Tag Archives: genre: contemporary fantasy
Birthday Bargains! 50-100% OFF eBooks
Birthday Bargains! 50-100% OFF eBooks
It’s our birthday 🙂
We have decided to celebrate by giving back to our readers and having a 1 day sale on our eBooks.
Most of our 99c books are FREE today and our other books are all 50% off.
The links below will take you to Smashwords where you can use the code below each book at the checkout stage and it will give you the listed discount. Smashwords has formats for all eBook readers.
Instructions for those unfamiliar with uploading files to their eReader:
FREE
50% OFF
And of course there are still our permanently free books as well.
Permanently FREE
AtoZChallenge 2015: W is for Welcome
AtoZChallenge 2015: W is for Welcome
We’re galloping towards the end of the AtoZ Challenge now, and of our theme here at Wittegen Press, ‘why’, specifically, why have we, as authors, written the titles we have. And, each day, the book we’re talking about will be FREE.
Being welcoming is something my family has always prided themselves on, and Tash and I wanted to be just as welcoming to our readers. So, we decided to each write a story for our readers to welcome them when they joined our mailing list. That was how Curse of a Banshee, my title today, was born.
Tash and I wanted to write two stories that would be popular, so we asked our existing subscribers to vote on their choice of genres. I, thus, ended up with contemporary fantasy.
I’m a big contemporary fantasy fan, both reading and writing, and so I’ve already written a selection of stories in the modern world with a fantastic edge. So, I had to sit and have a think about where I wanted to take this genre. I decided on fae, because it’s a wide mythology for me to draw from, but I could also put my own stamp on the fairy world.
Even after I’d nailed my universe, I had so many ideas darting around in my head that it took me a while to close down on one. I wanted to mix technology and magical lore in a modern world, but I also wanted it to be a down-to-earth kind of setting. In the end, it was a dream that inspired me to create B. She popped out of my subconscious pretty well formed, and then the rest of the story settled down around her.
B’s a pragmatist, someone who has had to work around what (if they were translated into a human concept) might be called disabilities. She knows her limits and she operates very successfully within them. She’s a bit of a sucker for a hard-luck story and helps those whom others pass by, but she’s also canny and can have a hard edge. I like her, but I wouldn’t want to cross her.
This story is the first in the Darwell (Magical) Cleaning Services series. I don’t have another one formed in my brain, yet, but there will definitely be more titles featuring B and her team. So, I hope our readers like this little welcome to our mailing list.
What’s the best welcome anyone has given you?
FREE Book Offer
Curse of a Banshee by Sophie Duncan
B, a djinn/banshee low fae, runs Darwell Cleaning Services, a business that specializes in tidying up magical crime scenes. She’s managed her company with her friend and business partner, Jean, for over one hundred years without any complaints, or problems. She keeps her head down and offers a job to those whom higher fae look down on for their lack of personal magic.
B and her team are expecting an ordinary night of clean-up when they arrive at the aftermath of a spell battle in the middle of an English woodland. However, when a terrified djinn boy appears in the middle of their job, B finds the mix of her djinn and banshee instincts, which she normally keeps under strict control, beginning to rise. The boy is not alone, he is being chased by criminals intent on selling him to become a genie, the same gang who took B’s father a century earlier.
B must struggle with her own unsettled powers and fight the slavers for the boy’s freedom, risking her own life and those of her friends in the process.
Curse of a Banshee is fast-paced fantasy taking a fresh look at ancient powers in a contemporary British setting.
*We’ve cheated a little today, the title is totally free, but you have to join our mailing list to get it. We never spam and we never give away your details. Just scroll down to the form at the bottom and you’ll get both books shown for free.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: R is for Re-Imagining
AtoZChallenge 2015: R is for Re-Imagining
Welcome to our AtoZ Challenge. Our theme here at Wittegen Press this year is ‘why’, specifically, why have we, as authors, written the titles we have. And, each day, the book we’re talking about will be FREE.
Of all the titles I have released, Night Blood has been on the longest journey and has been re-imagined three times.
I began writing it when I was 15, shortly after I fell in love with the vampire genre through The Lost Boys. I thought the revamp (pun intended) of vampires in the 80’s was brilliant, and I adore these modern fangs. The Lost Boys showed me that vampires can have up-to-date style and still be deadly. Fright Night. on the other hand, showed how an old vampire must adapt to the modern world. These stories were so different from the likes of Dracula that they instantly inspired me to start my own tale of the supernatural.
Most of the vampire movies I loved then were American, and most of the TV shows I watched too, so, of course, naive writer that I was, I began to write my story set in America too. In fact, I finished three stories with Tom Franklin over the next couple of years. Then, like everything else I wrote back then, with no internet and only my sister to share my stories with, Tom was laid to rest in a filing cabinet.
It wasn’t until I got to university and started writing fanfic that I pulled Tom’s stories out of their box. That is when I began my first re-imagining. Working with friends on the internet on fanfic taught me that I did not really know enough about American culture to base my plot and my characters there, so I moved the stories to the UK, Cornwall to be precise. I pretty much just filed off the serial numbers in this rework, changing place names, but not much of the story. This time, though, Tom ended up relegated to a file on a harddrive when things like passing my exams got in the way.
I never forgot about Tom Franklin, my half-blood vampire, though, and when I finally took the leap into publishing, this was the second story I worked on. This time, I took my original story and, with skills I’d been honing in the fanfic arena for years, I ripped the story apart and put it back together into a more mature story. Thus, I published Death In The Family as I first called it.
My sales were slow, but what reviews I had were good. There was something wrong, but I didn’t think it was with the plot. So I looked at other things, and concluded that my chosen title and that of the series, Heritage is Deadly, might be putting people off. Final re-imagining was with the title, I changed it and the title of the series to Night Blood – punchier and hitting my market’s keywords.
So, that’s how I came to where I am today, and I am now working on the sequel, Witch Blood.
There have been a lot of re-imaginings of movies and TV shows of late – what do you think about them, do you have one you think really worked, or totally failed?
FREE Book Offer
Night Blood by Sophie Duncan
Code for FREE download at Smashwords*: RM76A
Leaving a good London school with solid prospects, Tom Franklin has the world at his feet. Yet one thing has always haunted his perfect life: his dreams. When Tom discovers that the nightmarish images of dark places and even darker instincts are in fact repressed memories from his early childhood, he must face the heritage from his birth-father, a savage vampire known only as Raxos.
Realising his memories are his only hope of controlling his awakening instincts, Tom returns to, Coombedown, the sleepy, Cornish village in which he was born, unknowing that the night-breed in his veins will lead him into danger.
“Night Blood” is a young adult, paranormal novel.
This is the first story in “The Night Blood Chronicles”.
*Click Smashwords to go to the book on their site. Click the buy option. Put the code in the Coupon Code box, click ‘apply coupon’ and the book will be free. Coupon is only guaranteed to be valid for 21st April so please use immediately.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: Q is for Quickie
AtoZChallenge 2015: Q is for Quickie
Our theme here at Wittegen Press for this year’s AtoZ is ‘why’, specifically, why have we, as authors, written the titles we have. And, each day, the book we’re talking about will be FREE. And today you have both of us talking about our Christmas short stories, Stockings.
Okay, so maybe we’re a bit out of season, but you can save these stories for a stormy December night if you want to :). These stories were written as another thank you to our readers and are quick dips into the universe of The Haward Mysteries.
[Sophie] Personally I find short stories much more difficult to write than novels. Packing a whole plot into a few thousand words challenges my natural verbosity and it’s good for me! Writing short helps me practice with words, makes me really concentrate on making sure I have the right ones in the right order, there’s not as much room for manoeuvre in a short story as there is in a novel. There is also a quicker payoff for me as a writer in a short story, since I’m not spending months crafting chapter after chapter, it can be a matter of a few days and I have something to share with others. So that’s why I like quickies 🙂 [Tasha’s Bit] I don’t have such a problem writing short stories as Soph does (side-eyes her twin), but I can see why they can be daunting. I love writing them, but it’s about packing everything in without information dumping or leaving too much out and it can be a fine balancing act.For short stories I like to write fast, edit slow, where as with novels sometimes I write slow and edit slow 😉 . Quickies as we have christened them, can actually be quite exciting to write. Sometimes I have no idea where the story will go until it gets there. That’s the fun part.
So you like to read/write short stories?
FREE Book Offer
Stockings by Sophie Duncan and Natasha Duncan-Drake
There’s no need for a code, this book is permanently FREE, so just follow the title link above for all the download options.
In one story meet Remy and Theo as six year olds trying to meet Father Christmas and in the other see them come to terms with being the guardians of Blackwood during their first Christmas as such.
The Haward Mysteries is a set of Contemporary Fantasy, short stories and bargain priced novels full of magic and mystery with a side of CSI thrown in. Follow the Agatha Christie style whodunits of the novels, delve into the artfully rendered sorcerous science of the magical crimes and explore the enchanted world of the Haward Twins as they face supernatural trials in both their professional and private lives.
Stockings was released in Dec 2011 as a Christmas gift for fans of the Haward Mysteries, check the tags for more in the series.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: N is for New Adult
AtoZChallenge 2015: N is for New Adult
Hello and welcome to just past the halfway point of the A to Z. Our theme here at Wittegen Press this year is ‘why’, specifically, why have we, as authors, written the titles we have. And, each day, the book we’re talking about will be FREE.
So, N is for New Adult today, and that’s the classification for my book The End of the Journey. For those who don’t know what New Adult is, it’s a fairly recent classification for those darker, sexier, possibly more violent stories that fall over the top end of Young Adult and into the books aimed at adults only.
The End of the Journey is the first part of the contemporary paranormal Hidden War series. Demons and magic are real in the Britain in which this series is set, and war rages between those who raise demons for their own ends and those who are trying to protect their world from such dark infiltration. This war goes on unseen by most.
In this world of two very clear sides, my protagonists, young men Damon Wulfres and Zac Kithrall, one from each of the sides, are forced together, Zac finding himself very much at the mercy of his enemy. He should be fighting for his freedom, but he trusts Damon, relies on him and, when the story opens, he has done for quite some time.
It was this idea that hooked my muse onto the story.
I wanted to explore the relationship between Damon and Zac as it developed, first through necessity and then into something more complex as Zac tries to discover the truth behind his own and Damon’s actions. Two young men with totally different backgrounds, but who share the weight of the expectations of their people, expectations they have both destroyed.
The End of the Journey could probably have been classified simply as Young Adult, but as Zac and Damon’s connection arcs through the upcoming stories, I intend for the story to grow both darker and more intimate, thus deserving the New Adult Classification.
What do you think of the New Adult classification – do you think it’s a useful designation, or do you think we had enough subgenres already?
FREE Book Offer
The End of the Journey by Sophie Duncan
Code for FREE download at Smashwords*: BE93E
The Hidden War has been raging unseen my normal eyes for generations and Zac Kithrall, demon-seer, and Damon Wulfres, demon-raiser, have grown up on opposite sides of it.
Zac knows these truths, but when he finds himself mostly helpless and under Damon’s control, he can’t remember why he trusts his enemy, or why they are running from both sides in the war. Weak, and fighting a raging power that is threatening to tear him apart from the inside, Zac is forced to rely on Damon, friend or foe, and, together, they face a race against time to prevent Armageddon.
The End Of The Journey is the first story in The Hidden War Series.
*Click Smashwords to go to the book on their site. Click the buy option. Put the code in the Coupon Code box, click ‘apply coupon’ and the book will be free. Coupon is only guaranteed to be valid for 16th April so please use immediately.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: K is for Kick
AtoZChallenge 2015: K is for Kick
Our theme here at Wittegen Press this year is ‘why’, specifically, why have we, as authors, written the titles we have. And, each day, the book we’re talking about will be FREE.
Today isn’t about the kind of kick that is a ‘kick in the teeth’, or even one where a football is involved, it’s about the kick I get out of saying thank you, and that’s how The Diablo Ouija came about.
When someone does something nice for me, or is supportive, or friendly, I like to say thank you. Two simple little words, but they allow me to acknowledge my gratitude to another person. The Diablo Ouija is our way at Wittegen Press, of saying thank you to our readers. It’s a FREE short story for anyone to download, but its specifically aimed at our readers, to say thanks for being there, taking the time to download our books, reviewing them even.
Since the thank you is aimed at our readers, we decided it would be good to expand on existing characters, to given people another story linked into one of our series, and since it was from both of us at Wittegen Press, we chose The Haward Mysteries as the series.
I wrote this story for Hallowe’en 2011, so it has ghosts as well as magic and murder mystery. And I hope you enjoy my 11K thank you as well!
What’s the best way anyone has ever said thank you to you?
FREE Book Offer
The Diablo Ouija by Sophie Duncan
There’s no need for a code, this book is permanently FREE, so just follow the title link above for all the download options.
Theo and Remy Haward are drawn into a ghostly murder investigation on Hallowe’en when The Diablo Ouija, a dangerous magical item, is stolen from the SeCT evidence store. Theo turns to his old mentor, retired DCI Swanson, for more information about the one-time tool of serial killer, Raymond Holiday, and discovers Swanson has been keeping a secret about the deadly spirit board.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: C is for Collaboration
AtoZChallenge 2015: C is for Collaboration
Hello and welcome to day 3 of the AtoZ Challenge 2015. This year we are talking about the ‘why’ behind our books.
Welcome, this is Tasha, and Sophie will be talking in a little bit, so I shall try and keep it short and sweet 🙂 . Sacrifice of An Angel (scroll down for the FREE book offer) is a contemporary fantasy murder mystery set in the depths of the home counties and it is one of the few books Sophie and I wrote together. Think Harry Potter meets Midsomer Murders.
We decided we wanted to write together and collaborate very early on, even though we have rarely done it before. This is because we believed that together we could bring something to the novel that we might, not necessarily, do alone. Soph is a language geek and really enjoyed putting together a magical language for us. I’m more of a leap to the plot person so I loved hashing out all the ins and outs and that’s just one example for each of us.
It took a lot of preparation to be able to write together, but, in the end, it was very rewarding.
Sophie here now – and yeah, I will agree with Tash that it took a lot of prep to work together (there were some spectacular rows)! Anyway – why – well, I can tell you why I loved writing this book and am looking forward to working on the rest in the series, that would be the twins, our main characters, Remy and Theo. They’re not self-inserts, well there are aspects of us in the twins, the way they interact, the practiced knowing of each other, but they are very different characters from us. It was brilliant fun working on them, planning out who they were, their back stories, everything to do with their daily lives – something that I don’t think I do as a writer when I’m writing alone – not in that much detail anyway. The detail was needed because we were working together and we have to make sure we both understood the universe we were working in.
So, yes, the twins and playing with all that magic in a modern setting were what kept me writing Sacrifice of An Angel.
Do you have a special connection to a character, one you wrote, or one you’ve read or watched?
FREE Book Offer
Sacrifice of An Angel by Natasha Duncan-Drake and Sophie Duncan
Code for FREE download at Smashwords*: JW57F
The body of a girl in a ceremonial robe is found sprawled on a playground roundabout, her throat brutally ripped out. Is it a ritualistic, magical murder or a setup to distract from the real killer? That is the question that faces Theo and Remy Haward, detectives in the Sorcerous Crimes Task Force (SeCT), when they are called to the scene.
*Click Smashwords to go to the book on their site. Click the buy option. Put the code in the Coupon Code box, click ‘apply coupon’ and the book will be free. Coupon is only guaranteed to be valid for 3rd April so please use immediately.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
AtoZChallenge 2015: B is for Blank Sheet
AtoZChallenge 2015: B is for Blank Sheet
Welcome to Wittegen Press for day 2 of the AtoZChallenge 2015. Today Natasha Duncan-Drake will be explaining why ‘blank sheet’ has meaning to her book Cat’s Call.
So why is ‘blank sheet‘ significant to my book Cat’s Call?
The answer is very simple; that’s what I started with. When I first began writing Cat’s Call I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write. I mean I had not even an inkling.
All I knew was I wanted to write a new fantasy novel suitable for a YA audience, crossing over into the adult market. That was literally all I had in my head when I sat down at the computer. It was something of an experiment really, just to see what I could come up with.
I started typing and just followed my nose until something started to take shape. As I slowly created the first page, Charlie, my protagonist began to form in my head. It’s third person past and Charlie is my point of view character and as I put words on the page he came to life.
That first page is long gone, edited out to make the start of the novel much snappier, but I still have copies, because that is what kicked my brain off down the route that created Charlie, somewhat inept 18 year old that he is, and all his friends. That blank sheet, as it filled with words, was the catalyst for the evolution of the great spirits, the seven Questors, the realm of Between and the idea that seven people could save the universe. So far they have grown into three novels.
So, if you are at a dead end, or you just want to see what your brain comes up with, I heartily recommend the ‘blank sheet’ method.
Have you ever tried this? How did is go? If not, is it something you might have a go at?
If you are not a writer, but one of our valued readers, do you ever use this technique for brainstorming other things?
FREE Book Offer
Cat’s Call by Natasha Duncan-Drake
Code for FREE download at Smashwords*: MZ32V
Charlie meets his destiny in an encounter with a cat figurine that attacks him for no reason he can work out. Then he grows a tail in his sleep and has to travel to a realm called Between to learn how to use the magic now running through his veins. An anti-social vampire and five teenagers who all appear to be much more prepared and competent are only the beginnings of his worries; being asked to help save existence is the icing on the cake.
*Click Smashwords to go to the book on their site. Click the buy option. Put the code in the Coupon Code box, click ‘apply coupon’ and the book will be free. Coupon is only guaranteed to be valid for 2nd April so please use immediately.
Our other AtoZ blogs: Tasha’s Thinkings | Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles| FB3X (AC)
AtoZChallenge List 2015 click to see other participants.
If you enjoy our daily free books you’ll really love our permanently free books, including the two FREE ebooks we’ll give you just for joining our mailing list.
Love, Relics and Vampires – The Avebury Legacy
Vampires and romance seem to go hand in glove as one of the most popular genres available in modern fiction, be it written or in moving pictures. You only have to search for ‘love and vampires’ on Google to have loads of hits, 10 Vampire Stories That Are More Romantic Than Twilight: Breaking Dawn being only one of them.
I enjoy a good vampire romance myself, but I also enjoy vampires to be the evil lurking in the dark. Dracula is a great example of a crossover between the two extremes and one of my favourite vampire stories, at least in movie form.
When I wrote The Avebury Legacy the one thing I was absolutely sure of was that the vampires had to be nasty. I was thinking Salem’s Lot, John Carpenter’s Vampires and From Dusk till Dawn when I imagined these vampires, not Twilight, Vampire Diaries or Anita Blake. My vampires in this book are no longer human with human needs. They are killing machines who live for the hunt and for blood. They live in communal groups with an alpha and their spawn; the alpha being the brains and her creations acting more like mindless worker bees than humans.
This is the fate which awaits my protagonists, Nate and Lexie, if they cannot find a cure for the vampirism infecting them. Usually immediately fatal, turning humans into vampires in hours, Lexie’s magic has slowed down the change, giving them at least a chance. However, her purification ritual won’t last forever and so they need to find the relics from the ancient Avebury ritual which may hold a cure.
This is where the love comes into my tale. I am a romantic at heart, I admit it, and while I do enjoy fiction that has no romantic relationships in it at all, I love an undercurrent of love as well.
The evolution of Nate and Lexie’s relationship within The Avebury Legacy is important to the plot. It is part of the progression of their condition as they lose more of their humanity. Their connection helps them to hold on and keep their vampire natures at bay and yet sometimes that connection is what threatens to overwhelm them. This is not a love conquers all book, but it does have an element of love can help people stay strong when all seems lost.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day We extended the offer to the 6th, The Avebury Legacy is 99c for ONE MORE week only. Please see the bottom of the post for links. Thank you for reading and I will leave you with a question:
Do you prefer your vampires sexy and romantic, or slathering and evil, or a mixture of the two?
SPECIAL OFFER – Enjoy a Vampire Valentine and get The Avebury Legacy FOR ONLY 99c from Valentine’s Day (14th) – must end 20th Feb 2015 Extended AGAIN by popular demand until 6th March 2015
Buy Links*:
Amazon | Smashwords | Google Play | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Inktera | txtr
*(Smashwords and Nook definitely have the price update from the 1st, it may take a day or two for the other sites to trickle through).