Man Down by Tracy Tappan (review) ADULT title

Man Down
by Tracy Tappan



Man Down by Tracy Tappan is Book 3 in the ‘Wings of Gold’ series, that is first and foremost military fiction, with some romance interspersed. This particular tale focuses on Lieutenant Commander Jason Vanderby as he tries to survive after being blindsided by a horrific attack. He is joined in his arduous journey by his estranged former best friend, Shane Madden, and Dr. Farrin Barr. They have to depend on each other through a crucible of challenges, and survive long enough to work through their past and present traumas in order to have any kind of meaningful future.

This is a thrill-filled, suspenseful tale that starts with a description of the intense challenges faced to become a SEAL and ratchets up higher and higher throughout the story. Told through three points of view, this glimpse of the stamina and courage required to survive in a war zone is full of violence and savagery yet is leavened by the emotion and complicated relationships shared by the three main characters. The history between the two males, Jason and Shane, is revealed gradually in a counterpoint to the revelations of Farrin’s past while the intense action accompanying their struggle for survival keeps the reader invested in their story.

I love the realism this author brings to her stories even as I ache at the experiences that form the framework for her repertoire. The ability to draw the reader in and allow insight into the daily tragedies and heartbreak that is compartmentalized to allow these brave soldiers to continue fighting for our freedom and safety is a remarkable gift that she shares unstintingly. Those who have triggers should be forewarned that there is considerable grisly violence, including a heartwrenching execution of a family pet.

This is a story that you want to start only if you have plenty of time, because once you start, you will be immersed in a thrilling and vivid adventure that will keep you up late at night while you cheer, groan, and bite your nails, willing things to turn out positively. Those unfamiliar with the series will have no problem reading this as a stand-alone story, but will undoubtedly be gladdened to discover there are more alpha males to read about when this book is finished. Enjoy the adventure, I am sure there are plenty more to look forward to!


A copy of this story was provided to me for review, a version of which has been offered to Night Owl Reviews


Amazon link



                             

The Long Night by Jessica Scott (spotlight and review)

The Long Night

by Jessica Scott

Release date:  May 16, 2016


Blurb:

Whatever it takes, just come home to me. Promise me, Sam.

In eight months, Staff Sergeant Sam Brown will become a father. But first, he has to survive his fourth tour in Iraq. On his last night home, he tries to pretend that everything is fine, that the war is fine, that his life is fine.

But as he returns to the war zone, things are anything but fine and the promise he made to his fiancé takes on a desperate edge. As things spiral down, Sam starts to wonder about that promise.

How high is the price he will pay when the long night comes to an end?


Excerpt:

He didn’t touch Hale’s letter. The white envelope stood out against the dusty surface, pristine in the dirt except for one corner that had a smudged fingerprint.

Sam sat on the edge of his bed, one leg bouncing as he tried to figure out why this mission was bothering him as much as it was. Something wasn’t sitting right. Not at all. He was usually better at figuring these problems out but whenever he was stuck in the past, he’d bounce his thoughts off First Sarn’t Gnash.

And Gnash was gone because he hadn’t kissed the right ring.

So Sam sat and ran the mission through his head. Turned it around and looked at it from another angle. It was something about the location of the TAC. Why did it have to be so close to that building identified as having women and children in it? Why so close to that mosque?

Maybe he should get another look at the terrain. Maybe the commo guys knew something he didn’t, but it didn’t seem to make sense that they needed to be in that specific building in that specific neighborhood. There were always other options. Why not in this case?

His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was closing in on dinner. If he missed dinner, he’d have nothing but an MRE until the mission was completed. It would be just his luck that it would end up being the MRE ham slice or the omelet. That would be nasty. If he were hungry enough, it would taste like a porterhouse. But on three previous deployments, he’d never gotten that hungry.

There was always a first time.

He glanced at that fucking envelope and wished that Hale had given it to someone else. He snatched it out of the dust and shoved it in the drawer and hoped he’d never have to take it out again.

He paused before shutting the door. A deep disquiet slithered across the base of his spine. He should call Faith. He suddenly wanted very much to hear her voice.

He glanced at his watch. He had time to swing through the call center on his way to chow. If he didn’t get through to her, he’d have to wait until after the mission to try and call her again.

He closed the drawer and slapped his patrol cap on his head. He stuffed a Nutri-Grain bar in his pocket in case the chow hall was packed. He hated hanging out in the lines and the crowds. He hated listening to the Fobbits bitch and complain when the chow hall was out of their favorite food even more. They had no idea how good they had it. Fobbits never had to go out in sector, never had to risk their ass to get basic chow. They never left the damn base.

He headed back through the Jersey barrier maze that led past the company ops and back toward the call center. A massive armored vehicle rumbled past on the other side of the barrier. The new supposedly bombproof vehicles were still a rare sight. They were giant compared to the more familiar track vehicles, but according to the powers that be, they were more resilient when it came to withstanding blasts.

Sam hoped they’d get more. Soon. The last thing he wanted to do was die in the coffin of a Bradley, especially if another vehicle could withstand some of the massive blasts they’d been subjected to lately. The bomb makers were getting more skilled. Which meant that even if Sam thought this mission was the worst idea ever, he was going to figure it out. Clearing out the bomb makers might mean one more of his boys or someone else’s troopers would get to go home in one piece.

He rounded a corner as the armored vehicle rumbled off. He glanced into one of the bunkers, then did a double take. The dog was there, lying in the shade. Her head was propped against the cement and her sides were heaving as she panted hard.

He wanted to keep walking. He wanted to ignore her obvious hunger. But he couldn’t look away from the abject misery in her eyes. Her paws were too big for the rest of her body. She probably weighed thirty pounds when she should weigh fifty. Pity, far too familiar, rose inside him. Goddamned pity was going to get someone else killed. He couldn’t stop the sympathy from overwhelming his good sense. He felt bad for the damn dog. If she was mousing, she was working damn hard for any meals she might manage to catch.

He pulled the Nutri-Grain bar out of his pocket. No one was around to see him break his own rule about feeding the stupid dog. He felt the weight of his own hypocrisy deep in his bones as he tore the thin foil wrapper open and shook the bar into his hand. It crumbled into his palm.

The dog lifted her head, watching him warily. She looked like she’d been kicked one too many times. He wasn’t about to get close enough to hand her the bar, that was for damn sure. He’d never hear the end of it if he got bit after bitching at Lewis and Hale about the friggin’ mutt.

She tensed as he crept a little closer. He wanted to toss it into the bunker to keep anyone from seeing it if she refused the meal. He was sure one of the mice would drag it off if she didn’t eat it.

He hoped she didn’t have any puppies. Starving puppies might send him over the edge of shit he couldn’t deal with in this godforsaken war. It was a futile wish. She wouldn’t have the empty sacs on her belly if she hadn’t recently whelped. He inched closer until he was just at the edge of the bunker.

She rolled over and crouched on all fours, her head down. Her hackles rose slowly, one by one, until her back was rigid and stiff. Fear closed off Sam’s throat. He’d never get his weapon raised in time to shoot her. Forcing himself to move, he tossed her the bar and held up his hands. He backed away as she crept forward until the bar was between her front paws. Her lips curled. Her growl rumbled deep in her throat.

He never took his eyes from her as he rounded the corner. He moved out at double time as soon as he was out of sight. He refused to look behind him, even as the back of his neck tingled with the primitive fear of being chased. His spine tingled as he ran, waiting for the sound of claws clicking on the gravel to announce his demise.

He kept running despite the shiver that ran down his back and clenched his balls. He knew, knew, that if he turned around he’d see her loping behind him, a predator toying with her prey, her jaws opening to snap on his neck.

He rounded a barrier and finally dared to look back. A shadow disappeared behind the cement, but he saw nothing else. No wild dog was chasing him. Nothing but shadows from the setting sun and dust dancing on the rays.

He was safe.

So why did he feel like he was still being watched?

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My review:

4.25 out of 5 stars

In “The Long Night: A Novel of Suspense”, a military fiction story with paranormal elements by Jessica Scott, Staff Sergeant Sam Brown returns to Iraq for his fourth tour of duty, leaving behind his pregnant fiancée, Faith, who has extracted his promise that he WILL return.  Will the price he pays with body and soul be enough to allow him to fulfill that vow?

This tale is a somewhat unsettling but captivating look at the dark and painful effects wrought by war on the minds and bodies of soldiers caught up in the moral and ethical dilemmas they face while trying stay alive in a violent conflict.  This author provides a sobering verisimilitude to her stories that are undoubtedly mined from experiences she and those around her have faced. 

The contrast between the joy of knowing that he is going to be a father and the hell that Staff Sergeant Sam Brown has already experienced plus the new challenges and life-threatening situations he returns to is vividly portrayed.  His fiancée, Faith, tries to live up to her name but has her own superstitious stipulations to bring him back home safely to his family.  Sam must struggle with evil personified and the overwhelming stress of following orders, being true to his self and to his men, and surviving to deal with the decisions he has made in the field. The eerie events that mark his fourth tour underscore the question that is posed:  “You tell me if it’s possible to go to war and stay a good man.”

Those who are fans of Jessica Scott know that she provides gritty realism in her stories, but readers of this particular tale should be warned that this is not a feel-good romance but rather a darker and more eldritch tale of the horrors of war that can change a person so much that “Home…wasn’t, anymore” and reminds us of why “Everyone wanted to cheer the soldier on.  No one wanted to actually be the soldier.”  The story is well written, but definitely a sobering look at the horrific cost being paid both by those who fight our battles in distant lands and those who wait for them at home.

A copy of this title was provided to me for review

The Riesa Series: Teufel and New Austrian Order by LD Towers (VNBtM, guest post, excerpt and GIVEAWAY) GFT

I have the pleasure of a guest post by LD Towers, who answers my question about her writing process.



 

LDT:  My writing process is simple. I sit down and write. I’m not a person who gets into the whole ‘outline’ and ‘character mapping’ thing. While I don’t want to judge anyone else’s method, I think that a lot of new writers get really bogged down in making files and not spending enough time writing. Go out and write, people!

When I wrote Teufel I was on sick leave, and I made a concerted effort not to let myself out of the house until I had done 10, 1.5 space, Garamond 12 pt. pages on the days I could write. I suppose that would be about 5-6000 words. I wrote Teufel in 4 months. It clocked in at 287k words after the edits, though I think it was only about 250k words the first time through.

Now, when I’m having a writing day, I try to do 2k words. That can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 5, depending on how much research or thinking I need to do that day. Because I write historical fiction, I try to do a lot of research into my topics. My Riesa series is almost entirely documentable, and I’m rather proud of that. There is the odd thing here and there, but I spend a lot of time looking things up- probably too much time some days.

In my upcoming work, Curse of the Devourers, which is was supposed to be a pulp fiction vampire story, I realised I needed back story and a reason for why vampires existed. I hate the explanation ‘because they do!’ Suddenly I’m up to my eyeballs in early Christian and Jewish mysticism and my pulp fiction novel is turning into Bram Stoker meets Dan Brown! I was explaining it all to my mother and she said, ‘You just can’t make it simple, can you?’ That would be a ‘nope!’

My favourite place to think is either in the shower or on a walk. When I was in university, one of my fellow students told me how she liked to shower with the lights off when she was studying for finals. I tried it and WOW! It’s like sensory deprivation  of a kind. Nothing to look at, and you can only hear the white noise of the water. My brain can be anywhere. For the same reason, I also like to write in the dark at night. Sometimes this isn’t practical, but it gets rid of the world around me.

Walking 5km with my favourite tunes in can also help me hammer out a scene. No computer, no distractions, just me and my thoughts. That is usually when I will pick the song I write too. I always write to music. I have several playlists of ‘mood’ music of what I’m writing about- sometimes it is contemporary to what I’m writing and sometimes not. I have a truly obsessive collection of music from 1898 to 1950. I also have my modern music because sometimes that’s what you need.

But often I will pick THE song, of either a plot arc, or the entire book, and I will play that song for hours on repeat while I’m writing. When I finally heard Adele’s Hello, that became a perfect song for Curse. It’s been played 73 times on my computer so far. Also high on my ‘obsessively writing through a chapter playlist are… Taylor Swift’s Blank Space, Rob Dougan’s Clubbed to Death, Hozier’s Take me to Church, Caro Emerald’s Dr. Wanna do and Guns and Roses’ Sympathy for the Devil. It’s a bit eclectic… but then so am I!

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Teufel and New Austrian Order

by LD Towers

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GENRE: Military fiction

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BLURB:

BLURB FOR New Austrian Order:

1938. Germany is moving faster than Standartenführer Hagen Kohl thought possible. Sent down to Vienna to investigate a potential threat to Hitler’s plans for Austria, Hagen is drawn in to an aristocratic world he’s never encountered before. Without Hauptsturmführer Eugen Friesler at his side, Hagen is in more danger than he could have imagined as he hunts for a shadowy organization called the New Austrian Order. Back in Germany, Galiena von Steinberg returns to Riesa and the von Steinberg Gesellschaft, but taking over the reins of her Grandfather’s empire comes with many challenges. Can she protect her family holdings while keeping true to the new sense of self she has worked so hard to find?

BLURB FOR Teufel :

Against the politically charged background of Nazi Germany's police state, Standartenführer Doctor Hagen Kohl is trying to carve out a profession for himself in the SS. A middle class intellectual with a doctorate in Literature, Hagen is a an investigator who hunts criminals within the party apparatus itself. Hagen justifies everything by his personal code and patriotism, unable to see the flaws of the regime he serves. When he is ordered to investigate members of the army, he discovers patriotism is entirely a matter of perspective. His eyes are further opened by exposure to Galiena von Steinberg; an aristocrat whose own experiences bring him into the entanglements and intrigues at the highest levels of Third Reich society.

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EXCERPT

New Austrian Order

The parade ground was large, and all about there were people. The SS men, in their black uniforms, and the camp guards in their grey seemed drab on the sunny square. There were so many, trailing behind Himmler like a flock of crows. Galiena hated that analogy, but it seemed so appropriate. Here and there she saw people she assumed to be prisoners, in their black and white horizontal striped suits, and grotesquely shaved heads. They almost reminded her of larvae, their scalps so pale in the light. One man turned and stared at her, the bright splash of colour that she was, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then his face dropped back to his toiling in the black earth of the flowerbeds near the Administration building. The place was so dour. So grey. In her scarlet, echoed only in the swastika flag on the flag pole, she must look like a drop of blood on a piece of slate.

Himmler moved to intercept her, his eyes shining with something she couldn’t define. In this place he was a thousand feet tall, and his knowledge of his power emanated from him in waves. The men trailing after him followed his every movement and gesture. When he smiled, so did they, when he laughed, they echoed, and the moment he stopped, there was silence behind him. Galiena had never seen this Himmler. This was the Reichsführer-SS, and his power was consuming. His eyes met hers, as he clicked his heels and bowed his head before her. When the peak of his hat came up again, he was smiling; warmly and broadly. More the man of her acquaintance, but the look in his eyes seemed to mock her. This Himmler was a predator and he was in his lair with all his sycophants around to admire his magnificence.

Amazon link for Teufel


Amazon link for New Austrian Order

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

LD Towers travels the world like a rootless vagabond! A military historian, she searches out places of conflict to find a deeper insight to the things she writes about. Presently enjoying the warm weather and azure seas of Central America, she has lived all over Western Europe, including 5.5 years in the incomparable Berlin.

Primarily working in Historical and Military Fiction, LD sometimes sneaks in the odd Dystopian or Modern Thriller piece. Also look for a series of novellas about the despicable yet intriguing Meinrad von Steinberg from the Riesa Series, coming in fall 2015.

Website

Twitter: @L_D_Towers

FB

Amazon author page

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