If the Sun Spares Us by Brenda Marie Smith (Spotlight, excerpt, review, and GIVEAWAY) GFT

If the Sun Spares Us

by 

Brenda Marie Smith

 

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GENRE:  Post-apocalyptic thriller 

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BLURB:

 

Two years ago, a solar pulse destroyed modern life. Bea Crenshaw organized her starving, suburban neighbors into a farming community. But now Bea’s gone, and her grandchildren must carry her legacy forward.

In the post-apocalyptic pressure cooker of Austin, Texas, 19-year-old Keno and his younger cousins struggle to ensure their community’s survival even as they’re forced to relocate to safer grounds. Northern Lights that don’t belong this far south grow increasingly intense, making Keno fear what harm the sun will cause next.

Even worse, a marauding militia called the Raiders is closing in, led by a deranged woman who preys on teenage boys. Despite Keno’s debilitating flashbacks from a firefight, he and his wife have a new baby to protect. Though Bea is dead, her spirit desperately searches for ways to shield her grandkids. When Raiders target two neighborhood members, the only hope lies in the community’s strength, Keno’s ingenuity, and the family’s fierce love for one another.

 

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EXCERPT

 

In the next second, thick neon bands of green light shoot into the sky like they’re spewing straight out of the earth at the horizon, the aurora pulsing and soaring hundreds of feet into the air toward the stratosphere. This is nothing like the tame Northern Lights we’ve had off and on over the past year, but crazy-bright and thick and enormous. None of it belongs in Texas. I stare at the lights, getting dizzy from their movement and intensity.

The guys out on the street whistle and shout… I close my eyes to get my bearings.

Residual streaks of light burn my eyeballs and flash across my eyelids, then mutate into the recurring, overly-vivid memories I can’t shake: flaming, screaming boys, falling fiery trees, bursting Molotov cocktails, strafing assault rifles—a hand slaps across my mouth and covers my nose, and Richie’s behind me, yanking me to the ground, hissing, “Shhh! Shhh! Don’t scream.”

“The End of Days is upon us, and we’ve got work to do!” shouts the woman from the street. “Head back north.” The feet start tramping around. “Jonesie, north’s the other way.”

Richie’s pressing so hard on my mouth and nose he’s gonna suffocate me. My tears run over his hand. Flaming bodies still flash before my eyes while green lights burn in the sky overhead…

I grab his hand to yank it off, but he presses harder. I panic. Dude’s gonna kill me.

 

 Buy Links for the Braving the Light Series:

IF DARKNESS TAKES US (Book One):

IF THE LIGHT ESCAPES (Book Two

IF THE SUN SPARES US (Book Three): 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

 

BRENDA MARIE SMITH is attracted to stories where everyday characters transcend their limitations to find their inner heroism. She lived off the grid for years in a farming collective where her sons were delivered by midwives. A lifelong community activist, Brenda has managed student co-op housing, produced concerts, and raised a small herd of boys. She and her husband live in Kyle, Texas. They have more grown kids and grandkids than they can count.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Website

Blog

Twitter: @bsmithnovelist

YouTube

 

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 GIVEAWAY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The tour dates can be found here

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My review:

4 stars

 

"If the Sun Spares Us" is a post-apocalyptic story that is compelling and inspirational, reminding us that we can have hidden strengths that only arise when circumstances force us to access them. The dynamics between various members of the communities are a sobering comment on what happens when life is stripped down to the challenges of survival and learning to work together. It would be nice to have a little more depth to some of the secondary characters, and I think that missing some of the backstory makes some of the interactions between characters a bit more difficult to appreciate, but the story is intriguing nonetheless. I like the mystical element of the grandmother’s connection with young Mazie, and I’m rooting for the continued survival of this resourceful family.

 

A copy of this title was provided for review

The Last Book Ever Written by Jonah Kruvant (VBT, guest post, excerpt) Goddess Fish Tours

The Last Book Ever Written

by Jonah Kruvant

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BLURB:

In a futuristic American society where all citizens have computerized chips in their brains and insert needles into their veins to enter a virtual reality, Victor Vale leads a fairly typical life. He is an officer of the law with greater ambitions, a family man, and a dutiful citizen of the Nation. Yet when The Chief assigns him a case to go undercover and expose a community of illegal “creators,” Victor finds himself strangely compelled to creative writing. For the first time, he starts to question the world around him, and becomes involved in a web of lies, uncertain of whom to trust, and unable to distinguish between virtualism and reality. As he searches for answers, Victor slowly begins to unravel hidden truths about the world, and even uncovers an astonishing secret from his own past.



In order to prove to the “creators” that he is genuine, Victor writes a manuscript, at great risk to his wife and son. When books are banned and ultimately destroyed, Victor realizes that his book alone has survived. Only then does the reader come to a startling realization in a unique narrative twist.





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EXCERPT:

Not long after the Cleansing Act, I was promoted to Detective. I was thirty-four. I had a wife and child to support. A career to pursue. My son wanted things, my wife wanted things; hell, I wanted things. I had worked on the force for thirteen years and it was time I got my detective badge.

That was all I could see back then. I didn’t care about creators.

Then I was assigned to the case. But even before I stepped into the Chief’s office, events began taking shape that marked both the beginning and the end of a new chapter in my life. It was on my way to the police station, wading through the unbearable stench of the dirty human flesh of the Slums, that I began to question things, what I thought I knew about the world … and about myself.

So this is where I start my story. This is where I begin my book.

That day, for whatever reason, I felt conscious of my surroundings. The beggars were pushing each other out of the way to get under awnings and balconies of restaurants and apartments as it started to rain. The restaurants were filled with shattered glass, moldy kitchens. The strongest beggars lived in cramped apartments with cockroaches and termites. The ones that couldn’t find shelter that morning just lay there, shivering from the cold. Some would let raindrops fall from the sky into their open mouths. Two naïve children were chasing each other around bodies and giggling, cleaning dirt out of each other’s hair. The bright lights of the skyscrapers, the swiftness of the skytrain, the convenience of the airpath—all a beggar had to do was look up and he would find himself in a fantastical world of dreams.

Amazon


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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

A writer, teacher and student of the world, JONAH KRUVANT received his BA from Skidmore, his teaching degree from Fordham and an MFA from Goddard College. Jonah lives in New York City. He is the author of The Last Book Ever Written.



Personal website
Facebook



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GIVEAWAY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here

Seventeen by Mark Diehl (GFT)

Seventeen by Mark Diehl

Today I have a guest post from Mark Diehl (who apparently has quite a varied and complicated life and is an inspiration on finding a way to overcome challenges!)



Lessons I learned from my hero (heroine/villain).
by Mark Diehl

I never had a hero. 

Some guys say their dads are their heroes. I remember some lawyer at one of the firms I worked in had a picture of himself and all his brothers lined up with their dad, all holding fish they’d caught. It was behind him on the windowsill as he sat at his desk every day, and I wondered what that must feel like, to have a parent behind him like that. 

I usually visited my father one weekend a month, and he usually worked at his orthodontic office on Saturdays and drove me home on Sundays. In my dad’s family, money was the religion, and they were fanatically devout. Every issue and problem had an easy, automatic solution: Work hard and make a lot of money. It was the only advice he ever gave me.

Of course, I learned from him without his having to teach me. I observed him, drowning out every moment of his life with a screaming television in the background, working around the clock as he saw patients in the daytime and worked their files through the night, always banking that money. I watched him go through sports cars and private airplanes, and observed him standing silently as his wife berated me in the cafeteria line for taking the roast beef instead of the chicken. I got to see Dad and his wife indignantly insist to the neighbors at one of their condos that their full-grown Rhodesian ridgeback, over two feet tall at the head, weighed twenty-five pounds, just like it had on the day they’d agreed to the covenant. The message I got didn’t have to be spoken to be understood: It doesn’t matter how you behave toward people who actually know you, as long as you surround yourself in the trappings of privilege. 

Fortunately, I also observed that he had a pathetic life, and I had no desire to emulate any of that.






BLURB:  

Most of the world's seventeen billion people are unconscious, perpetually serving their employers as part of massive brain trusts. The ecosystem has collapsed, and corporations control all of the world's resources and governments. A bedraggled alcoholic known as the Prophet predicts nineteen year-old waitress Eadie will lead a revolution, but how can she prevail when hunted by a giant corporation and the Federal Angels it directs?



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Excerpt
 
“I know what you did, Sett. There is a Federal Angel with me right now. He wants to talk to you.  He would like to know why you helped some waitress escape after she killed Matt Ricker. Switch to visual. Now.”

He blinked hard and wiped a palm across his forehead. A sickly gray light seemed smeared along the opposite wall, having filtered through the filthy window at the end of the hallway. The floorboards creaked as he shifted his weight.

“Is it true, Sett?” his mother asked. “Why would you get yourself involved in a debacle like that? Why? When everything was going so well for you?”

He stared down at the stained plywood floor, now spotted with teardrops.

“What were you thinking? A waitress? You know better than to go getting messed up with people like that. They’ll drag you right down with them, every time. You come home right now and explain to this Angel exactly what happened; I’m sure he’ll understand. But I’m not going to lie to you. There will still be fallout. Society does not tolerate wretched, uncivilized behavior. I can’t guarantee you’ll be allowed to remain at Fisher.”

“I wasn’t thinking at all, Mother. I was just doing it, all of a sudden.” He sniffed. “She was hurt, and they started it, not her. Nobody else would help. What was I supposed to do? Just let her die?”

“Oh, Sett.” His mother sighed. “Of course you were.”



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AUTHOR INFORMATION:

Mark D. Diehl writes novels about power dynamics and the way people and organizations influence each other. He believes that obedience and conformity are becoming humanity’s most important survival skills, and that we are thus evolving into a corporate species.
Diehl has: been homeless in Japan, practiced law with a major multinational firm in Chicago, studied in Singapore, fled South Korea as a fugitive, and been stranded in Hong Kong.

After spending most of his youth running around with hoods and thugs, he eventually earned his doctorate in law at the University of Iowa and did graduate work in creative writing at the University of Chicago. He currently lives and writes in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.


Author’s Website: http://www.markddiehl.com


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GIVEAWAY

$50 Amazon or BN gift card

  a Rafflecopter giveaway



Other stops on the tour can be found at this link