THE BLOG TOUR – starring Author D.M. Cain

From an early age I was always more interested when things went wrong in the world. The light, fluffy Disney world of my younger childhood was left behind as I passed into my teenage years and surrounded myself with works of dystopian fiction such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

This love of a futuristic world gone wrong spilled over into my movie taste as well. So, here is a list of my favourite dystopian movies of all time, appearing in no particular order. What are your favourites?

Dystopian movies list:

1. 12 monkeys – a delightfully creepy and mysterious film with excellent acting and a gripping storyline. The music has an unhinged, fairground ride kind of feel to it as well.
2. A Clockwork Orange – probably my personal favourite dystopian movie (and book) ever, A Clockwork Orange is unnerving and philosophical, beautifully filmed, and with a huge underground following.
3. A.I. – I know a lot of people hated this movie, and fair play to them, because the last twenty minutes are terrible. (Why oh why didn’t it end when he was under the water?) But, what comes before that is excellent. The little boy is creepy and yet you feel so sorry for him. He just wants to be loved  The ‘flesh fair’ is such a horrifying concept too. I thought those scenes were brilliant.
4. Casshern – Unknown to many, this Japanese classic really does deserve to get more credit. Casshern has literally everything you could ever want from a sci-fi film – unhinged scientists playing God, divine intervention, humans killing what they don’t understand, the underdogs rising in their masses. Plus, of course, epic and beautiful fight scenes, a deep and morally taxing storyline and the potential for great debate and discussion afterwards. Just thinking about it makes me yearn to go and watch it right now…
5. Children of Men – one of the bleakest and most depressing films I’ve ever seen. I love the way this film pulls no punches. Nobody is safe from the death and desolation in this film. A true, gritty dystopian.
6. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – another fine example of what happens when humans step beyond their place (I do very much enjoy films where humans are the bad guys!)
7. District 9 – some awesome fight scenes, especially with the alien weapons which are so cool! But this film is not just about the aliens. Yet again, it’s about the humans abusing them, treating them as scum and stripping them of all rights. It’s no coincidence the film was shot in Johannesburg…
8. The Hunger Games – everybody loves The Hunger Games. Katniss is amazing, of course, strong and independent. She fights the system and refuses to conform to their brutality.
9. Looper – A really clever storyline (though it definitely had me scratching my head at times. Hang on – is he in the future or…?) I also enjoyed that sword of Damocles feeling – that his choices in life were definitely going to catch up with him, no matter what he did.
10. V for Vendetta – This isn’t just a film. It’s art. That scene where Natalie Portman cried in the rain – so beautiful. You can’t help but feel yourself wanting to rise up with V and fight the power
11. Watchmen – Not your average superhero story, every one of these antiheroes has some sort of dark, unhinged past. I loved Rorschach so much… And The Tales of the Black Freighter side story was one of the darkest, most horrific things I’ve ever read, and I flipping well loved it!

My latest novel, The Phoenix Project, features a man struggling to stay alive in a prison where inmates are forced to fight each other to the death. It isn’t just his physical circumstances that threaten his life; it’s also the demons within in his own mind. I drew upon my love of dystopia to write this novel and I can definitely see influences from these movies within my writing. So, if you’re a fan of dystopia too, why not check it out?

Don’t miss my Author Party Event (http://4Wills-DMCain.chatovod.com/) on Friday, January 15th at 1pm CST!!

The Phoenix Project

Nook: http://www.nook.com/gb/ebooks/the-phoenix-project-by-dm-cain/2940157645656

Amazon:
US http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0195A6AYK
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0195A6AYK

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-project-dm-cain/1123117161

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/book/id1066900946

GIVEAWAYS ON THE TOUR:  (2) book bundles – (1) paperback of THE PHOENIX PROJECT along with (1) paperback of her children’s book, SOREN!

To be eligible to win one of these sets, merely leave a comment on any stop along the tour, including this one and you could be one of our two lucky winners!!!

 

Biography

D.M. Cain is a dystopian and fantasy author working for US publisher Booktrope. She has released three novels: The Phoenix Project – a psychological thriller set in a dystopian future, Soren – a middle-grade fantasy, and A Chronicle of Chaos – the first in a dark fantasy series. She is currently working on the next novel in the series, ‘The Shield of Soren’, and a novella to accompany it.

D.M. Cain is also a member of the International Thriller Writers and is one of the creators and administrators of the online author group #Awethors. Her short story ‘The End’ was published in Awethology Dark – an anthology by the #Awethors.

Cain lives in Leicestershire,  UK, with her husband and young son, and spends her time reading, writing and reviewing books, playing RPGs and listening to symphonic metal.

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DMCainauthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DMCain84

Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/XevZH

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dmcain84/

Website: http://www.dmcain84.com/

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+DMCain/posts

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7888430.D_M_Cain

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzt_E8st1pyfkoTiA4E5jNg

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/D.M.-Cain/e/B00LTTX3PA/

 

 

The BIG, three week, blog tour is DONE! Time to ready the GIVEAWAY!

I want to thank everyone that stopped by on the different blogs along the tour to read about my recent releases.

Below are the links and a majority of the main post from the original launch page of the entire tour – hosted by 4WillsPublishing Author Services

I have the GIVEAWAY to draw as well – I am busy tallying up the blog stops and I’ll be drawing those and announcing on Friday.

 

Welcome to the I, HERO – THE BEGINNING Blog Tour!

Author, Jason Zandri

(Jason is on a whirlwind three week tour for three of his releases!  Each week’s tour, is for an individual book and each tour will be listed in 7 day increments.  The giveaways listed below will be awarded after the final tour is over and that is August 15, 2015.  To enter the drawing for the fabulous prizes and prize packages listed below, simply leave a comment at the bottom of this page, as well as each stop along his tour.  Each day that you leave a comment on a tour stop, your name will go into the drawing.  The more stops you visit and leave comments, the greater your chances to win!  GOOD LUCK!)

 

GIVEAWAYS (5 Winners):

1st Place:  $25 Amazon Gift Card + Kindle Versions of all 3 of Jason’s books

2nd Place:  $10 Amazon Gift Card + Kindle Version of winner’s choice of 1 of Jason’s books

3rd Place:  Kindle version of “As Life Goes – Elementary”

4th Place:  Kindle Version of “I, Hero – The Beginning”

5th Place:  Kindle Version of “Another Sunset”

***

TOUR LINE-UP for “I, HERO – THE BEGINNING”

Sunday, August 9, 2015:

C. S. Boyack

Monday, August 10, 2015:

Ani Manjikian

Tuesday, August 11, 2015:

April Adams

Wednesday, August 12, 2015:

Robin Chambers

Thursday, August 13, 2015:

John Howell

Friday, August 14, 2015:

A. G. Moye

Saturday, August 15, 2015:

Marc Estes

Sunday, August 16, 2015:

John Fioravanti

REPLAY OF THURSDAY, JULY 30TH STOP!

BOOK BLURB:

An everyday man, living less than ordinary life in New York City, simply makes his way about his work life and one at home. A kind heart and an empathetic soul, who tended to think of others before he thought of himself.

With his childhood totally left behind and gone with the final resting of his father, Nathan has come to terms with his past as he forges his life in the present, unaware of what lies ahead.

An unlikely friendship, a random act of violence, a budding romance, all part of a life changed.

*****

TOUR LINE-UP for “AS LIFE GOES…ELEMENTARY”:

Sunday, August 2, 2015:

Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko

Monday, August 3, 2015:

John Fioravanti

Tuesday, August 4, 2015:

P. H. Solomon

Wednesday, August 5, 2015:

Rebecca Reilly

Thursday, August 6, 2015:

Liz Gavin

Friday, August 7, 2015:

Shirley Harris-Slaughter

Saturday, August 8, 2015:

Isabel Pietri

BOOK BLURB:

Mark Sanford returns to his hometown with his son Matthew in tow to rebuild their lives. Recently divorced, and with the mother totally abandoning her parental responsibilities, both father and son are beginning their fresh start together.

Matthew begins to make new friends in the neighborhood and at school while he tries to find his place among people that have been friends with one another for years at elementary school.

Mark takes over the reins of the former family corner store with the help of a young woman looking for work. The ability to love and trust that woman entering his life is difficult for him because of all he has lost. For Matthew, that “first love” is difficult to understand without a motherly influence and with a father that has been deeply hurt.

*****

TOUR LINE-UP for “ANOTHER SUNSET”:

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Beem Weeks

Monday, July 27, 2015

Jan Hawke

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Beth Hale

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Harmony Kent

Thursday, July 30, 2015

This stop will be re-listed shortly

Friday, July 31, 2015

Patricia Green

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Marc Estes

BOOK BLURB:

David Stephenson is a kind drifter who comes to settle in the small Texas town of Westville. His sense, empathy, and awareness are well received by the residents of the failing town as they welcome and befriend him. During his stay he helps a small local girl try to realize her dream and while doing so excites and energizes the whole town to help out. Lives change as fate takes a critical turn. The local would-be reporter, tasked by David’s longtime friend, takes off on a mission to unravel the mystery of his travels, where he came from, and discovers why he is on his journey.

***

NONNIE JULES’ REVIEW OF “ANOTHER SUNSET”:  5***** Star!!!

This story had me confused in the beginning.  I felt there were too many characters introduced too soon, and I was getting them all mixed up, especially with David and Peter Dempsey, and then with Caroline and Charlotte.   I couldn’t remember who was the passenger and who was the truck driver, and then I couldn’t remember which was the child and which was the elderly woman (that confusion very well could have been my own mind, mind you).  After having read the first two chapters twice, I began to force myself to focus better.  Then, I got it!  It all clicked!  I was so moved by this story-line, which was filled with comedy at times, sadness at times, frustration (if you’ve read this already, think David letting Su Ann have it!), then it all leveling out into a marvelously joyous read.  I mean, how many people are there in this world like David?  He made me want to be better, kinder and more generous.  Anytime an author can evoke those feelings inside of you, the reader, HE/SHE is damn good! My original review rating was going to be a 4 star because I found that there were many occasions where punctuation was needed, yet there was none.  For it to be a fluid read for me, I need yellow lights, red lights and green lights guiding my drive…and although not very often, I am guilty of this crime, too. (The good thing about that, is the author, Jason Zandri can fix those minor hiccups in no time!).  With all that said, by the time I had rounded the final bend of this tale, I was so wrapped up in this AWESOME story, this wonderfully crafted story, that ANOTHER SUNSET gets a 5 star rating from me!

Now, let me say what I know you came here to hear…you DO want to read this book and you DO want to read it right away.  The story was better than good, and Mr. Zandri, you have just garnered yourself a new fan!   I hope to see this book as a Rave Reviews Book Club “Book of the Month” selection in the very near future because I know ALL will enjoy it!  And if you are a follower of my reviews, you know I don’t say that very often.  Only when it’s true!

Three new reviews for Another Sunset as the current segment of the blog tour wraps

As my blog tour for “Another Sunset” wraps up (and the one for the “As Life Goes” series begins) I am excited to promote three new professional reviews; two FIVE STAR reviews and one four star review.

The TOUR LINE-UP for ANOTHER SUNSET is available via the 4WillsPublishing Author Services site and the reviews are available via Readers’ Favorite site

I am really looking forward to the extra exposure these three reviews bring to the book as well as the exposure the tour brings to all of my titles.

Welcome to the ANOTHER SUNSET Blog Tour!

Please stay tuned over at 4WillsPublishing Author Services – they are organizing, promoting, and servicing my three week blog tour for all my published work and a couple of efforts that are still unreleased.

This week is the ANOTHER SUNSET Blog Tour and we are on day three today over at Beth Hale’s blog.

Today ALSO marks the kick off of the Kindle Countdown Deal for “Another Sunset” – for the next seven days, until Monday evening August 3rd, you can get it for just $0.99. (After the deal ends it goes back up to the incredibly expensive regular price of $2.99).

So don’t wait! Now is your chance to get “Another Sunset” on sale.

Please be sure to stop by the ANOTHER SUNSET Blog Tour, visit all the guest sites that are hosting me, and read all about what I have going on.

Thank you so much for following, reading my blog, and being a fan of my work.

THE BLOG TOUR – starring Author Jan Hawke

Deciding where to start a story is not always clear cut and, because I came at this book with a story plan that was loosely based on The Canterbury Tales, that followed several people’s experiences, there’s a fair amount of flashbacks and jumping ahead, whilst following along the main timeline of the safari. I hope I succeeded in making sense of the flow in the novel, but when I began to look ahead to marketing issues and found a need for a book blog, I quickly realised that I needed to streamline things more, so people could get a flavour of what goes on and where in the story more clearly.

We first meet main character, Sophie Taylor and her safari companions on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls, and the story roughly follows their itinerary from there into Zimbabwe and then Uganda and finally, after it’s over, into Tanzania where Sophie starts her new job. A magazine treatment, based on their journey (with the odd deviation when the backstory dictated) gradually presented itself as a useful solution for the blog as it gave me an opportunity to include some of my own personal background, influences and research information on the countries in which Milele Safari are set, and to including short synopses on each of the Tales that ‘happen’ in that region.  What’s good for my own blog should surely work for a blog tour too! So, this is your personal invitation to join me on a ‘blog safari’ that tells the true-life inside story behind Milele Safari, through the real and almost real lands depicted in the book…

… the Tales play out through the auspices of several point of view characters and their narratives, some through flashbacks into the past, or through a journal device that joins the various strands of their Tales together.

THE VOICES are:

Sophie Taylor ~ a doctor specialising in EMDR therapy, who returns to Africa to work for an aid agency running clinics for victims of the Zyandan genocide, still suffering from the ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder and other ills 13 years on.

Sister Teresa ‘Terry’ Olatunde ~ a battered and maimed orphan of the horrific war and famine in Biafra, whose valiant, but ultimately rash attempt at intervention to rescue terrified Zyandan refugees, results in her making the ultimate sacrifice.

Harry Burton ~ a highly accomplished Zimbabwean game guide and hunter whose memories of colonial childhood and adult experience of civil war and ecological vagaries pours light on yet more aspects of life in modern Africa.

David Mukuga ~ the boy soldier who witnesses his comrades slaying Sister Terry and two other men at a refugee camp, whose adult life is dogged by inescapable guilt and despair as he struggles to rehabilitate himself and make amends for his grisly past under the watchful eye of the mother of his dead best friend.

Verity Beleshona ~ a strong and principled woman who lost her entire family to the genocide, trying to transcend the tragedy and working tirelessly to help her countrymen ‘pay the amnesty’ of survival and rebuild shattered lives in a new UN-sponsored community project, the Mgakera Enclave, on the borders of Zyanda and Tanzania. Sophie’s thread is the one that binds them all together as she eases back into working life in Africa, meeting Harry and his nephew, vet Luigi Ogilvy, on the way, before taking up her new role as a consultant clinician in the Zyandan community of Mgakera, just over the border from Umbeke in Tanzania.

Author Bio: I live near Launceston in Cornwall, UK with Toby and Benji the Springer Spaniels – it’s a tie between us all as to who’s maddest, but as I outrank them in being weird anyway it’s not open to debate really. I’m physically lazy with things that don’t hold much interest for me (so that’s mostly housework and, increasingly, cooking…), but I love where we live, mainly because I chose it for being so quiet and off the beaten track, very close to the moors and quite near to the sea. I also love books, both to write and to read, the latter of which can be very eclectic (I enjoy Julian Barnes, Kate Atkinson, Jeanette Winterson and will happily admit to Jilly Cooper too) but in the main I’m heavily into SF&F, particularly Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and Julian May, although I can pass on Zombie Apocalypses fairly easily… …how I’ve chosen to write about Africa for my first novel may be something of a surprise to my friends, but if you read it you may find that all of the above information manifests in there somehow!

Future projects include a futuristic fantasy series, loosely grounded in Celtic myth – The Shadow Chronica (http://havenlands.blogspot.co.uk/), which is kind of stalled at present, but I’ll be dusting it off as summer gets in full flood with the first novel hopefully available at the tail end of 2016.

Book Blurb: Milele Safari back blurb – Milele Safari – An Eternal Journey …twines around a single day, in an unremarkable border village that snuffs out the lives of four people and shatters many others, only to draw the survivors back to a different time and, perhaps, a hope of atonement and peace. Step out on the journey and discover an Africa that could have been, is and might one day come to be.

Book links – Amazon (print & eBook) – http://www.amazon.com/dp/0992747201/   

Barnes & Noble (print only) – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/milele-safari-an-eternal-journey-janette-mary-hawke/1117529970?ean=9780992747206

Milele Safari blog – http://milelesafari.blogspot.co.uk/p/taster-1.html

Book Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJsS5vtJjg

Social Media links
Twitter – @JanHawke

Facebook Author page – https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jan-Hawke/386239624841750

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=254177051

Author blog – Jan Hawke INKorporated http://janhawke.me/

4WillsPublishing Link: AUTHOR EVENT – http://4wills-hawke.chatovod.com/