Friday, June 29, 2018

I Love Creature Stories

Black Vulture

I love a good creature story or even just an OK creature story. If I’m being honest, I can enjoy even a really terrible creature story more than an award-winning drama.  If I want drama, I watch the news. For entertainment, you can’t be a good creature. I love watching them, reading them, and writing them.

In creature stories, at least for me, size doesn’t matter. These stories can feature big creatures, like Bigfoot or tiny creatures like the Feenix Bug from book 3 in my Bug Hunters in Space series.  Creatures can be man-made like the Black Flies from Cryptid Ops Book 2 or the results of manipulation by scientists as with the flying spiders from Cave Terror.  Sometimes the creatures are just doing what they naturally do but with unexpected results—what happens when you mix spiders and energy drinks.

Sometimes the scariest creatures are the small ones that can easily be overlooked. I think this is why so many people have a fear of spiders. It’s pretty easy to avoid a lion. You can see them. But a spider can sneak into cracks and crevices to startle you when you least expect it.
Science gone wrong often plays a strong part in my creature stories. Man is always trying to improve on nature—usually with disastrous results.

I love the writing creature stories, because I love reading them.  There’s usually an element of “what were they thinking” or “they should have known better” to these stories. There’s a lot of terror and death in most of my creature stories but someone always survives. Of course, in true creature story fashion, so do the creatures.

Remember no matter what kind of stories you like to read…it’s all about the tale.

Jo Carey

Sunday, June 24, 2018

New Releases

Search for Rotaton
Once the director of OffSec's time travel program, Samantha Hardy finds herself facing the League's greatest threat on a world at the edge of known space. Can she thwart its evil plan before it's too late? Read Search for Rotaton and find out. Search for Rotaton is the fifth book in the Alliance Chronicles which follows Lord Gregory Alabaster and his Alliance as they protect the League of Planetary Systems from threats from the past, present and future.

Library Terror
The village of Endicott is ground zero in the war between physical books and ebooks. Bookworms have launched an attack on the Endicott Public Library and librarian Agnes Peabody is trying to mediate a peaceful solution as the bodies start piling up. With their food source decimated by the shift to electronic books the worms are fighting for survival. Can Agnes mediate a peaceful resolution that allows the town and the worms to survive?

Friday, June 22, 2018

It's All About the Tale


Still Life with Clock and Chalice

Frank and I love writing. We enjoy the process and hope our joy of writing comes through in our books. Recently we realized we will be publishing our 100th book sometime soon. Wow! That thought made me step back and take a look at our body of work. What do all of our books have in common?

We’ve written a lot of series and a few stand-alone novels.

We’ve written several short novels and some that are longer.

Together our books span the genres of cozy mystery, space opera, romance, medical thrillers, and creature stories.

Many of our books feature strong female characters.

All of our books have a bit of humor.

When we started writing, we quickly realized it was easy to get caught up in all the “helpful” advice out there for new authors.  While its true that as an author you have to think about your cover, and description, and editing, and formatting and a million other details, we decided the most important thing is the story itself. That was the birth of our tag line.

Now, if we find ourselves getting stuck in the morass of book marketing advice, or internet posts that claim to have the formula to create the perfect description, we just remind ourselves…

It’s all about the tale.

Jo Carey

Sunday, June 17, 2018

New Release

Prisoner of Time (Alliance Chronicles Book 4)

Lord Gregory Alabaster and his team have earned a vacation, but their time away from work is short-lived when they find themselves having to save the universe from a temporal disaster. Once more they must travel into the breech to protect the League of Planetary Systems.

Prisoner of Time is the fourth book of the Alliance Chronicles series which follows Lord Gregory Alabaster and his Alliance as they protect the League of Planetary Systems from threats from the past, present, and future.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

New Release

Announcing the release of the fifth book of the Hairy's Cryptid Cafe series

Tracking the Mystery (Hairy's Cryptid Cafe Book 5)

In the past few months, Everly Mason has gone from southern belle to café owner to cryptid hunter. Can she survive her latest ordeal without adding killer to her resume? Tracking the Mystery is the fifth book in this exciting new women’s adventure. Stop by Hairy’s Cryptid Café and check out the new menu.

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