Tag Archives: horror

Books worth checking out, Liquid Friday with Eden Freed, My Book, soccer mom updates

All Tied Up In Knots Series New Release

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Sometimes it takes a while to get to get the e-books up and approved, but this one sailed through. I’m hoping the paperback will be released soon, but in the meantime I’m so excited to share this with you.

Knot A Psychic, is book number 9 of the All Tied Up In Knots Series. It is the third full length book and a crossover book between the All Tied Up In Knots Series and the Help Wanted Romance Series (supernatural & monster books). I wanted a fun way to mix things things up in time for Halloween, so I hope you love this book as much as I do.

Many of you know me from my side job as a Psychic Reader. I’ve always had a love of all things carnival. I think I have Seaside Heights and Six Flags to blame for my cheap thrills addiction. Now, I chase carnivals, whether its for the beautiful belly dancers, clever balloon twisters, candy floss (cotton candy) and sweet makers, henna artists, or other entertainers who knows, I love them all.

Having worked with many other entertainers over the years has given me some insight into the personalities behind the performance. Instead of killing the magic, it has done the opposite and I often find myself making pilgrimages to one faire or another for the rush of adrenaline fueled by thrill rides and excited screams.

My children are equally big on cheap thrills and we get season passes for places I know they’ll stay from the time they open until they shut down for the night. Whether it’s a magician or the thrill of lit up carnival rides after dark that get’s you, you know that feeling of excitement.

Before the big venues shut down for the season, I’m going to go on one more roller coaster (as soon as the weather lifts) and maybe have one last candy apple before Halloween.

Now, back to the book… Knot A Psychic

Here is the blurb:

Mystic, psychic reader extraordinaire, can help everyone else with their troubles but is completely lost when it comes to her own messy life. Her whisperers offer advice but she can’t force people to bend themselves to her will and change the future for the better. It cost her the love of her life, Mike, because he refused to listen to her pleas and succumbed to injuries caused by a motorcycle accident. Bereft, Mystic decides to live her life out alone, away from people.

Johnathon Riley convinces him to do one more gig, an annual event for charity. Chaos ensues, when a serial murderer comes to destroy the only person who might be able to identify him, Mystic. Together with Detective Steve Turner, Mystic is determined to flesh out the criminal, even though it means attending a BDSM event on a cruise under a different identity with no way out if things go wrong.

Ghoulish fun at Six Flags in Jackson, NJ

Since I always include a segment about the author and a recipe, let’s combine the two. I’m a huge fan of apple picking and apple cider-hot, cold, with alcohol… doesn’t matter-just love the stuff. Since I’ve picked up a gallon of apple cider which will last about a day with the imps in the house. It’s cocktail time for me.

Top Shelf Caramel Apple Cocktail-’cause you deserve the good stuff

Ingredients:

Ice

Apple Slices for Garnish

Chopin or Belvedere Vodka

Butterscotch Liqueur

Apple Liqueur

Apple Cider (to taste)

Caramel Drizzle

Fill tall glass with ice and add equal portions (1/2 jigger of each) of Vodka, Butterscotch Liqueur, and Apple Liqueur. Add apple cider to taste and drizzle over caramel for that syrupy sweet taste. Garnish with a slice of orchard fresh apple and serve.

Books worth checking out, Liquid Friday with Eden Freed, My Book

Just In Time for Halloween Reading

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Desperately Seeking Vampire Hunter: A Help Wanted Romance (Help Wanted Romance Series Book 2) has been published and we’re pleased as punch, cranberry punch to be precise (recipe below).

Cranberry Punch for your Halloween Party (see recipe below)

About the Author:

Since it’s me, I’ll be candid. I am a beach loving Jersey girl with a spooky obsession. I blame all those books on cryptozoology and monsters that I read as a child for making me the lady that’s just bat-shit crazy over Halloween.

Even before the autumnal equinox, I’m busy as a bee preparing for Halloween. It’s my absolute favorite holiday and I kinda put a spooky twist on everything, even my favorite treat- candy apples.

When you are a fulltime writer and Mom to a large family, you learn to make due and save the splurges for science center memberships and walking sticks for our hikes. Instead of buying overpriced costumes, I let the imps pick out cool weapons and implements (gotta have swords) and make more unique costumes for Halloween with the aid of a sewing machine (or 3) we use year round for alterations and my ebay store (paying for the tiny sickly canid monster’s medical care with my earnings).

This year my youngest imp, Soph, decided to make his own costume and I couldn’t be prouder. I supervised while he picked out a pattern, shopped for fabric (coupons, coupons, coupons), and read the instructions to prepare himself. He pinned and cut everything out and slowly the garment began to take shape. There was a small accident with pinking sheers that left a little hole as he was trimming his edges, but he patched it up and you can’t tell even up close. Costume finished, he put it on and paraded around the house, victorious.

His older brother Esteban found some cool weapons in one of the many Halloween stores we visited. Spirit Halloween is his favorite store and he will probably stop by every one within a two hours drive of our home-it’s an obsession. This year he needs a black cape for his costume and is now completely out of children’s sizes that we have at home, so it may give Soph an extra sewing project to do before Halloween.

Unless it’s raining, the plan is to put our the big folding table complete with spooky tablecloth, the black flame candle, the book, and wait for a virgin to arrive-or something like that. We will have safe spooky treats like spider rings and candy for the thirty to fifty trick-or-treaters brave enough to stop by and let me ooh and ahh over their costumes.

This will be my first year having two crazy canids (dogs) to dress for Halloween and I haven’t even started on their costumes yet, so I have to play catch-up now and come up with something truly brilliant. Wish me luck.

Book Blurb:

After finding her twin brother murdered, Madison hunts down the suspected killers, only to find out they are vampires. She gets subdued, captured, and placed on trial by the Conclave. She knows too much to be allowed to live, but they seem hesitant to just kill her outright. Gabriel, one of the Obsidians, a group of Conclave’s enforcers, saves her life by offering to keep her captive for the rest of her life or until she willingly chooses to become a vampire.

She vows to kill them all, even the one who saved her life, while she bides her time and plots to escape. Madison would put a stake in his heart, but the longer she is around him the deeper Maddie falls in love with him.

To help put the ghost of her murdered brother to rest, despite never finding his body, Madison participates in his memorial celebration and all hell breaks loose as werewolves, bent on world domination, crash the event.

Will Maddie ever find out what happened to her brother’s body? Will she kill every last member of the Conclave or spend eternity with Gabriel?

A word from the Author, Eden Freed:

I hope you get to read Desperately Seeking Vampire Hunter: A Help Wanted Romance (Help Wanted Romance Series Book 2). Yes, Autumn is still in there, but we have switched focus to Madison for this book. I have some more fun in store for Book 3 and even bigger plans for the series. If you have KU, you’ll get to read them all for FREE. I’ve kept the price down for eBooks and you can always order a signed copy from me or get yours at one of my book signing events. If you’re saving your money for Halloween costumes and candy, ask your library to order a copy.

I always appreciate likes, stars, and shares for both the blog and the books, so thanks for making this Jersey girl smile. It take a lot of juggling squeezing in writing time with two amazing dogs and five busy children, but you keep me motivated, thanks. Enjoy the recipe below.

Cranberry Punch Recipe: Perfect for Cocktails, Mocktails, and little Monsters at the door

Ingredients:

64 ounces Cranberry Juice (cran-grape or sugar-free work great, too)

1 liter Gingerale or Lemon Lime Soda(can be sugar-free)

Juice of 1 lime

Juice of 1 lemon

Optional: Gummy spiders, gummy worms, and gummy bugs to adorn glasses, eyeball ice cubes look cool floating in the punch.

Optional: Add 1/2 liter of your favorite vodka and 8 oz blackberry brandy for partygoers over 21

Instructions:

Mix ingredients in a large punch bowl with plenty of ice and serve. Have some Gummy body parts, eyes, spiders, worms… to adorn glasses for extra fun.

Caution: If serving children and adults, make it alcohol free. Children tend to try everything at a party, so its safer to stick with a mocktail. You’ll be certain adults can drive their children back home safely, if they haven’t ingested alcohol. If it’s only an adults party and you are drinking, pre-plan transportation (party bus, Uber, Lyft…), so everyone is as safe as can be. DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE

Have a Safe and Spooky Halloween!

Books worth checking out, My Book, soccer mom updates

In Favor of Horror Fans Everywhere

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I think most of us began as fearless children, the ones that wanted to jump the highest on the trampoline, swing highest, build a ramp and take it at top speed, sit on the edge of a cliff and looked down, rode the Cyclone as many times as they’d let us in a row(trust me it was a lot)… we set the bar high.

What separated us from the rest of the pack wasn’t a lack of imagination of the bad things that could happen with our stunts. To the contrary, we probably had the best imaginations of the horrors that could occur, we just didn’t let fear stop us. We didn’t let anything stop us. We ate that fear like it was sugar coated cereal on a Saturday morning.

While our friends cringed and covered their eyes, ours were wide open. We waited for that little terror to make us giggle and make us feel alive. We were the first to tell spooky stories by the campfire and approached Halloween with religious reverence. (Still the best day of the year)

We played out Horror movies in backyards and parks and got into character, complete with black trash bag capes and weird smelling leftover plastic Halloween masks. The thrill was everything.

And with classic horror movies like Nosferatu, The thing With Two Heads, Mars Needs Women, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher, the Phantom of the Opera… we got hooked on the terror and the monster themselves. In the 1908’s we saw so many great monster movie remakes. They were brilliant and we were so ready for them.

Then came slasher movies like the Nightmare on Elm Street, Sleepaway Camp, Halloween. Puppet Master… How many of us bought that Freddy Krueger glove and sat in the movie theater for the third or fourth time scaring the wits out of unsuspecting people? Okay, I did but it was all in fun.

We’ve watch so many great vampire films like Near Dark, the Hunger, the Lost Boys, Fright Night… and laughed at so many cheesy ones like Modern Vampires, Vampire’s Kiss, Subspecies, My Best Friend is A Vampire, Vamp… while we were reading incredible books like Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (we’ll chat about that movie later).

And we ate up movies with jump scares like Poltergeist, the Evil Dead, Pet Sematary, the Exorcist, IT, Cujo, the Descent, Hell House and others because we couldn’t get enough. It’s in our blood.

Highschool ended and I packed up my things (movie posters included) to take with me to college. The first day I went room to room knocking on every door trying to find all the horror film fans I could and I brought out my shoebox of vhs horror films and we sat and giggled our asses off watching them. They were also the same group that went to comic book conventions and got the very best vampire/monster/horror comics, some wrapped in brown paper for mature audiences only-but they got them all the same in vinyl bags with backboards or cruised the mall for the bookstores and read every scary word they could find. You know your people and where to find them.

Now we are streaming horror films and playing the audio in our cars or as ringtones on our phones and why not? It’s all in fun, right? Break out the popcorn for viewers in the back while we drive to the latest horror film, horror book signing, vampire convention, book store hunt, or other dark broody adventure.

So, in that same adventurous giddy horror bound spirit, I give you Autumn Ravenwood, our heroine in Desperately Seeking Vampire: Help Wanted Romance Series now available free on Amazon KU, for ebook or paperback purchase. https://www.amazon.com/Desperately-Seeking-Vampire-Wanted-Romance-ebook/dp/B0CLXV6GNG?

If your the choosy connoisseur and prefer a signed copy, those will be available directly from me at Vampires of New Jersey Convention on November 18, 2023 from 2p to 8p at QXT’s Night Club, 248 Mulberry St, Newark, NJ.

I think we’re going to have a fabulous day with lots of people in the horror movie industry, writers, vampires… who knows. You don’t want to miss it, so get your tickets https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vampires-of-new-jersey-convention-tickets-655033150787

I’m going to be there and we’re going to have some fun, talk about horror films, books, comics… Promise I’ll keep the Freddy Krueger glove at home, so the scares will have to come from someone else this time (maybe).

Claire will be vending jewelry to die for and I’m going to have some kooky things like filled coffins, goodies, give aways, and we’ll also have Deserie Kelly’s Zodiac Shifters books.

What’s your absolute favorite horror film?

Liquid Friday with Eden Freed

Liquid Friday with author Brian McKinley

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This week we are featuring  paranormal suspense author Brian McKinley and his  Authors Talk About It 2016 Horror Novel Contest Grand Prize Winning novel :  Drawing Dead.  We will also take a look at Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (Order Saga Book 1)

But before we indulge in the succulent pages of his books, let us find out what drink does Brian recommend for our readers on Friday night.

“My favorite drink is Diet Mt. Dew mt-dew

but Faolan’s favorite drink is a blood-and-scotch, no ice. The scotch acts as an anti-coagulant for the blood, which needs to be in there. When vampyrs drink straight alcohol, it is too astringent and leads to dehydration. ”

scotch

As good as Foalan’s drink sounds, we suggest not to use “real” blood, as some of us are only part-time Vampires.  A good substitute for this occasion is Blood & Sand Cocktail thought to be named for a 1922 silent film starring Rudolph Valentino.

Ingredients:

  • Scotch 3/4 oz.
  • Cherry Liqueur 3/4 oz.
  • Juice from Blood Oranges 3/4 oz.
  • Sweet Vermouth 3/4 oz.
  • Ice

Preparation:

Pour all blood-and-sandingredients into cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into Cocktail glass. Flame orange zest over the top of the glass.

So let us kick back relaxing with this delicious beverage in hand and get a little nibble of  Brian’s books.  What am I saying?  Lets go full force an bite right into them, just like Faolan would have.

 

Drawing Dead: A Faolan O’Connor novel (Book 1).

Faolan O’Connor spent his life killing for men like Legs Diamond and Lucky Luciano, and now it’s his turn to face the music. But when drawing-dead-9-bwvampire Darcy Killian offers him immortality, Faolan enters a world of violence, wealth, and power beyond anything he’s ever imagined.

Driven by ambition and guilt, Faolan fights his way up the ranks in a battle to justify his sins with success. He’s learned the hard way that relationships are vulnerabilities and friends are just enemies in disguise, but he also knows that he can’t conquer a city alone.

Aided by an emotionally-crippled genius and a warm-hearted call girl, Faolan builds a loyal crew with which to challenge the tyrannical Killian s rule. However, will this re-awakened humanity prove a fatal flaw or his ace in the hole? With his life and the future of the city he loves at stake, can Faolan play his cards right or is he drawing dead?

Drawing Dead is the Grand Prize winner of the Authors Talk About It 2016 Horror Novel Contest.

Brian McKinley

When your dreams all fail
And the ones we hail 
Are the worst of all 
And the blood’s run stale

I wanna hide the truth 
I wanna shelter you 
But with the beast inside 
There’s nowhere we can hide

– Imagine Dragons, “Demons”

 

Blurb from Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (Order Saga Book 1) 

Avery Doyle loves vampires; he’s read every novel, seen all the movies, and researched the folklore. When his first one-night-stand, Caroline, turns out to be a true vampire on the run, he jumps at the chance to leave his ordinary life and join her as a “child of the night.” The honeymoon ends, however, when Caroline’s brutal Creator ancient-blood-2Sebastian enslaves them on his island estate and Avery must confront the dehumanizing reality behind his dreams.
In order to survive, Caroline and Avery take their place as servants in Sebastian’s household during a gathering of the most powerful vampires on Earth, the Hegemony, and soon find themselves involved in the myriad intrigues and deceptions that form the night-to-night existence of The Order.
A society of wealth, power, and inhuman decadence whose existence is protected by human complicity and disbelief, The Order is the immortal aristocracy hidden behind the giant corporations and political leaders of the world. Sebastian, however, has a plan that will change The Order forever and shatter human civilization.
To avoid this terrible fate, Avery and Caroline will not only have to defy the most powerful creatures on Earth, but also confront the darkest aspects of themselves. For in the world of the Hegemony, even victory may cost them their souls . . .
A fast-paced thriller that both re-imagines and pays tribute to the traditional vampire, Ancient Blood is a story of love, ambition, sacrifice, and betrayal that is frighteningly human.

About the Author

Brian McKinley doesn’t really exist. He’s a constructed mortal brianmckinleyidentity used by a relatively young Vampyr in order to publish the truth about The Order. Due to the world-wide influence of The Order and its minions, these accounts must all be published as fiction; however, they are all very real and actually happened. Sometimes the names and sequence of events have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, and to keep from getting sued.

Brian is no longer a typical Vampyr and, for this reason, lives in hiding and writes from a secret location. The real “Brian” lives a life of danger and excitement; he loves Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Boardwalk Empire as much as he loves Chicken Fried Steak. He’s a reader, a role-player, and a dreamer who doesn’t believe that “liberal” is a dirty word. He’s lived many lifetimes and is eager to share as many of them as possible with his readers.

You can follow Brian  on Twitter: @BPMcKinley

You can also follow this link for his Facebook page.