FREE BOOKS! (#Trick-or-Treat-Reads 2019)

It's Time! Spooks, Ghouls, Witches and Sexy Nurses are out in force! You know what that means? Free candy, and more importantly, FREE BOOKS!

Below is a list of authors, participating in this year's Trick-or-Treat Book Blog Hop. Each of them will be giving away free books and stories, just like candy. All you have to do is click on the link to visit their sites. Pretty awesome and easy, right?

Trick or Treat reads is organized every year by the talented Patricia Lynne/Josephine, so be sure to drop by her blog to say thank you! (As well as pick up some free books that are probably better than mine)

So what do I have to give away?

AVAILABLE FREE until NOVEMBER 1st!

AMAZON US | AMAZON CANADA | AMAZON UK

They say love hurts and time heals all wounds.

Sometimes the reverse is true.

Isaac was very good at wasting time. Video games, a mindless job, no responsibilities - he had a simple life and few wants. Despite being hopelessly average, unassuming and kind of useless, he had somehow married the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world.

He had no idea how good he had it - until it was all taken away.

Time does not like being wasted. It is mercurial, inexorable and carries a wicked grudge. And sometimes, just sometimes, it enjoys playing games with people's lives. To be perfectly honest, Time is a bit of a jerk.

Isaac had never learned to appreciate what little time he had, and now he must travel to the ends of the universe and face unspeakable evils in a cat-and-mouse game with Time itself for the slim chance to win back a few fleeting seconds of happiness. The price of failure? Only the end of all existence.

Ten Thousand Days is a fairy tale set in the modern day, a fantastic journey of desperate love and horror with a twisted sense of humour. It's a story of exactly how far a young man will go for love...

NOTE: This is the revised and expanded version from 2017, which is significantly different than the original that was published in 2015. This is also the first time TEN THOUSAND DAYS has been available for free on Amazon.

But that's not all!

AVAILABLE FREE until NOVEMBER 1st!

AMAZON US | AMAZON CANADA | AMAZON UK

This is a serious story.

A serious, grimly dark short story of hilarious misery.

SUGGESTED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES: Contains coarse language, violence and candid descriptions of the genitalia of various fantasy races.

In a peaceful land of lush prosperity, an ancient eight-tentacled evil has risen to wreck unfathomable havoc. A simple, unassuming warrior named Huckle gathers together the bravest and most dysfunctional band of heroes in the kingdom to battle the beast, but they are fated only for the direst of suffering and failure.

The only way to defeat a monster of this magnitude is with an even more horrifying monster...

Huckle goes to hell and back and back again in this tragic tale of terrestrial cephalopods, ursine lycanthropes and explosive volcano drake diarrhea.

Dark fantasy will never be the same.

With a forward by R.S. Matheny and Philip Overby, hosts of the Grim Tidings Podcast

TENTACLES UNDER A FULL MOON is the first part in the ongoing WEREBEAR vs LANDOPUS series, which just gets more and more silly as time goes on...

Here's the list of participating authors again. Go give them some love and grab yourself some free books! And authors, hey, it's not too late to sign up, so join in the fun!

Stone Man by Charles Suddeth RELEASE DAY

I'm going to turn the blog over to the fine folks at Dancing Lemur Press today to tell you about a brand-new release you should check out:

Driven to Stone Man’s trail...

After U.S. soldiers attack twelve-year-old Tsatsi’s Cherokee village, his family flees to the Smokey Mountains. Facing storms, flood, and hunger, they’re forced to go where Stone Man, a monstrous giant, is rumored to live. 

His family seeks shelter in an abandoned village, but soldiers hunt them down. Tsatsi and his sister Sali escape, but Sali falls ill and is kidnapped by Stone Man. Tsatsi gives chase and confronts the giant, only to learn this monster isn’t what he seems.

Their journey is a dangerous one. Will Tsatsi find the strength to become a Cherokee warrior? And will they ever find their family?

THE DETAILS!

Stone Man
And the Trail of Tears
By Charles Suddeth
Print ISBN 9781939844620
EBook ISBN 9781939844637
$12.95, 6x9 trade paperback, 162 pages
Juvenile Fiction: Boys & Men/Legends, Myths, Fables-Native American/Historical-United States-General
Release date - October 8, 2019

THE AUTHOR!

Charles Suddeth loves to tell stories of all sizes and shapes and flavors. He has published picture books, middle readers’ books, young adult thrillers, and adult mysteries. Of Cherokee heritage, he draws inspiration from hiking Tom Sawyer State Park and teaches in Louisville, Kentucky.

https://ctsuddeth.com/

THE LINKS!

ITunes - https://fnd.io/#/us/book/1455664389-stone-man-and-the-trail-of-tears-by-char

Barnes & Noble – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130849102?ean=9781939844620

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Man-Trail-Charles-Suddeth-ebook/dp/B07X9CM3CH

Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/stone-man-and-the-trail-of-tears

Dancing Lemur Press LLC - http://www.dancinglemurpressllc.com/new-adultyoung-adultmiddle-grade

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44453832-stone-man-and-the-trail-of-tears

Read the Damn Book (#IWSG October 2019)

Warning: This Month's Optional Question inspired a bit of a rant. I apologise in advance.

October Question

It's been said that the benefits of becoming a writer who does not read is that all your ideas are new and original. Everything you do is an extension of yourself, instead of a mixture of you and another author. On the other hand, how can you expect other people to want your writing, if you don't enjoy reading? What are your thoughts?

"It's been said" that writing without reading is a good idea? By who? That's terrible advice.

(To be fair, 90% of all writing advice is terrible, so statistically speaking it checks out. Also, there's a 90% chance that everything I say below is complete and utter garbage.)

I don't believe you can write without reading. Reading will make you a better writer. Period. Reading will provide you new ideas, not just for content but in style and substance. Whether you learn new things to do, or things you shouldn't do, you can always gain something from reading. I find the most formulaic, boring writing comes from people who don't read, because they have limited ideas of what a story is supposed to look like. They keep writing it the same way over and over again.

I'm a just leave this here.

I firmly believe there are no new ideas. In the thousands of years humanity has been writing stories (and tens of thousands they have been sharing them orally), everything has been said. You are not going to come up with a new idea for your first-ever self-published supernatural YA cozy romance mystery. But there are other ways to say the same things, other ways to express similar ideas, new settings and ways to deconstruct themes. You can tell stories with your voice, with your perspective. But in order to do that, you need to learn other people's voices, to learn about other themes, from different writers, different perspectives, different times, different cultures. You can't bake a cake without multiple ingredients. Writing without reading other people's ideas is like trying to make cupcakes with only a bag of flour.

Some people might be into it, I guess?

Tangential Anecdote Time: It's in my bio and I mention it from time to time, but I have a Bachelor's Degree in Theatre Arts. I originally wanted to be an actor. One of the (many) reasons I didn't pursue acting is because I hated the way my school taught performance. They encouraged everyone to be edgy and creative and "true to themselves." The number one lesson was "Break all the rules." The only problem was that they didn't teach us the rules. There was no basic instruction on how to project in front of an audience, how to interpret text in performance, or even how to tell a coherent story. How can you deconstruct something that you don't know how to construct in the first place? I watched so much experimental, weird performance in that class, and so much of it was terrible. There was broken glass, raw meat, gratuitous nudity, fake blood, simulated masturbation, impromptu make-out sessions with strangers and more (I did three of those myself in a single piece; I'll let you guess which ones). The people that came in with a background in Theatre, or that were just really naturally talented, could pull it off and do interesting stuff, but the rest of us were lost and just making horseshit. We thought (and were told) that we were imaginative and creative but we didn't have a fucking clue what we were doing, and no one would watch our shows that weren't forced to sit through them as part of class. It's the exact same reason there are so many terrible self-published books out there on Amazon.

Conclusion: Writing without reading is like pretending to masturbate in theatre class.

I think I'm going to put that on a business card.

TRICK OR TREAT READS!

OCTOBER IS FINALLY HERE! HALLOWEEN SEASON! Know what that means? Yes, dentists are rubbing their hands in greedy anticipation, but also...

AUTHORS WILL SOON BE GIVING AWAY FREE BOOKS LIKE CANDY!

Once again, the lovely and talented Miss Patricia Lynne/Josephine will be hosting Trick-or-Treat reads, an awesome blog hop where anyone can join to give or get free books on October 31! 

Authors, sign up to give out free books! Find new readers and get your books into appreciate hands!

Readers, all you have to do is go through the list on Halloween and grab any freebies that you're interested in!

The list of participating blogs/authors is below. Authors sign up any time between now and October 31. 

Be sure to check out Patricia's blog as well, for full details and just because she's an awesome person.

Until next time!
Hugs & Kisses,
-CDGK

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Writers post their thoughts on their blogs, talking about their doubts and the fears they have conquered. It's a chance for writers to commiserate and offer a word of encouragement to each other. Check out the group at http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/.