Spotlight: Burn Red Skies by K.E. Rosero

Burn Red Skies

by K.E. Rosero
adult high fantasy
Out Nov. 11, 2020

Final Fantasy meets the “First Law” universe

It starts with a rift that burns a thousand scars into the sky.
It makes the winds stop.
It makes the stars go dark.
It awakes an ancient beast.
And with it, a new reign of blood.
It is the Summoning.
And at the heart of it is fire.

When the Summoner’s army blazes through her village, Dove is forced into hiding. Torn from everything she knows, she begins training in the elements with only one goal in mind: to find her brother. She just needs to get past the Summoner’s army—but how can she slay a dragon that is already dead?

Copyright Credits: Audio: J.T. Peterson – Sky Productions Trailer Titles: DesireCreator Sound: Stefano Cremona, Wistan Sound Trailer Master: Franziska Haase

Available on Kindle Unlimited
Amazon ebook / Amazon print

 

K.E. Rosero, Filipino American author of debut novel BURN RED SKIES, is always finding herself in odd places–from hiking across Germany to draw castles, to training in a Muay Thai boot camp in Thailand, to practicing the fine intricacies of Chinese calligraphy in Taiwan. This Bay Area native left home for college in Portland and somehow ended up studying Chinese in Germany.

Through her experiences, she realized that the story was in the journey, not the destination. Based on her adventures, she decided to write a fantasy novel with fire, flame, swords, and martial arts. And dragons.

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Spotlight & Excerpt: As Far As I Can Tell

 

Book Title: As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father In World War II

Author: Philip Gambone

Publisher: Rattling Good Yarns Press

Release Date: October 30, 2020

Genre: Memoir

Trope/s: Father/Son Relationships

ThemesConnecting to the past, Understanding our fathers, 

Father/Son silence and the inherent lack of communications, 

Coming to terms with history

Heat Rating:  2 flames      

Length: 155 000 words/474 pages

It is a standalone book.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links

Publisher 

(Note – The Rattling Good Yarns online store only ships within the US)

Amazon US  |  Amazon UK 

 

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL

2021 Lambda Literary Award Nominated

 

Blurb 

Philip Gambone, a gay man, never told his father the reason why he was rejected from the draft during the Vietnam War. In turn, his father never talked about his participation in World War II. Father and son were enigmas to each other. Gambone, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, spent seven years uncovering who the man his quiet, taciturn father had been, by retracing his father’s journey through WWII. As Far As I Can Tell not only reconstructs what Gambone’s father endured, it also chronicles his own emotional odyssey as he followed his father’s route from Liverpool to the Elbe River. A journey that challenged the author’s thinking about war, about European history, and about “civilization.”

 

Philip Gambone weaves a moving memoir of his family, a vivid portrayal of his travels through the locales of WWII, and a powerful description of what that war was like to the men who fought it on the ground into a seamless and eloquent narrative.” — Hon. Barney Frank, former Congressman, Massachusetts

“A single question pulses through As Far As I Can Tell: why didn’t my father talk about his time in the war? With meticulous research, Philip Gambone puts sound to silence, offering us a book-length love letter, not just to his father, but to anyone whose life has been hemmed in by obligation, obedience, and the brutality of the system. It’s also a coming to terms with the unknown in others, which is its own hard grace. A vital, dynamic read.” — Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World

“As Far As I Can Tell is a fascinating mix of autobiography, travelogue, and historical research that not only takes us on a great adventure in search of what World War Two was like for those who fought in the European theater but probes that most difficult of all subjects, the relationship between a father and a son — in this case, a gay son. Extensively researched, highly literate and profoundly thoughtful, the story Gambone tells uses not only soldiers’ memoirs but writers as disparate as Samuel Johnson and James Lord to make this a reader’s delight.”— Andrew Holleran, author of Dancer from the Dance

 

Excerpt 

On February 12, 1942, Dad reported for induction.  The chief business was the physical examination, which was conducted assembly-line fashion. The inductees were naked, wearing only a number around their necks. It was the most comprehensive physical most of them had ever had.  For some it was intimidating, for others embarrassing.

Most inductees were eager to pass the physical exam, so eager in fact that in many cases, they indulged in “negative malingering,” trying to conceal conditions that might get them disqualified. Once the physical was out of the way, the only screening that remained was a brief interview with an army psychiatrist, who had been instructed to look for “neuropsychosis,” a diagnosis that covered all sort of emotional ills from phobias to excessive sweating and evidence of mental deficiency. 

Paul Marshall, who ended up in the same division as Dad, remembered being asked at his physical if he liked girls. “I didn’t quite understand what he meant about it. I told him, ‘Why sure, I like girls.’” Later Marshall figured out what he was really being asked. “The ultimate question mark of manliness,” James Lord, himself a homosexual, recalled. “Do you like girls? Or prefer confinement in a federal penitentiary for the remainder of your unnatural life.” The terror of being considered a sexual leper or worse, “unfit to honor the flag of your forebears,” was real.  Lord answered, Yes, he liked girls, and was promptly accepted into the army.

Not every homosexual inductee lied. Some, like Donald Vining, came clean with his interviewer, who turned out to be “marvelously tolerant, taking the whole thing easily and calmly, without shock and without condescension.”  The interviewer marked Vining’s papers “sui generis ‘H’ overt,” and he was out.

My father passed his induction physical. Hale, hearty, and decidedly heterosexual, he needed none of the remedial medical work—dental, optometric—that millions of other inductees did.  With the physical and the psychological screenings done, Dad signed his induction papers, was fingerprinted, and issued a serial number.  The final piece of business was the administration of the oath of allegiance, done, according to army regulations, “with proper ceremony.”  Once sworn in, Dad was sent home to put things in order before he went off to Camp Perry to be processed for basic training.

Twenty-eight years after Dad’s, my own induction notice arrived, during my senior year in college. I was instructed to report to my hometown on May 6, where the Army would put me on a bus and drive me to the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in South Boston. I remember standing, before dawn, on a curb outside the town offices waiting for the bus. Other fellows from my high school were there, and I nervously tried to make small talk with them. We’d had nothing in common in high school, and the situation hadn’t changed in the intervening years. 

My recollection of that day is shrouded in numbness. I remember standing in a line, stripped to my underwear, making my way from one examining station to the next. I kept assuring myself I could not possibly go to Vietnam, that the good fortune I’d enjoyed so far would see me to a different destiny than the one where I would end up dead in a jungle in Southeast Asia.

I was clutching a letter from my dentist attesting to the fact that I needed braces, in those days a cause for rejection. But aside from that, I had not taken any steps to ensure that I wouldn’t be taken. I’d heard stories of guys planning to go to their induction physicals drunk, or stoned, or wearing dresses and makeup. Others said they would flee to Canada or apply for conscientious objector status. I had made no such plans.  Throughout senior year, I had been sitting on my damn butt, still banking on magic or luck to get me the hell out.

I passed every exam. I was not overweight. I did not have flat feet or a heart murmur. My blood pressure was excellent.  At one station, I handed over the dentist’s letter. The examiner gave it a perfunctory glance and tucked it into my file.

At last, I came to the psychological screening area. All I remember is the examiner asking me if I’d ever had any homosexual experiences. And when I said yes, he followed up with a few more questions. Had I sought counseling? Did I intend to stop?  That was it. He thanked me and I moved on. Less than two weeks later, I received a notice from the AFEES: “Found Not Acceptable

for Induction Under Current Standards.” I’d been declared 4-F. In the parlance of the day, I had “fagged out.” My parents thought the dentist’s letter about braces had done the trick.

 

About the Author 

Philip Gambone is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His debut collection of short stories, The Language We Use Up Here, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.  His novel, Beijing, was nominated for two awards, including a PEN/Bingham Award for Best First Novel.

Phil has extensive publishing credits in nonfiction as well. He has contributed numerous essays, reviews, features pieces, and scholarly articles to several local and national journals including The New York Times Book Review and The Boston Globe.  He is a regular contributor to The Gay & Lesbian Review.

His longer essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, including Hometowns, Sister and Brother, Wrestling with the Angel, Inside Out, Boys Like Us, Wonderlands, and Big Trips.

Phil’s book of interviews, Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers, was named one of the “Best Books of 1999” by Pride magazine.  His Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans was nominated for an American Library Association Award.

Phil’s scholarly writing includes biographical entries on Frank Kameny in the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford) and Gary Glickman in Contemporary Gay American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook.  He also wrote three chapters on Chinese history for two high school textbooks published by Cheng and Tsui.

He is a recipient of artist’s fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. He has also been listed in Best American Short Stories.

Phil taught high school English for over forty years. He also taught writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston College, and in the freshman expository writing program at Harvard. He was twice awarded Distinguished Teaching Citations by Harvard.  In 2013, he was honored by the Department of Continuing Education upon completing his twenty-fifth year of teaching for the Harvard Extension School.

 

 

Author Links

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Spotlight & Excerpt: Dawn of Vengeance + Giveaway


Dawn of Vengeance
(The Droseran Saga #2)
By Ronie Kendig
Sci-Fi, Space Opera
Hardcover & ebook, 416 Pages
December 8, 2020 by Enclave Publishing

A haunting prophecy upended his identity. Now it demands his life.

Once a formidable bounty hunter, Marco Dusan is plagued by insecurity as he tours the realm he now rules. This quiet, backwater planet is not as untouched as he’d once thought. Evidence of collusion between Droseran factions and the powerful Symmachians with their forbidden technology litters his encounters. Worse, all signs indicate Xisya, the alien who tortured him, is still snatching Kynigos Brethren–but to what end?

Lance Corporal Eija Zacdari works hard to win a coveted place on the Symmachian hyperjump program, but instinct tells her their intel is flawed. Despite nearly failing the tests, she is assigned to the team-and lands in the middle of a bewildering conspiracy.

Haunted by a prophecy that promises pain and war, Marco forges alliances to protect the primitive world against Symmachia’s devastating influence. But one truth becomes painfully clear: the biggest threat to their world may be much, much closer to home.

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Excerpt

“Zacdari! What in Void’s Embrace are you waiting for?”

Claxons rang in her helmet, a grating noise that made it hard to think. Her heads-up gave a visual on the target station, and another on the left displayed the corvette’s actual trajectory. The dots were not aligned.

Lance Corporal Eija Zacdari could handle it. She might be a mere candidate for the Tertian Intergalactic Hyperjump Program for Exploration. She might be a Tryssinian orphan with more scars than fingers. But she wasn’t a quitter. Getting onto the Prevenire, the first HyPE ship to access the hyperaccelerated slipstream to Kuru System, was her last hope.

She nudged the controls, bringing the corvette into alignment with the great metal flower that was her target.

A wave of heat speared her mind, and with it came a strange visual. A realization. The vectors were wrong. Her angle of approach wrong.

It was all djelling wrong.

And you know that how? Nobody knew Kuru System because nobody had been there. How did Command know this was right? How did anyone? Even her? That alone made her hesitate. Throw this away and she threw away a gift.

“Nobody can know, Eija. Do you understand?”

She glanced up, wide-eyed, at the one offering her the world—a whole new world and life.

The woman wore slacks and a blouse. Nothing fancy. But a lot nicer than anything Eija’s orphaned self ever wore. “If they find out, this all goes away. And there will be nothing here to return to. Am I clear?”

“Why me?”

“Look around you, Eija. The others—they’re hurting, too. That’s what we are supposed to change. They are the ones we need to protect; the ones who can’t do anything for themselves.” Her bright eyes seemed less blue just then. “So, tell me. Are you the warrior I think you to be?”

“But nobody from Tryss—”

“No. Never mention that place again. Do, and your dream of escape dies as soon as the name falls from your lips. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Patron.”

“So, what are you, then?”

“Napian,” she replied obediently.

Napian. By record only. But Eija had grown up on Tryssinia, where everyone was taught from birth to distrust the government, and the Academy was as close to government as one could get out in the black.

“Nice and easy, Z. Guide her in,” came the calm, unaffected tone of her flight training instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Sevart “Rhinn” Crafter. “That’s right.”

His words pushed her attention back to the panels. The simulation said it was right. So just shut up and do it. Pass the stupid test. If she failed, she wouldn’t get assigned to the Prevenire.

Eija’s vision blurred, and a thrum of heat against her palms warned her of a fatal mistake. Something beeped. She glanced down. Her thumb slid across the rounded surface of the control instruments. A small but significant gesture that shifted her trajectory.

Beep-beep-beep!

“Zacdari! What’re you scuzzing doing?”

Her gaze snapped to the blue ring gliding farther from the white blip of her craft on the screen. No. She couldn’t scuz this. Breathing a little harder, she jerked right.

Too hard! Too hard!

The sim ship decelerated sharply, and she could feel it itching for a spin.

Exiting slipstream at Kuru Station One in five . . . four . . .

“C’mon,” Eija muttered as she hit thrusters to compensate for the variance in distance. If she didn’t get it corrected soon, she’d fling into the atmosphere or collide with the station rings, which guided ships safely through Kuru to the anchor point station, where she’d dock.

According to the intelligence.

Which was slagged.

“Just . . . pass the . . . djelling test,” she murmured to herself.

The hard deceleration flipped her couch and pressed hard against her body, fluids snaking into her system to keep her from being crushed alive. The fast-attack craft finished its deceleration. But like everything in her life, it wasn’t enough. The first ring was barreling toward her. She tensed. Her sweaty hands slipped off the control. A whimper lashed out, fogging the helmet. “No no no,” she muttered.

Warnings glared in red block letters: Impact imminent. Alter course.

Eija tried to comply, but the ship shuddered as if it, too, were appalled by her insanity. The screen flashed searing white. Her fluids went cold, a painful punishment for failing the sim.

Like her own deflating hopes, the couch sagged and lowered her to the deck. Snakes retracted, sucking away her last vestige of self-respect. Growling, Eija pounded her console. With a huff, she extricated herself from the simulator.

“What the slag was that?” barked Gunny as the walls drew up.

A swarm of nerves invaded Eija at the sight of the forbidding former Eidolon charging across the simdeck. “It messed up—”

“No, that’s what you did!” Gunny growled. “You just blew up everyone on your ship, Corporal!”

Excerpted from Dawn of Vengeance by Ronie Kendig. Copyright © Ronie Kendig. Published by Enclave Publishing.

Other Books in the Series


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About the Author

Ronie Kendig is an award-winning, bestselling author of over twenty-five titles. She grew up an Army brat, and now she and her Army-veteran husband live a short train ride from New York City with their twin sons and their fur-sons, VVolt N629 (retired military working dog) and Benning the Stealth Golden. Ronie’s degree in psychology has helped her pen novels of intense, raw characters.

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Tour Schedule
(Posts go live on the day they’re scheduled.)

November 29th: Launch
November 30th: R.J. AndersonSwift
December 1st: Ralene BurkeArmor of Aletheia
December 2nd: Michelle Diener – Breakaway
December 3rd: Sandra Fernandez Rhoads – Mortal Sight
December 4th: J.M. Hackman – Burn
December 5th: Sharon Hinck – Forsaken Island
December 6th: Ronie Kendig – Dawn of Vengeance
December 7th: Carla LaureanoOath of the Brotherhood
December 8th: Belle MaloryDeviant Descendants
December 9th: Sara SchallerThe Genesis of Seven
December 10th: Jennifer SilverwoodStay
December 11th: Anne Wheeler – Treason’s Crown
December 12th: Melissa Wright – Between Ink and Shadows
December 13th: Morgan WylieSilent Orchids
December 14th: Kristen Young – Apprentice
December 15th: Grand Finale

Tour Giveaway

One winner will receive a $75 (USD) Amazon eGift Card

Open internationally
Ends December 19, 2020

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