Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Blood and Spirits by Dennis Sharpe Interview & Giveaway


Blood and Spirits
   The Coming Storm
   Book One
   Dennis Sharpe

Genre: Paranormal Thriller

Publisher: Booktrope Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-62015-595-0

Number of pages: 220

Cover Artist: Shari Ryan

Book Description:

Small-town life can be hard for a dead girl…

For Veronica Fischer the night to night life of a bloodsucking madam in Middle America is tough enough before she adopts Rachel Gregory, an eight year old ghost.

After her house is set on fire and Rachel disappears, all signs point to foul play. When she finds herself with a hit out on her unlife and warrants for her arrest, it becomes clear she’s going to need help.

Now she has to contend with horny zombies, violent spirits, and murderous grave robbers if she’s ever going to find Rachel and discover the awful truth of the coming storm.

A raucous ride through the dangerous lives of the lecherous undead.




Excerpt:
Chapter 1

I’m told it’s an oddity that I still sleep.  It only comes in short bursts, no more  than forty-five minutes at a time. Most others with my condition, and I have only known a handful, tell me they don’t sleep anymore. Some of them haven’t in more than five decades. I can’t imagine the hell that must be. Even in my brief moments of rest, I still dream and in that I find relief. Even if the dreams aren’t what I like, they are still an escape.
The soft thickness of my comforter envelops me as I relax back into bed. Before I’m completely awake, my mind begins to unfold, opening to the world around me. In the distance, the fog is rolling in off the river, dense and blanketing, its vaporous fingers right there on the edges of my consciousness. The night is cool, and the last lights of the dying day dance across my ceiling, reflected from the crystals hanging in my window. The light tinkle as they sway into each other is a reassuring sound; the beautiful prisms they cast, a blessing. Not one night comes that I don’t wake to thank Jules for having the windows in this house ‘treated’. I can actually see the sun, even if I can’t be out in it.


About the Author:

Born and raised in the middle of the American Midwest, Dennis Sharpe has been a writer as long as he can remember. His mother has told many people about the fantasy and science fiction stories he'd write on scraps of paper, and staple together as his 'books', before he'd attended his first day of formal education.
He has spent many late nights at diners and dives, drinking coffee with a tattered notebook to put a voice to his feelings of himself and the world around him, and other worlds that can exist only in fiction. The voices in his head don't ever stop talking to him, and so sooner or later he has to get out onto a page all that they've filled him up with.

Inspired by Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Miller, Chrissie Pappas, Charles Bukowski, Stephen King, Issac Asimov, and countless classic literary influences, Dennis continues with the ability to write what at a glance might seem absurd, but quickly begins to resonate with our own thoughts and emotions. He writes people we know, love we've known and lost (and found again), and places we've been in our lives and in our heads. Even his fictional characters and worlds carry enough of the grey areas we experience in day-to-day life, to let us find the truth in his words, no matter how fantastic.

These days he can be found still writing, drinking coffee with friends, or spending time with his children (the true joys of his life), in Western Kentucky.

Interview

Where are you from?

I almost feel like this is a trick question. Not deliberately, you understand, but it's not an easy question to answer – not and feel like I'm being accurate.

I was born in Paducah, Kentucky. I lived in Paducah until I was about 9 and then my mother began to move. I saw Illinois, Arizona, and then thanks to my Grandfather I saw a little bit of most of the states that sit in between the two.

As an adult I've lived in Chicago, Columbia, DC, Houston, L.A., the New York area briefly, and many other places for weeks or months at a time. I'm kind of a child of the US – a child of travel.

Tell us your latest news?

My latest news? Well, let's see… Blood & Spirits has been sitting pretty consistently on Amazon's Hot New Releases list for Vampire Thrillers… holding down the #2, and #4 solts for the digital and print editions. That's new and exciting for me.

I'm also really proud to be publishing with Booktrope, releasing Blood & Spirits, and the other two books in the series very shortly.

On a non-publishing related note, my oldest son, Arol, just got engaged to his high school sweetheart. That's an exciting development.

When and why did you begin writing?

I started writing right before my fifth birthday. Science fiction stories about the invasion of earth and the brave human pilots who fought and died trying to deflect their onslaught were my earliest fare.
I wrote everything that happened from my childhood into my teens and twenties down, and sometimes performed (as spoken word pieces) those things on stage.

I went to school, as part of a screenwriting program, and began to tell stories in earnest.
It wasn't until 2010, when I was 33, that I began to write anything that could be considered a "novel".

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I've considered myself a hack writer since I was a child. As long as I can remember, really, I've been a writer. I haven't been an author or a playwright or a reporter… but I've always been a writer.

What inspired you to write your first book?

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg . Sounds cheesy, right?

I was raised in the generation of the original Star Wars films and the Indiana Jones films, add to that E.T. and Close Encounters, then a light dusting of cartoons (essentially toy ads with thin plotlines), bake at the ridiculous temperatures of young imagination… and voilà!

Since then there have been many, many inspirations. Neil Gaiman and Kurt Vonnegut are likely the two biggest.

Do you have a specific writing style?

I usually try to use the "one word in front of the next" method.

How did you come up with the title?

The title was just an extension of the story. It just seemed to fit the tale I was telling, as I was telling it.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
How much of the book is realistic?

Well, I try to approach everything I write from as realistic a point of view as I can. That being said, there are vampires, ghosts, zombies, magic, and other realms featured in the book… so… I tried to make them seem as realistic as I felt I could. I address everything I write as though it were real, because in the world that story takes place in, it is reality.

Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

In the sense that writers write what they know… yes. However, it must be said that even the things in Blood & Spirits that have some basis in actual fact or experience, are highly exaggerated. While there are grains of truth and glimpses of actual emotions in this story… it is a fantasy tale of vampires, ghosts, and zombies… told in the way I felt did the genres the most justice and framed them in a reality that I felt they could best exist within. That reality is, most certainly, not the one we live in.

What books have most influenced your life most?

Lord of the Flies? Neverwhere? 1984?

There are a lot of books that have influenced my work, but not very many that have influenced my life. Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut have both done a lot, at an early age for me, to impact the way I see the world around me. I don't think they really influenced my life the way the people I've dealt with, both positively and negatively, first hand have done.

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

If you are asking for a writer whose work I look up to, and whose career I follow, the answer is Neil Gaiman. If you are asking about a writer who is an actual mentor – someone who I talk to, take advice from, and look up to – then it has to be Rachel Thompson. 

What book are you reading now?

I'm currently reading You, by Caroline Kepnes, and Broken Places, by Rachel Thompson.

Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

Allie Burke! If you haven't read Paper Souls – her 2014 release – then you are doing yourself a disservice. I cannot stress that enough.

What are your current projects?

Honestly, there are too many for me to list them all. The highlights?

I'm putting together a funding package for a web series based on my novel Wednesday, starring the phenomenally talented Hayley Kavic.

I'm doing my final edits on Distant Thunder (Book Two in The Coming Storm trilogy), Saturday Night To Infinity, and expanding the draft of Mitch Will vs. The Queen of Evil and Her Space Zombies!



What would you like my readers to know?

Wow! That's a big question. I guess I'd like them to know that if they like Blood & Spirits then there is much more to come from me in that world. I'd also like them to know that I'm not a one trick pony – meaning that I have books in several genres out, and coming out, as well as projects in visual media coming as well. It's also fair to say that I'd like them to know that if they read or watch anything that I create… that I appreciate them. I appreciate, sincerely all feedback (positive and negative) in all formats. I don't create in a vacuum, and I'm supremely aware that without readers and viewers then what I do is really without purpose. So, I thank any of them who help give me that purpose for what I love to create.    


Twitter: @witlesslackey


Tour giveaway

5 ebook copies of Blood and Spirits

1 paperback copy Blood and Spirits US Shipping Only




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