Reel to Reel by Isla Grey

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Isla Grey will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Lights, Camera, Action! From the very beginning, the world of cinema has captivated us. We have found ourselves laughing at our favorite comedies, crying when love finally comes to fruition, being beamed to other worlds or battling in the midst of action sequences. While movies might be the perfect entertainment, most have slight imperfections, mistakes, which go unseen, until they’re released and caught by the movie audience. These mistakes don’t detract from the film, and finding them are just as fun as watching the movie. For the past several years, Isla Grey has written a “Movie Mistakes” column for Bellaonline. “Reel to Reel” is a collection of some of those columns, spotlighting the fun goofs found in some of our favorite movies. Can you spot them? Grab the popcorn, sit back, and happy movie watching!

Read an Excerpt

The Notebook

There’s no question--Noah and Allie are in love. Set in two different time periods, the beginning of the pair’s relationship is shown via a notebook an older Noah reads to Allie who is suffering the effects of dementia. Can true love ever be forgotten? Here are a few movie mistakes to look for while watching “The Notebook”.

Near the beginning of the movie, the younger Allie and Noah are at a carnival. After their first encounter, Allie and another man get on the Ferris wheel. The man is holding cotton candy in his right hand. This is noticeable throughout the scene. After Noah has climbed aboard and gets Allie to go out with him, the cotton candy the man was holding is now gone.

After Noah and Allie have watched the movie in the theater, they decide to go for a walk. When they get to the traffic light, Noah tells her how he used to lie in the road and demonstrates for her. At first, Noah is closer to the center of the lane to his left. (This is noticeable in the overhead view.) During the close-up, Noah is now closer to the double lines that run down the middle of the road. This happens again when Allie joins him. At first, they are closer to the center of the lane to their left, but the next view shows them near the double lines.

About the Author

Isla Grey is from Central Virginia and at an early age developed a love of movies. She shared many Sunday afternoons watching old favorites with her grandmother that included everything from “Gone with the Wind” and “Rio Bravo” to “Titanic” and “The Mummy”. (Her grandmother may or may not have made fun of her when she covered her eyes during “Anaconda”.)

Working as Bellaonline’s Movie Mistakes editor since 2012 has given Isla the opportunity to indulge in two of her passions—movies and writing.

When Isla isn’t writing or watching movies, most of her time is spent with her ever active daughter and her band of cats. She also enjoys good music, reading biographies and ghost stories and taking quiet strolls.

Website: http://www.islagrey.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorIslaGrey/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IslaGrey1

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0918MM97L

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She's the One Who Cares Too Much (Book Two of the War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters) by S. R. Cronin

 

She's the One Who Cares Too Much

(Book Two of the War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters)

by S. R. Cronin

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GENRE: Historical Fantasy

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BLURB:

Coral, the second of seven sisters, has been hiding her affair with the perfect man until her older sister can get her life together. But the perfect man is getting impatient and now she’s gotten pregnant. Coral decides it’s time to consider her own happiness.

But what does she want? The perfect husband turns out to be less than ideal. She adores the small children she teaches but the idea of being a mother fills her with joy. Meanwhile, her homeland is gripped by fear of a Mongol invasion and she can’t stop crying about everything now that she’s with child.

Then a friend suggests the ever-caring Coral possesses a power well beyond what she or anyone else imagines. Does she? And why is the idea so appealing?

When Coral’s big sister loses faith in the army and decides to craft a way to use magic to save Ilari from the Mongols, she decides Coral’s formidable talent is what the realm needs. Can Coral raise a baby, placate an absent military husband who thinks he’s stopping the invasion, and help her sister save her homeland?

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EXCERPT

“I’ve been thinking about this invasion, Coral. If we get word they’re getting close, I want to move you to safety until the battle’s over. My baby too, if he’s been born.”

“What for? My little house couldn’t be safer.”

He was annoyed with me again. “Surely you understand something about war. No place in Vinx will be safe. It sits on the only path leading from our entrance to Pilk where our riches lay.”

“So what will happen to Vinx? And the people in it?”

“I don’t know. We’ll move those we can to safer areas, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t want to lose any Ilarians, but things don’t always go as you’d like in a war. I want you to be somewhere else when the time comes.” He stopped, and he seemed to be counting on his fingers. “When exactly….”

“Right around Svi. The coldest night of the year.”

He sighed. “The Mongols always attack in the winter. It could be this year. We’d better think about moving you to safety before you get too close to having the baby.”

“But I want my mother there when the baby is born. My sisters.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. We’ll find a way. Tonight, let’s just enjoy the fire.”

I understood the conversation had ended. I reached back and took his hand again. He let me hold it and we sat in silence. As he stared into the flames, I wondered what, or who, he thought about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Sherrie Cronin is the author of a collection of six speculative fiction novels known as 46. Ascending and is now in the process of publishing a historical fantasy series called The War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters. A quick look at the synopses of her books makes it obvious she is fascinated by people achieving the astonishing by developing abilities they barely knew they had.

She’s made a lot of stops along the way to writing these novels. She’s lived in seven cities, visited forty-six countries, and worked as a waitress, technical writer, and geophysicist. Now she answers a hot-line. Along the way, she’s lost several cats but acquired a husband who still loves her and three kids who’ve grown up just fine, both despite how odd she is.

All her life she has wanted to either tell these kinds of stories or be Chief Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise. She now lives and writes in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she admits to occasionally checking her phone for a message from Captain Picard, just in case.

Author Social Media Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinnabar01

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/46Ascending

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/5805814.Sherrie_Cronin

Amazon: www.amazon.com/Sherrie-Cronin/e/B007FRMO9Q

Author Blog: https://sherriecronin.xyz/

Book Series Blog: https://troublesome7sisters.xyz/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

S. R. Cronin will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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He'll be Waiting by Liz Alterman

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Liz Alterman will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

What would you do to remember? What would you give to forget?

When Tess Porter agrees to pick up her boyfriend’s college pal at the airport on a snowy December night, she has no idea she’s about to embark on the most dangerous ride of her life.

Two days later, the 17-year-old wakes up in a hospital with broken bones, unable to remember how she got there. Her parents are acting strange, and neither James, her boyfriend, nor her best friend, Izzy, has visited.

As she struggles to physically recover, Tess wrestles with haunting questions: What happened? Will her memory ever return? And what if she’s better off not recalling any of it?

Read an Excerpt

“Tess! Tess!” Mom pats my right arm gently. “Honey, wake up, you’re having a bad dream.” I stare at her, confused. It was so real. I’d been tumbling, falling down beside a flat cement wall. I’d tried to stop myself, but there was nothing to grab on to, no banister or ledge. All I could smell was damp, wet earth. A man stood above me. I couldn’t see his face and had no idea who he was. But one thing was clear: He’d come to hurt me. Me specifically. In my nightmare and in real life, my mouth is dry, my tongue as sandpapery as Daffy’s. I can’t speak. My heart gallops, thumping hoofbeats pound in my ears. “This is how it ends!” he shouted in the dream, his voice echoing as I plunged into total darkness and struggled to crawl out of sight. I couldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t work. I want to tell Mom everything, but I can’t catch my breath. Was it only a dream or does it have something to do with my accident? What if it’s one of the flashes Lydia talked about? Memories attempting to resurface? My head hurts thinking about it. For once, I'm actually grateful to be in this hospital bed. Safe.

About the Author:

Liz Alterman lives in New Jersey with her husband and three sons. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Parents, McSweeney's, and other publications. She spends most days microwaving the same cup of coffee and looking up synonyms.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizAlterman
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21164511.Liz_Alterman
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/liz-alterman
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liz.alterman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethalterman
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizalterman

Amazon: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091N9XH9M

Liz Alterman will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Calling by Branwen OShea

Today I'd like to present  The Calling by Branwen OShea !

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GENRE: YA Sci-fi        

Humanity’s wake-up call. Answer it or face extinction.

When Bleu’s little sister shows symptoms of the deadly Sickness, a strange vision directs him to leave humanity’s subterranean haven and seek the cure on Earth’s glacial surface. Joining the expedition team, Bleu expects extreme temperatures, not a surface ruled by ingenious predators.

Rana and her fellow star beings have co-existed with Earth’s top carnivores since the humans disappeared. But when her peers transform into Crowned Ones, the final stage of star being development, she fears remaining Uncrowned like her parents. To prove her worth, she undertakes a dangerous mission—contacting the hostile and nearly extinct humans.

But Rana’s plan backfires, and Bleu’s team retaliates. As war with the more advanced star being civilization looms, both Rana and Bleu separately seek a way to save their people.

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The Book sounds fantastic! Let's hear more about the author. Hello and welcome to my blog! Can you tell me a little about yourself, and how you became an author?

Thank you for hosting The Calling’s tour! I love talking about my books and interacting with readers.

I always loved stories and their power to help me learn new things, escape from my day-to-day reality, explore new worlds, and see problematic social issues in new ways. I experienced a horrible origin story, lol, but instead of becoming a villain, I became an author. Though what I put my characters through, maybe I am a villain.

I hope my stories inspire teens and adults to consider their own potential and possibilities for Earth’s future other than climate destruction, war, or a technological apocalypse.

What is your book about?

So here’s the pitch:

In a future ice age, Bleu’s expedition team emerges from their subterranean haven to discover humans are no longer the dominant species.

The series explores what would happen if humans were given a choice to change their millennia-long patterns of violence and dominance over the environment to survive or become extinct. Could our species do this, or, given our history, would we fail?

Who is your hero/heroine? Is he/she based on someone in real life?

Because the story involves humanity as a group, I chose to make this a multiple point of view book. There’s a large cast of characters, but the point-of-view characters are two human teens: eighteen-year-old Bleu and fifteen year-old Atsushi; two star being teens: sixteen-year old Rana and seventeen-year-old Kahali; and then the morally gray adult, Commander Savas.

None of them were based on anyone I knew in real life. Instead, Rana came to me in a dream and gave me the entire story. As I started to write it, the others introduced themselves. I joke that as Athena sprang fully formed from Zeus’ head, these characters seemed to spring from mine. They were always super clear personalities, though Bleu had a few secrets he kept from me until the final rewrites.

What are your favorite times for writing? Morning? Evening?

I work, write novels, and homeschool my kids, so I write whenever I can fit it in. I can write anytime and anywhere, though my favorite place is in a corner of one of my favorite coffee shops. I can’t wait for quarantine to be over and get back there.

Who are your favorite authors? Did they influence your writing, and if so, how?

My taste is a bit backwards, lol. When I was a kid, I read mostly adult books, and as an adult I now read mostly young adult books. I loved Isaac Asimov’s Robot and Foundation series as a teen, and always wanted to write my own epic tale of humanity’s future. He probably influenced my interest in vast, expansive science fiction tales.

My current favorite authors are Laini Taylor, Hafsah Faizal, Erica Cameron, Katheryn Purdie, the team of Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff, Ruta Sepetys, Alechia Dow, the team of Rebecca Schmid & Niamh Schmid, and Alyse N. Steves. They have influenced my writing by inspiring me with their beautiful words and/or support. I also like to study their books to see how they handle various aspects of the writing craft.

Did you have a favorite book as a child? Did it influence your choice to become an author?

The first author I fangirled over was Marguerite Henry’s horse books, but the books that probably made me most want to write were Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. I also really wanted more books about the character Yoda from Star Wars. I feel like Yoda’s movie character inspired me to ask a lot of “what if?” questions that I explore in this series.

                                                  

Thank you for answering my questions! Here is an excerpt and where-to-buy info! 

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EXCERPT:

A bloodcurdling howl pierced the darkness nearby. He startled, and the rover lurched to the side, the treads grinding against the ice. In all his years of secret studies, he’d never considered studying animal vocalizations. Anything, including the Undescended, could be making the howls beyond the range of his snow rover’s headlights. As much as he had longed for this world, he was lost here.

As he scanned the inky horizon, a large dark blob drew his gaze to an elevated area of ice. Did it move? He narrowed his eyes, straining to confirm reality. Just get to the camp. Just get to the camp.

It moved.

"Base, something’s out here…pacing on a hill above me. I’m maintaining course, but I’m going to have to pass below it. Should I change course?”

“You heard Commander Savas. Shoot it as soon as it’s in range. Continue course.”

“Continue course. Got it, sir.” Bleu hastily checked his gun, wishing for Stamf’s longer-range rifle. It’s not close enough yet…

His hand tightened on his gun. I don’t even know what it is, and I have to kill it? The rover sped along as his indecision churned within him. Trust your instincts, Bleu, his mother had said. It lured us, Savas had said.

In his mind, Bleu replayed Neviah’s terrifying video footage. That creature could be stalking him right now. Orders were orders. He raised his gun.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

As a young girl, Branwen wanted to become an ambassador for aliens. Since the aliens never hired her, she now writes about them.

Branwen OShea has a Bachelors in Biology from Colgate University, a Bachelors in Psychology, and a Masters in Social Work. She lives in Connecticut with her family and a menagerie of pets, and enjoys hiking, meditating, and star-gazing. Her previously published works include contributing to a nonfiction yoga book, wellness magazines, and her published science fiction novella, Silence of the Song Trees.

Website: www.branwenoshea.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/branwenoshea

Instagram: www.instagram.com/branwenoshea

Facebook: www.facebook.com/branwenoshea

Order Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735915998

Branwen OShea will be awarding $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via

rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway