Lauren Dawes : August 2015

Australian Author Month: O. N. Stefan

O.N. Stefan

I'm an author and reader from Australia. I love creating something from the world around me. My characters are from everywhere and nowhere.
I love reading mysteries, thrillers and fantasy but am known to read sci fi or anything else that catches my attention.
I uploaded my first mystery/thriller to kindle at the end of January this year. It's set in California. Most of the characters in the book are American but the main character is Australian. The car accidents are from my memory banks as I grew up across from a bad intersection. Nearly every weekend vehicles ran off the road, overturned, (no seat belts then) ran over other people who had been flung from the car at impact and occasional fatalities.

Three Fast Fun Facts about O.N...

1. I enjoy reading thrillers, fantasy and mysteries. Sometimes I can be seen reading when I should be doing other things.

2. I used to do 20 push ups in a row easily and now I can only do 10. I keep thinking that I have to exercise not only my fingers but my body as well.

3. For years, I've been practicing Tai Chi, which for me is pure relaxation wrapped in martial arts moves. This year I've been learning the Tai Chi sword.

Where to find O.N...

The Deadly Caress is a fast-paced story set in California. Suspenseful and thrilling, it is holds a mystery that Amanda Blake, a freelance photographer, must unravel.

Amanda tracks down her birth mother, the multi millionaire Jean Campbell. Hours after her arrival, Jean is murdered.

Amanda sets out to discover her mother’s killer. Her quest takes to Australia to find the man she thinks holds the answer to the killer’s identity. While visiting this man, she has to run for her life under a hail of bullets. Someone will stop at nothing until she is dead. If she thought things were bad enough, they are about to get much worse...

Where to get your copy of "The Deadly Caress"

Giveaway

(International)

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Australian Author Month: C.S. Sealey

C.S. Sealey

Carmel Sealey was born in Sydney, Australia, and has a great passion for fantasy. Her brother first inspired her to write at a very young age and she has continued to do so with gusto. The first seed of Equilibrium began to sprout at the age of 15 and the story has been rewritten, reworked, abused, edited, rewritten again, expanded, cut, stitched back together and polished in the dozen years since. Enjoy!

Five Fast Fun Facts about Carmel...

1. I've been playing football (the proper kind, mind) since I was six. Don't get in the way of one of my kicks...!

2. I love cats. To me, a cat's purr is the best de-stressing sound.

3. When I'm not writing, reading or playing football, I love to draw. I've been trying to visualise my characters for years.

4. I'm an avid gamer, especially for RPGs, such as the Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. I get the weirdest dreams after a gaming marathon.

5. I love singing karaoke! :)

Where to find Carmel...

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | deviantART

"Equilibrium"

The Spirits’ ancient equilibrium is brought into being when the twelfth mage is finally found. But Angora is unlike those who have come before her and she refuses to blindly accept her fate.

The Ayons have mysteriously retreated from a far-reaching southern offensive, ordered back by their newly crowned king.
In the aftermath of this battle, Angora is washed up on the shore of a foreign land, bruised and battered, determined to keep her past a secret from all. Rescued from slavers, yet immediately falling prey to others, she is thrust into a war not her own.
Proclaimed one of twelve legendary mages, Angora is charged with protecting the innocent with magic beyond her imagination.
But a dark future awaits her and her friends as the Ayon threat begins to swell once more in the north.

Where to get your copy of "Equilibrium"

Momentum Publishing

Giveaway

(International)

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Australian Author Month: Ashley Howland

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Australian Author Month: Susan Horsnell

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Australian Author Month: Ali Constable

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Australian Author Month: Lorraine Cobcroft

Lorraine Cobcroft

An Australian author who spent her working life penning instructional and technical books and ghost-writing informational works, Lorraine Cobcroft adopted the name ''Rainbowriter'' because her husband nicknamed her ''Rainbow'', and she has always been excited by the rainbow's pomise.

Lorraine's most successful work was ''The Layout Course'', a 15 lesson self-paced learning program to teach novices visual 4GL computer programming using the now defunct ''Layout'' software produced by Objects, Inc. of Boston, MA. Later, she ghost-wrote informational works on subjects as diverse as body building, child health, home renovation, tax reduction and asset protection, and buying a car. She also produced investment offer documents, marketing collateral, business reports and procedure guides for small businesses.

Now semi-retired and resident in a small beachside village in Northern NSW, Lorraine divides her time between reading, writing, gardening, sewing, beach walks, spoiling grandchildren and touring Australia with her husband in their campervan.

Five Fast Fun Facts about Lorraine...

1. I've worked as everything from motel cleaner, nurses' aide, canteen manager, and bookkeeper to professional writer, software entrepreneur, and CEO of a global technology company with over 500 shareholders.

2. I've lived in four countries, and though Australian-born, I have an English father, U.S. born sister, and Singaporean-born daughter.

3. I've been called a gypsy, because I love to wander and it took me a long time to put down roots. I am driven by itchy feet and an insatiable curiosity about people, life, and the world.

4. I was once sued in a foreign court for $100 million dollars, and had to fight the case, without a lawyer, in a hearing conducted by telephone.

5. I think I'm a bit of a stirrer. I like to write stories that are politically incorrect and quite confronting - exposing the seedier side of society and government crime and corruption.

Where to find Lorraine...

Website | LinkedIn

"The Pencil Case: They Stole Us White Kids too"

How many white kids were victims of ''The Stolen Generation''?

Until around the mid-1970s, government policy across Australia was to remove children they considered to be “at risk” in their home environment. The story of ‘’The Stolen Generation’’ is now well known internationally, but the whole truth hasn’t been told. Children weren’t taken solely because of their race. They stole white kids too. Welfare legislation authorizing the removal of children from poverty-stricken homes was enacted by people who were untrained, and unable or unwilling to acknowledge that lack of money did not mean a bad home life. For financial gain to welfare workers and Churches, children were removed from their family to institutions where they suffered deprivation, abuse, separation from loved ones, and withholding of affection that scarred them for life.

A minimally fictionalized biography, "The Pencil Case" is a confronting account of the life of one of the victims of this policy.

A hit on the head with a pencil case began Paul Wilson's lifelong battle against the system and the pencil-pushers who tormented him... but nothing could break his indomitable spirit. A fifth generation, native-born white Australian, Paul was a stolen child. Bureaucrats stole him twice. So-called ‘women of God’ and a misguided carer stole his identity, his heritage and his self-respect.

Join Paul as he takes his lawyer on a journey through time, from the post-war home of a poverty-stricken Australian family, to a cold, harsh Catholic Orphanage, into foster homes and an Anglican Boys’ Home, to an army training school for boys, and through an eventful adult life desperately searching for identity, acceptance, love and peace.

His is a story is that may sadden or enrage you, but it's also one that will reassure you of the beauty and strength of the human spirit and the power of family love.

Where to get your copy of "The Pencil Case: They Stole Us White Kids too"

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords | Booktopia | NovelUnity

Giveaway

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Australian Author Month: Morgan Bell

Morgan Bell

Morgan Bell is a young Australian woman, born in Melbourne, Victoria in 1981. She attended primary school in the regional areas of New South Wales, including the Northern Rivers, and the South Coast, and attended secondary school in the southern suburbs of Newcastle. She currently lives in Sydney and works in Local Government as an engineer. Morgan is university educated in civil engineering, traffic engineering, technical communications, linguistics, and literature. She is a member of Hunter Writers Centre, Newcastle Writers Group, and Newcastle Speculative Fiction Group. Her short story "It Had To Be Done" was first published in the Newcastle Writers Group Anthology 2012, and her short story "Midnight Daisy" was published by YWCA Newcastle in 2013 as part of the She: True Stories project, being awarded a Story Commendation at the exhibit launch, and with live readings on ABC 1233 in February 2014 and Newcastle Writers Festival in April 2014. In March 2014 Morgan's short story "Don't Pay The Ferryman", an anti-travel piece, was shortlisted for the Hunter Writer's Centre Travel Writing Prize 2014.

Five Fast Fun Facts about Morgan...

I never wear jeans because I am allergic to the metal buttons.
I am six foot tall.
I love Melissa McCarthy movies.
My favourite accents are Welsh and Boston.
I am obsessed with eyebrows.

Where to find Morgan...

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

"Sniggerless Boundulations"

Debut collection of short stories by indie Australian author Morgan Bell. A cross-section between dreams and reality. An examination of the horrors of life, with plenty of peering, in the form of vignettes, micro fiction, flash fiction, and short stories.

Themes include fear, time, aging, anxiety, and jealousy.

This collection of fifteen stories contains bizarre medical conditions, industrious creatures, conniving cops, killers, dead bodies, a rescue mission, homoeroticism, nonchalant students, a secret garden, and the road to hell.

Contains the stories:

The Tunnel (173 words)
Deep Water (127 words)
Shark Fin Soup (507 words)
The Dermoid Cyst (384 words)
Mrs Jackson (644 words)
It Had To Be Done (206 words)
Granted (1034 words)
The Package (482 words)
Strings & Ribbons (131 words)
Mini Play (485 words)
Tiptoe Through The Tulips (523 words)
Poppycock (327 words)
Telfer Speck (1499 words)
Earth Mites (409 words)
Garsdale (539 words)

Where to get your copy of "Sniggerless Boundulations"

You can also get your copy from Audible

Giveaway

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Australian Author Month: Shona Husk

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Australian Author Month: Steve Harrison

Steve Harrison

Steve Harrison was born in Yorkshire, England, grew up in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, migrated to New Zealand and eventually settled in Sydney, Australia, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

As he juggled careers in shipping, insurance, online gardening and the postal service, Steve wrote short stories, sports articles and a long running newspaper humour column called HARRISCOPE: a mix of ancient wisdom and modern nonsense. In recent years he has written a number of unproduced feature screenplays, although being unproduced was not the intention, and developed projects with producers in the US and UK. His script, Sox, was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild ‘Awgie’ Award and he has written and produced three short films under his Pronunciation Fillums partnership.

His novel TimeStorm was Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) National Literary Awards for 2013, Jim Hamilton Award in the fantasy/science fiction category, for an unpublished novel of sustained quality and distinction by an Australian author.

Three Fast Fun Facts about Steve...

1. I used to be a movie extra (my left shoulder appears prominently in Mission Impossible II)

2. I once partnered the 21 year old Hugh Jackman in the chorus of Paint Your Wagon in an amateur musical production (I made him look and sound so good, he became a star)

3. It took more than 25 years (and many drafts) to find a publisher for TimeStorm.

Where to find Steve...

Website | Facebook |Goodreads

"TimeStorm"

In 1795 a convict ship leaves England for New South Wales in Australia. Nearing its destination, it encounters a savage storm but, miraculously, their battered ship stays afloat and limps into Sydney Harbour. Here, the convicts rebel, overpower the crew and make their escape, destroying the ship in the process.

Fleeing the sinking vessel with only the clothes on their backs, the survivors struggle ashore. Among the escaped convicts, seething resentments fuel an appetite for brutal revenge against their former captors while, for their part, the crew attempts to track down and kill or recapture the escapees. However, it soon becomes apparent that both convicts and crew have more to concern them than shipwreck and a ruthless fight for survival; they have arrived in Sydney in 2017.

TimeStorm is a thrilling epic adventure story of revenge, survival and honour set in a strange new world of unfamiliar technology and equally unfathomable social norms. In the literary footsteps of Hornblower, comes Lieutenant Christopher ‘Kit’ Blaney, an old-fashioned hero, a man of honour, duty and principle, dragged into the 21st century… literally.

A great fan of the grand seafaring adventure fiction of CS Forester, Patrick O’Brien and Alexander Kent, and modern action thriller writers such as Lee Child, Steve Harrison combines several genres in his debut novel. The book was inspired by a replica 18th century sailing ship on Sydney Harbour and a question from Steve’s brother, Tony: “What if that was a real convict ship?” TimeStorm explores that question in a fast-paced story as a group of desperate men from the 1700s clash in modern-day Sydney.

Where to get your copy of "TimeStorm"

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Australian Author Month: Sally Odgers

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Australian Author Month: Tima Maria Lacoba

Tima Maria Lacoba

My name is Tima Maria Lacoba and my background is in archaeology and Ancient Roman History, especially Roman Britain. I was a practising archaeologist for many years before taking up high school teaching. It gave me the opportunity to take my students on overseas excursions to visit the amazing archaeological sites they’ve only seen in books.

One day, I surrendered to the itch of writing. After many years reading and correcting my students’ creative writing tasks and essays, I decided it was time to write my own. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

Bloodgifted is the result.

Bloodgifted is just the start of a three part series I’ve entitled, The Dantonville Legacy. Later, I intend writing individual books on the other characters in the series, for they all have their own story.

Currently, I live on the Central Coast, an hour’s drive north of Sydney, surrounded by wooded hills, possums and seed-dropping rosellas. Between bouts of writing, I teach English and History, enjoy long walks while dodging the nesting magpies and plot the next series of books I’d like to write.

Five Fast Fun Facts about Tima...

1. I smashed a 3,000 year-old Egyptian vase on my first dig (I'm an archaeologist).

2. I can read Egyptian hieroglyphics.

3. Chocolate is my favourite food.

4. I make my own jewellery (for giveaways).

5. Unicorns are my favourite animal.

Where to find Tima...

Website | Facebook | Twitter| Amazon | Goodreads

"Bloodgifted: (The Dantonville Legacy Book 1)"

Being unable to age is only the beginning …

Laura Dantonville is shocked to learn her strange genetic mutation, is linked to a dark family secret—a centuries-old curse that turned her Roman ancestor into a vampire. Now that she has come of age, she is the key to breaking that curse. But she’s also the prey of rogue vampires who inhabit the city’s frightening and violent underworld, as her blood gives them the ability to daywalk. For her protection she’s assigned a guardian—the handsome, sexy and dangerous Alec Munro—who wants nothing to do with her.

If not for her family, Alec Munro would never have been transformed into a vampire. He owes them nothing, yet he also knows his own fated role in breaking the curse, and the unthinkable consequences should he not accept.

To the Brethren, the ending of the curse spells disaster. Among a powerful few malice grows . . .

Where to get your copy of "Bloodgifted"

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Lauren Dawes

Australian Author Month: O. N. Stefan

Australian Author Month: C.S. Sealey

Australian Author Month: Ashley Howland

Australian Author Month: Susan Horsnell

Australian Author Month: Ali Constable

Australian Author Month: Lorraine Cobcroft

Australian Author Month: Morgan Bell

Australian Author Month: Shona Husk

Australian Author Month: Steve Harrison

Australian Author Month: Sally Odgers

Australian Author Month: Tima Maria Lacoba

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