Spotlight and Giveaway: Scarecrow Has a Gun

Today, I'm stoked to be hosting a spotlight for the SCARECROW HAS A GUN by Michael Paul Kozlowsky Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. This one looks mighty tense, so check it out and make sure to enter the giveaway for your chance to read it for free. 

 

About The Book:

Title: SCARECROW HAS A GUN

Author: Michael Paul Kozlowsky

Pub. Date: August 2, 2022

Publisher: Imbrifex Books

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 266

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org

Never trust other people's memories, and watch out for your own

Sean Whittlesea was there when his wife was murdered. He saw the light leave her eyes. He held her dead body in his arms.  He knows he wept, but he cannot recollect a single other detail. Tormented by the tragedy, Sean relives the horror over and over again. As he struggles to recall what really happened, his imagination serves up an endless chain of scenarios. The truth, however, remains hidden in the vault of his memory, and the key is nowhere to be found.   

Nearly two decades later, Sean, now remarried and a father of two, wins a bizarre contest hosted by his eccentric boss. The prize is the Memory Palace, a state-of-the-art black box that purportedly allows its possessor to relive every moment he has ever experienced, playing out all the memories on a screen.

While the small machine at first appears to be the answer to the mystery surrounding the death of his wife, it instead upends Sean’s life. He pushes his family further and further away as the Memory Palace forces him to confront harsh realities and difficult questions that he lacks the strength to face or answer. Spiraling downward, Sean encounters increasingly harrowing challenges that force him to realize that his memory is not the only thing at stake. To recover the truth about his past, Sean must fight for his very life.

Reviews:

"Suffused with an atmosphere that suggests J.G. Ballard and Paolo Coelho chained together in a basement while a carbon monoxide alarm goes off, Scarecrow Has a Gun is at once disquieting and illuminating, eerie and sincere.”—Martin Seay, award-winning author of The Mirror Thief

“Michael Paul Kozlowsky’s brutally eccentric Scarecrow Has a Gun is a masterclass in Cartesian storytelling—simultaneously evoking Christopher Nolan’s clockwork precision and JG Ballard’s ultra-modern sense of irony.”— Jeff Chon, author of Hashtag Good Guy With a Gun

“Scarecrow Has a Gun is a propulsive read that spirals deep into the intersections of memory, technology, and the shifting boundaries between the real and the unreal."— Nicholas Rombes, author of The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing and The Ramones’ Ramones

"A whodunit wrapped inside sci-fi story and blended with a compelling and clear-eyed examination of how memory works."— Brett Riley, author of Comanche, Lord of Order, and Freaks

"With writing that's both sharp and dense, Michael Paul Kozlowsky's Scarecrow Has A Gun is a labyrinthine mystery that feels as if David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo had collaborated on a Philip K. Dick adaptation. It's a gut-punch meditation on the way our brains process mediation, memory, trauma, and grief."—Tex Gresham, author of Sunflower, Heck, Texas, and This Is Strange June

"This engrossing and inventive novel entertains on multiple levels. It’s a mind-bending mystery, in which the pursuit of the truth about his wife’s murder threatens the main character’s trust in his powers of perception and his very sense of self. It’s a horror-show-worthy take on corporate ambition, overreach, and villainy."—Beth Castrodale, author of I Mean You No Harm, Marion Hatley and In This Ground

“What an original and captivating sci-fi read! I totally loved the real life references and often found myself so intrigued I had to then go search for confirmation and further information. Things really ramped up towards the end and I was glued to the text. I enjoyed the dark undercurrent and found the ending deeply satisfying as well as super clever.”—Caroline Lewis, Librarian at St. Jospeh’s College Mildura

 

About Michael Paul Kozlowsky:

Michael Paul Kozlowsky is a former high school English & film teacher, and, writing as M.P. Kozlowsky, the author of four children’s books — Frost, Juniper Berry, Rose Coffin, and The Dyerville Tales. He lives in New York with his wife, two daughters, and a rescue beagle named Huxley. When he’s not reading or playing chess, he continues to write everything from poetry and screenplays to short stories, articles, philosophical essays, and books for readers of all ages. SCARECROW HAS A GUN is his first novel for adults.

 

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | BookBub

 

Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of SCARECROW HAS A GUN, US Only.

Ends August 9^th, midnight EST.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

7/25/2022	Rajiv's Reviews	Review/IG Post
7/26/2022	The Underground	Spotlight
7/27/2022	Jazzy Book Reviews	Review/IG Post
7/28/2022	@just_another_mother_with_books	IG Review
7/29/2022	One More Exclamation	Review/IG Post

 Week Two:

8/1/2022	Lifestyle of Me	Review
8/2/2022	The Momma Spot	Review
8/3/2022	BookHounds	Excerpt/IG Post
8/4/2022	GryffindorBookishNerd	IG Review
8/5/2022	Brandi Danielle Davis	Review/IG Post

Giveaway: Full Fusion

Hey all. Today I'm excited to bring you a giveaway of FULL FUSION, a YA fantasy full of angels and romance, in partnership with RockStar Book Tours. The bottom of the post includes a tour schedule full of reviews, excerpts, and interviews, so make sure to check them out when you enter the giveaway.

About The Book:

Title: FULL FUSION (The Fusion Series Volume 1)

Author: NJ Damschroder

Pub. Date: June 4, 2014

Publisher: Dragonsoul YA 

Pages: 322

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Find it: Amazon, B&N, iBooks, TBD, Goodreads

Eighteen-year-old Roxie Sebastian lives a charmed life, and she knows it. Too bad she can't feel it. 

All her life, she's felt disconnected from the world around her. Everything changes just before graduation, when she's drawn to an eerie, brilliant light-which narrowly misses her as it blows up her friend Lincoln's car. Clearly someone's after Roxie, and finally Lincoln tells her the truth: He and Roxie are angels, beings from another dimension, and that light is her soul, separated from her human body in a traumatic birth. 

Once a skeptical Roxie rules out the other possibilities-like Lincoln created this delusion to escape his abusive father-she accepts her gut-deep knowledge of the truth. But someone has been screwing with her light, using it to commit crimes, and their actions are about to cause irreparable damage to two worlds: the one she lives in, and the one she can't remember. 

Aided by her best friend Jordan, her boyfriend Tucker, and Lincoln, Roxie tracks down the criminal and uncovers many more secrets not only of her past, but of the history of their race on Earth. And then Roxie faces a horrible dilemma-the only way she can stop them from ripping apart both worlds is to fuse with her light...which could be tainted by the evil with which it was used. 

About NJ:

Natalie J. Damschroder is an award-winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance, with an emphasis on romantic adventure. She has had 24 novels, 7 novellas, and 16 short stories published by several publishers, most recently with Soul Mate Publishing, Entangled Publishing, and Carina Press. She recently debuted her Fusion Series, a young adult paranormal adventure series, with Full Fusion, as NJ Damschroder. Learn more about those books here.

Natalie grew up in Massachusetts, and loves the New England Patriots more than anything. (Except her family. And writing and reading. And popcorn.) When she’s not writing, she does freelance editing and proofreading. She and her husband have two grown daughters, one of whom is also a novelist. (The other one prefers math. Smart kid. Practical.)

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Giveaway Details:

3 winners will receive a Box Set of the FULL FUSION Series, US Only.

Rafflecopter Code:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

3/19/2018- Caffeine And Composition- Interview

3/19/2018- A Gingerly Review- Review

3/20/2018- Twirling Book Princess- Excerpt

3/20/2018- The Underground- Review

3/21/2018- Elley the Book Otter- Guest Post

3/21/2018- Wonder Struck- Review

3/22/2018- Am Kinda Busy Reading- Review

3/22/2018- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post

3/23/2018- BookHounds YA- Interview

3/23/2018- two points of interest- Review

Week Two:

3/26/2018- Always Me- Excerpt

3/26/2018- RhythmicBooktrovert- Review

3/27/2018-Smada's Book Smack-Review

3/27/2018- Wonder Struck- Excerpt

3/28/2018- books are love- Excerpt

3/28/2018- Ginger Mom and the Kindle Quest- Review

3/29/2018- Reading for the Stars and Moon- Review

3/29/2018- A Dream Within A Dream- Excerpt

3/30/2018- Paulette's Papers- Excerpt

3/30/2018- Diary of an Avid Reader- Review

Publisher Spotlight: Slug Pie Stories

Today on The Underground, I'm excited to focus my spotlight in a new direction. I'm all about indie and so I'm excited to welcome KE Blaski, author of the young adult novel Glimmer of Steel and Senior Partner of Slug Pie Stories, LLC. Slug Pie is an indie publisher of middle grade fiction. Right now it exclusively publishes an adventure series by Mick Bogerman, but they have plans to expand and mentor other authors. Their mission is "to inspire reluctant elementary and middle school readers, through exciting storytelling, to develop a life-long passion for books."

I had the chance to read How To Protect Your Neighbourhood from Circus Werewolves (say that ten times fast), the latest book in the series, and you can find my review for it here. The book was such a fun read that I invited KE Blaski back to the blog to find out more about Slug Pie.

I hope you'll all join me in welcoming KE Blaski to the blog.

How was Slug Pie Stories born? 

I like to read what my kids read and my middle school girls are assigned a lot of books to read for school. Every single one of the books they were assigned to read was tear-jerking sad: mom’s losing her battle with cancer, brother gets hit by a car, best friend commits suicide, the dog dies. It got to the point where neither my kids nor I wanted to read them any more. Real life is sad enough already. So I pulled out some of my son’s old Goosebumps books and the girls loved them. There was one problem with them though… every book spent the first couple of chapters introducing you to a new set of characters. That’s when I thought to myself, what if there was a series with kid-level horror and lots of adventure that featured the same set of kids? It could be the Goonies meet Goosebumps. And so, Slug Pie Stories was born.

Why did you decide to start up your own imprint?

I wanted to publish Slug Pie Stories my way. Call me a control freak, but I wanted to work with editors of my choosing and an artist who could capture what I wanted to see on the covers. I wanted to price the books competitively and I wanted the profits for my efforts. The traditional publishing model requires giving all that up.

How did you come to editing?

Honestly, I hire out the editing. My expertise is in writing, teaching, and marketing, and I know enough about business to know I need to focus on my core competencies. Handing over the story to a professional editor for new, objective, skilled, and experienced feedback just makes sense, both financially and for the good of the story. Slug Pie Stories go through at least two, often three rounds of professional editing: developmental editing, line editing, and proofreading.

What was the hardest part of starting your own imprint?

It’s not necessarily difficult to start and run an imprint as it is time-consuming. There are months of prelaunch tasks and then there are the never-ending marketing efforts for the series as well as individual books. Slug Pie Stories, LLC is a family partnership, so I do have help, thank goodness.

What has surprised you the most about the journey?

The absolute emotional reward when a reader loves a book and says so, either through a review, an email, or in person during an author visit. There is nothing else like it.

What do you hope to do differently with Slug Pie Stories?

I’ve got a to do list a mile long! Right now, I’m contracting audio book production. The first audiobook was released summer 2016 and I’m looking at a second one summer 2017. Once the series itself hits six books, We'll be releasing a boxed paperback set. I would love to do graphic novel versions of the entire series with illustrator Kat Powell. She is so very talented.

You mention an interest in mentoring authors. How does that look to you?

I have met wonderful writers on my own publishing journey and some of them are at a crossroads: do they continue pursuing traditional publishing when there are fewer traditional publishers out there than ever before, do they forge their own path as an indie publisher, recreating the wheel and duplicating the mistakes of others, or is there something in between? Perhaps, a consortium of indie authors who share a publishing model. We started a second imprint Mollusc Bay Books that is outside of the Slug Pie Stories world in the hopes of eventually using it with other indie authors to achieve that goal.

What made you decide to focus on middle grade fiction?

It’s my personal mission! I like to think of 8 to 12 year olds as being in that sweet age where they decide if they are going to read for the rest of their lives or only what they “have to” to get through school. If I can publish books that guide these kids into the first category instead of the second, I’ve done my job.

What drew your interest to Mick and his stories?

Mick’s stories have all the right stuff: a blend of kid-appropriate horror, adventure, friendship, tense pacing, surprises, and always, a satisfying end.

Mick Bogerman is the author and main character of his series. How does that work? How does he write in between fighting off monsters?

You’ll have to ask him that one. Apparently he’s good at multi-tasking.

You’ve mentioned on your website hoping to publish a few authors you already have a relationship with. What kind of stories are you hoping to publish going forward?

Once I streamline my own publishing model, I would love to open Mollusc Bay Books up to the indie middle grade and YA authors I know who share the same philosophy as I do: creating books that engage and help drive a love of reading for life. My mother and I are also suckers for a happy ending. Whatever Mollusc Bay Books publishes has to have one.

What kind of reaction have you received from readers? Any stories?

Both kids and kids-at-heart are loving Slug Pie Stories. My favorite email came from a ten-year-old boy who after his parents put him to bed, would sneak in to his six-year-old brother’s room to read the series with him under the covers with a flashlight. You know you’ve done it right when kids are willing to risk getting in trouble in order to read.


If you'd like to check out Slug Pie Stories and learn more about Mick and his adventures, check out their website at www.slugpiestories.com