State of the TAM - 26 Aug
What’s Up
People, it has been a week and it’s only Monday! A bank holiday Monday at that.
So I have been hard at work on my blog tour for Dead Man Stalking, where you get to enter a raffle for gift cards and read a prequel short story set in the Blood and Bone world. So make sure to follow along once it starts! I’ll also link to all the extracts on this page.
In honour of my 10th book with Dreamspinner—can you believe it?—I’m also going to running competitions throughout September. With the reluctant assistance of Rhys Ford and whoever else I reel in. There’s going to be a few good prizes, sales, and a whole host of really weird prizes that I don’t know if anyone will want. But things like ‘I’ll sing a song of your choosing’ or ‘I’ll name a character in the next book after you’. So keep an eye out! I’ll drop them in here as it goes.
Other news….
I nipped over to Donegal again to finish the Wild Atlantic Way. It’s so beautiful, but I had a nasty fall. Face first on some stone steps. Luckily it was such a surprise that I went - walking! I can fly? ow - so I got away with a few bruises and a dinged up elbow.
This was the basic sequence of events. As you can see, cockiness comes before an ow!
Look at Andi Lee’s adorable, wizard hamster!
Book Rec of the Week
If you have read the 415 Ink series then do you REALLY need any encouragement to go and read Ivo’s book? As for those who haven’t read the 415 Ink series, go and check them all out. You’ve got time before Ivo gets here!
From the moment SFPD Detective Ruan Nicholls meets Ivo Rogers, he knows the tattoo artist is going to bring chaos to his neat, orderly life. A hellion down to the bone, Ivo is someone Ruan not only doesn’t understand, he’s not even sure he needs to. Everything about Ivo is vibrant, brash, cocky, and arrogant, and Ruan wants no part of him.
Or at least that’s the lie he tells himself when he damps down his desire for the social wild child life tosses into his path.
For Ivo Rogers, life revolves around two things—his family and 415 Ink, the tattoo shop he co-owns with his four brothers. His family might be stitched together by their battle scars from growing up in foster care, but their brotherhood is tight—and strong enough to hold Ivo together during the times when he falls apart.
Now Ivo faces a new challenge when he falls for a cop with an old-school mentality on how a man looks and acts. Ruan is the promise of a life Ivo thought he’d never have, but their clashing perspectives threaten any chance of a relationship. Being the family’s hellion makes it easy to be misunderstood, yet Ivo has faith Ruan will not only embrace who he is but love him as well.
Cover Artist: Reece Notley
Left Turn at Albuquerque Playlist
Coming together nicely! I love this Offspring song. It reminds me a lot of the Mercedes Lackey Bardic Voices series.
Can’t wait to go back to Paris next year!
Deal of the Week
$1.99 eBook by Ariel Tachna
Sale ends August 27, 2019 at 11:59 PM ET
Some things crumble under pressure. Others are tempered by it instead. For three former soldiers, a tragedy might be the catalyst that binds them together—stronger than ever.
Richard Horn and Timothy Davenport met in the SEALs twenty years ago and have been lovers ever since. Now running their own paramilitary organization, Strike Force Omega, they work in the shadows to protect their country and its people. When Tim falls for Eric Newton, a deadly sniper and strategist on their team, Richard accepts that Tim’s heart is big enough for two men. He respects, admires, and even desires Eric enough to accept him into their relationship—and their bed—but he’s never been fully a part of what Eric and Tim share.
Then Eric is captured by terrorists and Tim is gravely injured in an op gone wrong, bringing Richard’s world crashing down around his ears. Even if he gets his men out alive, Eric must face the aftermath of months of physical and psychological torture—and without Tim to lean on, Eric’s PTSD is tearing him apart. Richard has to figure out the third leg of their triangle fast, or Tim won’t have a life to come back to.
Must Read of the Week
VACCINATE!
As a child I had measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and rubella. None of that was fun and it didn’t even build character! I just spent a lot of time being contagious on my own, and probably the whooping cough is one reason I have asthma now.
So unless there’s compelling reasons not to, I am fully in favour of vaccinations.
The Message of Measles
One day in the early sixties, Saul Zucker, a pediatrician and anesthesiologist in the Bronx, was treating the child of a New York assemblyman named Alexander Chananau. Amid the stethoscoping and reflex-hammering of a routine checkup, the two men got to talking about polio, which was still a threat to the nation’s youth, in spite of the discovery, the previous decade, of a vaccine. At the time, some states had laws requiring the vaccination of schoolchildren, but New York was not one of them. In his office, on the Grand Concourse, Zucker urged Chananau to push such a law, and shortly afterward the assemblyman introduced a bill in the legislature. The proposal encountered resistance, especially from Christian Scientists, whose faith teaches that disease is a state of mind. (The city’s health commissioner opposed the bill as well, writing to Chananau, “We do not like to legislate the things which can be obtained without legislation.”) To mollify the dissenters, Chananau and others added a religious exemption; you could forgo vaccination if it violated the principles of your faith.
Imagine staggering home one night, a few sheets to the wind, and you run into this. I would fully die.
I would die for this precious baby.
Useless Site of the Week
Only my Irish and Canadian friends love Letterkenny. I don’t know if that is statistically relevant, but it does lead to me trying very hard to explain to Californians why this is ACTUALLY the funniest thing ever.
Poetry of the Week
Check out the 2019 Belfast Poetry Slam. Some of the best of Belfast’s performance poets.