belle, so blame her if you must!) Err, um, anyway, this means we'll be eliminating 21 books so far. I'm happy to report we are done slush piling, and we'll discuss shortly which books we'll roll forward to consider to be our semi-finalists and then finalist. Watch this space people, it really, really gets interesting! This means we'll be eliminating 16 books so far, just a tiny bit over half of the books in our group. We are getting there! We'll probably have one more reaping (looking at early November) before we announce our first semi-finalist, so keep your eyes open! Today Team RockStarlit BookAsylum is going to say goodbye to 5 books, some we enjoyed reading, some not so much. This means we'll be eliminating 11 books so far, so almost half of our entrants will be out of the game.
I'm happy to be taking part in The Violent Fae Blog Tour to celebrate the upcoming release the closing chapter of the Ordshaw series’ The Sunken City Trilogy. If you are not familiar with it yet, no worries, Phil got you covered, as the first book, Under Ordshaw is on sale for 0.99p on Kindle US and UK until tomorrow.
During this tour Phil Williams is sharing 12 short stories from the city of Ordshaw. The Ordshaw Vignettes are tiny insights into the UK’s worst-behaved city, each with a self-contained mystery.
Tales from the Asylum is a new feature I came up with for SPFBO. I wanted to create a unique opportunity for the authors to show off their story telling skills by taking their characters and putting them in an asylum room to see how they would deal with the situation. A lot can happen in a closed space...
I fell a bit behind on writing up my DNF posts for those books we already eliminated from the competition. So far I've slush piled 24 books, we've cut 16 and I have 4 books (at the moment) I want to consider further. I'm hoping to finish slush piling by the end of the week (November 3rd) and sit down with my team to talk about how to go on. I suspect to have our first semi finalist announced pretty soon. Things will accelerate in November, so keep your eyes open!
Music Monday is a meme that was created by Drew from The Tattooed Book Geek. You pick a song and/or video and share it on Monday.
There were moments in the story where you could see the trail, the event or the thing that had to happen to push or spur that character forward to their path. But then there were also times that the story took a total left, and I was like, What the hell just happened here? When you read a lot, those surprise moments are rare so the fact that there were a few; impressed me.
Tales from the Asylum is a new feature I came up with for SPFBO. I wanted to create a unique opportunity for the authors to show off their story telling skills by taking their characters and putting them in an asylum room to see how they would deal with the situation. A lot can happen in a closed space...
Dispel Illusion brings a most satisfying ending to the Impossible Times trilogy. The threads are closed seamlessly and there aren't unanswered questions left. Maybe a few smaller ones, but in general, you can't have much complains. I had high expectations for Dispel Illusion, and it didn't disappoint. Just as full of heart, and life lessons as the previous books. I highly recommend the whole trilogy if you'd like to dive into a tale about time travelling, love, friendship, decisions and second chances.
Music Monday is a meme that was created by Drew from The Tattooed Book Geek. You pick a song and/or video and share it on Monday.
I'm taking part in the cover reveal event for Clayton Snyder's upcoming release, The Infernal Machine, out on October 15th 2020 by The Parliament House!
The sequel, Wrath of Storms will be released on August 8th!
As you might have gathered at this point, Shadows wasn't really a book that I could enjoy. It has the potential to be intersting, but it just falls flat at the execution. I did like the fox creature though, that was cool. I'm pretty sure as she discovers her talents and the world she'll learn a lot more about these creatures, the magic and most of all herself. She'll need it.
