Author Interview: J.E. Nicassio

How did you get the inspiration for your book?

My youngest son had an unusual supernatural experience in his room when he was eight years old.

He said a light came in his room and someone was trying to take him away. Of course I thought he had a nightmare but he has never been able to shake the experience. One evening while having a bon-fire we came up with the idea of aliens and being abducted. From that moment on I was hooked.

Could you talk a bit about your publication process/experience? 

It has been a journey to say the least. I made a number of crucial mistakes. I learned the hard way. I talked about it in the guest article.

If you could jump into the world of your favorite book, who would you be and what would you do?

It would be Game of Thrones. I would like to jump in the role of the ‘Mother of Dragons’ Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen and save the slaves and rule the Iron Throne!

Are you currently working on any projects?

I am launching the sequel to From the Sky titled Equinox and in the process of writing the third book titled Realm of Truth Teknon.

I am finishing up the newest edition Rocky The Rockefeller Christmas Tree.

And two adult novels, One is ghost story called Kiss from a Rose and the other a novel based on my short story Cursed to Live Again under my pen name Ava Malino with the working title Vexatious.

What is something that surprises people about you?

I am a MUFON Field Investigator- a UFO hunter.

What is the most important thing being a writer has taught you?

To be true to myself. And whenever I make up my mind up to do something I do it to the end.

If your book were made into a movie, what would the tag line on the poster say?

Believe in the Unbelievable! 

About From The Sky:

When Samantha Hunter and her father move to New Mexico, it's a chance to get away from the bittersweet memories of her past and start over. However, the arrival of a dark-haired stranger into her life changes everything. The stranger, a boy, named Lucien introduces Sam to the hidden world of real-life aliens. Redemption and romance follow Sam in her new life as she works to decipher her complicated alien-human relationship and discovers what connects her to this strange alien boy.

About the Author:

J.E. Nicassio is a former freelance writer, MUFON field investigator and the mother of two adult sons based in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since early childhood, she dreamed of creating characters readers could fall in love with while taking them beyond our reality letting them dare to believe in something more beyond the stars. Those dreams were put on hold while she focused on raising her sons as a single mother. She finally listened to the whispers in her mind to pull herself together and make her dreams a reality. She earned two degrees and followed her gut and typed up the courage not to listen to the naysayers and let her fingers be the guide on her keyboard. From The Sky made its debut a few months after the death of her beloved father. She is also the author of Rocky The Rockefeller Christmas Tree and Louis Joseph’s Ooh Rah.
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Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Cover Reveal: Ghetto

My name’s Sunny Grace Beaumont. Only child, self-taught computer geek and cancer survivor. Oh, and did I mention my dad’s the President? As you can imagine that’s sometimes a little problematic, especially when I want to sneak out. But it never got me into quite as much trouble as the night I ventured into the Ghetto – don’t ask me why I was there in the first place… it was stupid. Everyone knows that the Ghetto is where hardened criminals are sent to live out the remainder of their lives. At first the men that kidnap me are just as I’d imagine, mean and thoughtless, but slowly I begin to have doubts. 

I meet a guy. His name’s Sin, he has no Brand – a crime punishable by death – and he’s the rebel leader. I should hate him… but I don’t. Instead he opens my eyes to a whole other side of the Ghetto, where people are innocent of the crimes they’re accused of and helpless children suffer dreadful poverty. Is it possible that I’ve been lied to my entire life… that the governments been deceiving everyone? And how can I challenge the law my own dad is adamant to uphold? 

Ghetto will be available for purchase September 15th, but if you can't wait that long, the first chapter will be on Wattpad on July 21st!

Check out the author's website!

Review: Ugly People Beautiful Hearts

Title: Ugly People Beautiful Hearts
Author: Marlen Komar
Page Count: 96
My Rating: 3.5 TURTLES: A very enjoyable read, I recommend you check it out.
*The author provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Ugly People Beautiful Hearts on Amazon




I'd like to thank the author for sending me a copy of this book. I don't review a whole lot of poetry. I have read a fair amount of different styles and authors as well as written some poetry of my own, though, so I know a bit about the genre. 

The way Marlen Komar formats her poetry is rather avant garde. It is a mix of prose poetry and free verse, one poem would be one block of text, the next would be separated lines like I normally think of in poetry, the next would be a mix. I thought it was a really interesting presentation as it allowed her to really emphasize a line if it broke away from the rest of the test. Also, Komar's imagery is just beautiful. She has some really unique ways of describing things so that I could just picture what she was trying to convey, but never would have thought to say myself. Those lustrous lines of imagery were my favorite part about this collection.

Poetry is kind of a hard thing at least for me to rate since the rules are very different. I'm not judging world building or character development or even grammar, really. A lot of it just came down to personal preference. One thing that is completely a preference thing is that many of the poems were about the speaker addressing a lover they were no longer with, but it wasn't clear to me if it was the same lover in each poem, or if each poem was focused on a different scenario. I wished there had been a bit more variation on the subject matter because sometimes it felt like the different poems were part of a larger one or there would be images that would repeat with slight variations, but didn't feel intentional. Again, all very much personal preference.

I would certainly recommend this book to fans of poetry (Although, you don't have to read poetry exclusively to enjoy Ugly People Beautiful Hearts). Komar's voice is fresh and unique and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of her in the future.



Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Spotlight: From the Sky

About From The Sky:

When Samantha Hunter and her father move to New Mexico, it's a chance to get away from the bittersweet memories of her past and start over. However, the arrival of a dark-haired stranger into her life changes everything. The stranger, a boy, named Lucien introduces Sam to the hidden world of real-life aliens. Redemption and romance follow Sam in her new life as she works to decipher her complicated alien-human relationship and discovers what connects her to this strange alien boy.

About the Author:

J.E. Nicassio is a former freelance writer, MUFON field investigator and the mother of two adult sons based in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since early childhood, she dreamed of creating characters readers could fall in love with while taking them beyond our reality letting them dare to believe in something more beyond the stars. Those dreams were put on hold while she focused on raising her sons as a single mother. She finally listened to the whispers in her mind to pull herself together and make her dreams a reality. She earned two degrees and followed her gut and typed up the courage not to listen to the naysayers and let her fingers be the guide on her keyboard. From The Sky made its debut a few months after the death of her beloved father. She is also the author of Rocky The Rockefeller Christmas Tree and Louis Joseph’s Ooh Rah.
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Author's Blog

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Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Blog Tour: The Courage Series

Jill Daugherty Bio:

Jill Daugherty lives in Denver with Bailey, the world's cutest dog. By day, she works with gifted children and their teachers. By night, she writes. A lot. She is the author of the Courage series, which has received glowing reviews. At the insistence of her readers, she has started work on a spin-off series.

Courage and Other Demons (Book 1) Synopsis:

The end of the world will start in the suburbs of Denver with a faery transfer student from Ireland. If you think that’s totally ridiculous, then you understand how Maggie O’Neill feels. In all of her sixteen years, faeries were something you read about in children’s books. They didn’t actually show up on your doorstep. They didn’t kiss you and make your knees go weak and whisper sweet nothings in your ear. Until Simon Brady, that is. Simon changed everything. He makes her heart race and her skin burn with excitement, but he has also changed her core beliefs about the world and made her see it as a dark and dangerous place filled with monsters that belong only in the lines of faery tales. There is no doubt in Maggie’s mind that she loves Simon, but can she see past who he is and find a place for him in her heart?

Abandoned Courage (Book 2) Synopsis:

Maggie O’Neill had a rough junior year… She fell in love with Simon. She found out Simon was a faery. She spent some time with her dead ancestors. An evil faery with control issues came after her and brought his groupies to kill her. …but that was

nothing compared to what’s in store for senior year. She’s the new girl at faery boarding school and is subjected to something she never thought she’d have to deal with in her entire life—mean girls. To make matters worse, she’s seeing less and less of Simon, her faery guard is smothering her in their efforts to protect her, and the evil faery is still stalking her, determined to kill her before she can kill him. She starts to wonder if she’ll make it to graduation. Then the unthinkable happens and she wonders if she’ll be able to survive even one more day.

Defining Courage (Book 3) Synopsis:

Eighteen-year-old Maggie O’Neill is a high school dropout. If her parents knew, they’d probably kill her, but that’s the least of her worries. Balor—the evil faery from hell—is still stalking her, someone is still betraying her, and the mean girl at school is still mean. The worst part of her life, however, is figuring out how to live it without Simon. Will Maggie discover a way to defeat Balor? Will she ever be able to out-snark the mean girl? Will she find Simon? Tune in next week—uh, read the book—to find out.

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Author Interview + Giveaway: Stephanie and Holland

Mother/Daughter writing team Stephanie Taylor and Holland Burris were kind enough to answer some of my questions today! Please welcome them to the blog.

How did you get the inspiration for your book? (Holland) Well, I think it was last summer, and I wanted to write a story by hand because I didn't know how to type. I asked my mom if she could type it up for me after I wrote it on paper, but then we got an idea to actually make a series together. I got the idea to write stories about different girls from the "American Girl" books. (Stephanie) To add on to that, we sort of quickly jumped from "stories about girls" to "stories about girls who come to America." At the end of last school year, Holland was studying the pioneer experience and was fascinated by that, so I think we felt like writing something contemporary about girls her age, and then mixing in that pioneer spirit, would give us the basis for a really cool series.

Could you talk a bit about your writing process/experience? (Holland) I come up with the big ideas for the characters, and then my mom is good at details. (Stephanie) We sit down together to draft (side-by-side, usually!) and then we talk our way through the scenes as I type. She keeps me in check in terms of what we're saying and doing, and if something seems off for the age of our characters and readers, she lets me know!

If you could jump into the world of your favorite book, who would you be and what would you do? (Holland) Percy Jackson is my favorite! I would be my own character. I like a lot of the characters, but I'd want to be me...and also one of the main heroes of "Heroes of Olympus"! (Stephanie) One of my favorite books ever is "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. The premise is that a man dies over and over again at the exact same moment in time, but each time he wakes up, he comes back as his younger self at a different point in his life. It would be terrifying to wake up over and over again in your own life not knowing when or where you are, but also fascinating to get to relive things with the wisdom and different vantage point that age and experience bring.

Are you currently working on any projects? (Stephanie) We're working on book #2 of the "American Dream Series". Book 1 focuses on Iris from the Netherlands as her family moves to California, but book 2 is about a girl named Mai from Tokyo. Her family moves to Hawaii to help save her aunt and uncle's restaurant, but they're also looking for a fresh start after Mai loses her arm to cancer.

What is something that surprises people about you? (Holland) People are surprised that we're really a mother-daughter team, and that we write books together even though I'm just starting middle school!

What is the most important thing being a writer has taught you? (Holland) In our series of books, it's taught me about being myself. People in middle school want to fit in, but we write about just being yourself, honestly. (Stephanie) Being a writer has taught me to take charge of my own destiny. I've always wanted to write professionally, and I learned that through the magic of indie-publishing, we could get our work out into the world and make it exactly what we want it to be. From there, it's just a combination of luck, tenacity, discipline, and fairy dust.

If your book were made into a movie, what would the tag line on the poster say? "What's YOUR American Dream?"

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email:  redbirdsandrabbits@gmail.com

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Twelve-year-old Iris Beekman loves photography, her family, and her life in Holland. She DOESN’T love having divorced parents, the panic attacks she’s had since Dad left, or the news that her mom just got a job teaching at Stanford University in America. With their beloved grandma in tow, Iris and her siblings move to California with their mom to start their new life. But can Iris’s older brother get his three-part plan to reunite their parents off the ground in time to break up Dad and his girlfriend? Will Iris be able to keep her anxiety in check when Mom starts dating a fellow professor? And will the family pull together or fall apart when tragedy strikes? 

Join Iris as she goes in search of her American Dream.

Author bio:
Stephanie Taylor and Holland Burris are a mother-daughter author team from the Pacific Northwest. Together they write the "American Dream" series about young girls and their families who move to the United States.

Stephanie is a high school teacher who loves sushi, "The Golden Girls", Depeche Mode, orchids, and coffee. Holland is a middle-schooler who swims competitively, loves animals, jumping on the trampoline, making her parents laugh, and every creative aspect of storytelling. 


Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Excerpt: Corvidae

From The Valravn by Megan Fennell

“I mean you no harm,” called a voice from the other side of the door. It was a man’s voice, rich but presently a bit uncertain. “It’s only this dreadful storm, you see… I seem to be a bit turned around in the woods, and I suspect there might be wolves stalking me as well. So I’m afraid you simply must open the door for me or else I’ll be left no alternative but to be killed horribly and bleed all over your quaint little doorstep.”

I didn’t realize my mouth was hanging agape until my mother shot me a stern look and tapped the bottom of her chin. She moved past me to the door, slipping the hatchet under the folds of her apron. When she opened the door, the howling wind threw a lashing of rain into the room, soaking the floor and pulling tendrils of my mother’s hair free from her neat kerchief.

I wasn’t certain if it was the force of the storm or the sight of the stranger on the other side of the door that set her back upon her heels. My eyes were first drawn to his cloak. Even sodden, it was a spectacular thing, bright robin’s egg blue mottled with large silver diamonds. It shimmered as it moved with the wind. His wide-brimmed hat was a more modest black, but trimmed with a broad band of the same blue and silver, and plumed with a flurry of long feathers that wilted in the rain. He swept the hat off to make a bow to my mother, pouring a brimful of water with unfortunate precision onto her feet. Her posture stiffened with disapproval and, despite my nerves I had to cough to cover my giggle.

When the stranger straightened, he was smiling hopefully but I could see him shivering even from where I sat near the fire.

“Rikard the Bard at your service, frau,” he announced.

“A bard,” my mother echoed. Her tone reminded me of the time she’d discovered a drowned squirrel floating in the rain barrel. Rikard seemed to not hear it quite the same way.

“A bard among bards!” he said, sweeping his arms wide. “I’ve performed with my voice echoing through the gilded halls of the Heidelberg and have shouted above the crowds on the meanest streets of Cologne until I brought them to awed silence around me. My ballads of love unrequited have left duchesses in tears and I am veritably pursued for my moving elegies.”

He’d puffed himself up so that even the feathers in his hat seemed to have gained new life, though his teeth were chattering fiercely and his lips were a shade of blue that nearly matched his cloak.

“I thought,” my mother said, “you were pursued by wolves.”

The prideful flair fled from him, leaving him drooping and dripping like an overwatered sapling. When he wasn’t speaking or gesturing wildly, I thought he couldn’t have been more than five years older than me at most.

“The wolves don’t seem to think much of my songs,” he admitted morosely. “I came to the great forest seeking inspiration. As it stands, frau, I would settle for something to eat and an hour to rest out of the rain.”

My mother’s shoulders moved in a sigh I couldn’t hear for the storm, and she stepped back, opening the door for Rikard to come inside. Her hand, the one holding the hatchet, was still hidden under her apron.

“No ballads,” she warned.

Clutching his hat in his hands and ducking slightly to enter the cabin, Rikard nodded earnestly. “Not so much as a limerick without your request, gracious lady. When I write of this place, it will be as a haven of utmost mercy.”

“Or perhaps not at all,” my mother said, and shut the door behind him.

“Perhaps not at all!” Rikard agreed cheerfully. “Is that fresh bread I smell? I’m entirely famished. Oh… hello there.”

This last was addressed to me.

About Corvidae:
A flock of shiny stories! Associated with life and death, disease and luck, corvids have long captured mankind’s attention, showing up in mythology as the companions or manifestations of deities, and starring in stories from Aesop to Poe and beyond. 

In Corvidae birds are born of blood and pain, trickster ravens live up to their names, magpies take human form, blue jays battle evil forces, and choughs become prisoners of war. These stories will take you to the Great War, research facilities, frozen mountaintops, steam-powered worlds, remote forest homes, and deep into fairy tales. One thing is for certain, after reading this anthology, you’ll never look the same way at the corvid outside your window. 

Featuring works by Jane Yolen, Mike Allen, C.S.E. Cooney, M.L.D. Curelas, Tim Deal, Megan Engelhardt, Megan Fennell, Adria Laycraft, Kat Otis, Michael S. Pack, Sara Puls, Michael M. Rader, Mark Rapacz, Angela Slatter, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and Leslie Van Zwol.
Corvidae






Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.