Book Tour: The Legend of Black Jack by A.R. Witham – Genre: YA Fantasy/ Adventure @arwitham @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours

Welcome to the tour for The Legend of Black Jack by A.R. Witham! Read on for more details!

Legend of Black Jack cover full res

The Legend of Black Jack

Publication Date: May 17th, 2022

Genre: YA Fantasy, Action Adventure, Coming-of-Age, Portal Fantasy (Full Page Illustrations)

Jack Swift can tell you every element on the periodic table, recite Treasure Island verbatim, and would remember in perfect detail every word you’d ever say to him. He has been alone for a long time, so he has buried himself in books, using them to plan his escape.

But no textbook could ever prepare him for the land of Keymark.

At 3:33 a.m. on his fourteenth birthday, Jack is kidnapped by a hideous monster to another sphere of existence. Now there are two moons in the sky, and he is surrounded by grotesque creatures and magical warriors training for battle. They want the impossible: Jack must use his abilities to save a life or be trapped in this bizarre world with no chance of rescue.

Jack doesn’t have secret magic, a great destiny, or any experience.

So why do they all expect him to become a legend?

Content/Trigger Warnings:

Shown on Page:  Child Abuse (foster mom hits main character), Child Abduction (main character kidnapped by monster)

Alluded to:  Child Neglect (foster mom ignores her wards)

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Blood

The operating room was anything but sterile. The floor was pounded-down dirt, the walls were splintered wood that collected dust by the handful, and the smoking fire in the corner exhaled nearly as much soot into the room as up the chimney. It was dark, it was dirty, and it put the odds against Jack Swift before he even began.

Jack had two concerns, other than the obvious: that Xiang-lo would die the moment he touched him. The first worry was the anesthesia. Dr. Richards had told him repeatedly that in almost any surgery, the drugs used to put the patient to sleep were by far the most dangerous part of a procedure; more men had been killed by a tiny slip in the amount of medication used than from any mistake a surgeon made. The gas passers, as Richards called them, were the background heroes of the operating room, and kept their patients walking the thin line between sleep and death.

Jack had made the calculations for the correct amount of anesthesia, but in the end, it proved unnecessary. Memphis would keep Xiang-lo asleep. Such majik was well within the monster’s mastery, said Valerian, and keeping Xiang-lo out of consciousness and out of pain would be the rhino’s task during the procedure.

The second concern was more personal. “I don’t want to see his face.”

Valerian nodded as if he had been expecting the request. “That has been arranged.”

Good. So the knight understood. “Not just his face,” continued Jack. “I don’t want to see any part of him other than his belly on the right side. There are medical sheets in Memphis’s bag; cover him with those. His chest, his legs, but especially his face. I don’t want to see it.”

Surgery was just like carpentry. Jack had to remember that. But the only way to treat a man like a block of wood was to remove his face, remove his personality, remove any trace of humanity from him…and even then, he would still be a Pinocchio.

If everything went well, Jack would love to hear about Xiang-lo, about who he was, what his dreams were, and how he’d lived his life. But right now, all Jack wanted to know, all he could know, was where to cut.

Besides, some darker part of his mind chided. You don’t want another face haunting your dreams when you kill him.

Available on Amazon

About the Author

AR Witham Author Photo

A.R. Witham is a three-time Emmy-winning writer-producer and a great lover of adventure. He is the world’s foremost expert on the history of Keymark. He loves to talk with young people and adults who remember what young people know.  He has written for film and television, canoed to the Arctic Circle, hiked the Appalachian Trail and been inside his house while it burned down.  He lives in Indianapolis.

If you would like a sneak peek at his upcoming work or upcoming events, please reach out to him.

A.R. Witham | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

 

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Book Tour & Giveaway: The Man Who Came and Went by Joe Stillman – Genre: Mature YA/ Magical Realism @dwilk @simonschuster @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #YABooks

Welcome to the book tour for The Man Who Came and Went by Joe Stillman! Read on for more info and a chance to win a signed copy of the book!

Cover art 1-27-21

The Man Who Came and Went

Publication Date: March 1st, 2022

Genre: Mature YA/ Literary Fiction/ Magical Realism

Publisher: City Point Press

Distribution: Simon & Schuster

The Man Who Came and Went, a novel of the new west, is a magically realistic story for the modern era that will tease your understanding and beliefs, and draw you into the mysteries of the universe, from the brilliant mind of Joe Stillman, acclaimed Academy Award nominated co-writer of “Shrek.” 

Fifteen-year-old Belutha Mariah, our storyteller, is the oldest of three kids from three different fathers. Her life’s goal is to keep her dysfunctional mom, Maybell, from procreating yet again and then to leave the coffin-sized town of Hadley, Arizona the second she graduates high school.

Along comes the new grill cook at Maybell’s Diner, Bill Bill, a mysterious drifter with the ability to mind-read orders. As word spreads in Hadley and beyond, the curious and desperate pour into this small desert town to eat at Maybell’s.

Some believe Bill knows the secrets of the universe.

Belutha figures he’s probably nuts. But his cooking starts to transform the lives of locals and visitors, and Belutha finds her angry heart opening, as Bill begins to show her the porous boundary between this life and what comes after.

In a normal American town, something new and strange, and yet achingly familiar, begins to unfold.

Joe Stillman has brought us an ensemble of empathetic characters, all in the elusive search for happiness in this witty and poignant exploration of love, expectation, and mortality. I laughed, I cried, I loved it.

–  D.J. MacHale, New York Times bestselling author

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Excerpt

The door opened with a DING from the bell that hung on it. No one noticed Bill entering. He was about average in height, but his skinny frame made him look taller. You could tell from his face that he was in his mid-20s, but those were hard years he had lived, and his body looked frail and geriatric. His clothes were old and clung to him like an extra layer of skin, with a smell that would never wash out.

The angles of his face were sharp and careworn. But his eyes, those were different. His face was hard and weathered, but his eyes were soft. They seemed brand new.

No one in the diner even looked. If they did they would have seen those eyes taking in every little detail: the people talking, forks carrying food, the string lights behind the counter, Dolene ringing up a check. But what drew Bill more than anything else was the grill. Harley, the grill cook, must have had four meals going at once, each with its own set of sounds and smells. Most of those meals involved eggs. His spatula made a metal-on-metal scrape as he turned them. Bill was riveted. He went to sit at the counter to watch.

Down the counter, a porkish-looking man named Earle—probably one of three men in town who had never slept with my mom—raised his empty cup. “Can I get a refill, Maybell?

Maybell stopped and faced him. “Seriously, Earle? Is it so goddam much trouble for you to get up off your ass and get it yourself? Can’t you see I’m working here?”

“Well…” he stammered. “I just—was I—I was—”

Maybell pointed to the coffee pot. “How far away is that? Two feet?”

“Sure, I guess…”

“Am I your personal slave, Earle? Is that why God put me on earth?”

“No, I don’t think you’re—”

Maybell grabbed the pot and sloshed coffee in his Earle’s cup. “There. You happy now?”

He nodded meekly.

While she had the pot in her hand, Maybell filled the cup sitting in front of Bill. “I’ll be by to take your order in a minute, hon.”

Maybell walked on. Bill just sat there and stared at the coffee. For him, there was no diner anymore, no Maybell, no clanking dishes or dumb conversation. He leaned closer to that cup like it was the only thing in the world. And there he was, smelling coffee for the first time. And it smelled like life. Like a whole world. Like this is how a planet smells if you’re up in space and could take a deep breath. Bill was motionless for who knows how long. And then, when he was good and ready, he took his first sip.

Those eyes, the ones that didn’t belong on his head, they closed as if he was praying. No, more like he was hearing a prayer. The coffee was praying to be heard, and Bill heard it.

Amazon | B&N | Books-a-Million | Bookshop.org | IndieBound

 

About the Author

Joe Shot 4 _

Joe Stillman co-wrote “Shrek” for Dreamworks which earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Annie and BAFTA Awards.

Other produced features are “Beavis & Butthead Do America”, “Shrek 2”, “Gulliver’s Travels”, “Planet 51” and “Joseph King Of Dreams”.

In television, he was co-producer and writer on “King of the Hill,” for which he received two Emmy Award® nominations. He was a writer and story editor for Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” and a writer on MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead”. More recently he worked on Nickelodeon’s “Sanjay And Craig” and “Kirby Buckets” for Disney. Other TV credits include “Albert” for Nickelodeon, “The War Next Door” for the USA Network, “Clueless”, “Doug” and “Danger And Eggs” for Amazon.

Joe is currently working on a “Curious George” feature for streaming on Peacock.

Joe Stillman | Instagram | Facebook | Newsletter

 

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Book Tour: Dreamland Court by Dale Herd – Genre: Literary Fiction @dwilk @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #BookTour

Welcome to the tour for Dreamland Court by Dale Herd. Read on for more details and an exclusive excerpt!

9781947951488

Dreamland Court

Publication Date: February 22, 2022

Genre: Literary Fiction/ Romance

Set in the blighted industrial landscape of the Los Angeles basin, Dreamland Court is an underground love story.

Just out of prison, Johnny Dalton returns home to find his wife Jackie, the mother of his two small children, passionately involved with one of his good friends.

Doing everything in his power to win her back, Johnny blunders his way through one criminal enterprise after another. When the cops pick him up for being the only adult present at a wild teenage party, he’s sent back to jail.

The strange thing is, as far as Jackie is concerned, Johnny’s maneuvers actually work.

Reminiscent of the pathos in Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the comedy of John Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, Dale Herd focuses his astute gaze on lives that are ordinarily invisible, while turning the conventional love story on its head.

“Known for his brilliant short prose pieces as published in the books, Early Morning Wind, Wild Cherries, Diamonds, and Empty Pockets, Dale Herd is a meticulous recorder of the language we move around in, and he possesses the skill and guts to take it all the way. His underground novel Dreamland Court is simply a masterpiece.”
Kevin Opstedal, Blue Press Books

City Point Press

Excerpt

JACKIE

When I was a kid I felt the only behavior that was mine was bad behavior, my mother took credit for good behavior, but bad behavior was my behavior. Now I was usually good, but regarded my life as a sort of prison term and that when I got out of school or married or eighteen I would start my own life. I didn’t nurse Dawnie. I wanted to nurse. I really did. But sometimes you can’t, even if you want to, not if you’re nervous. There’s a reflex mechanism in your head that won’t release. I thought she was taking it. I would feel she was, but she wasn’t. I felt I was squirting it out but she wasn’t getting it, So I had to give her the bottle, which made Johnny mad. He said having a breast in your mouth was one of the best things in life and he wanted only the best things for his daughter and that ice cream was just a substitute for breast milk and that’s why vanilla ice cream was everybody’s favorite, people that had been breast-fed, that is, that people that hadn’t been breast-fed had to have all those fancy ones like Cherry Jubilee or Mint Chip or Rocky Road, which were never satisfactory.

IRENE

Well, let’s see. There’s Gun-Gun and Leo-Peo and Margarette an’ then there’s Pepsi n’ Lejo, Frosty n’ Pucksters, and Skip. How many is that? Eight? Nine? That should be nine. You know, it’s just awful when one of them goes. The only thought you have is go get another one, you know, one just like it, so’s the others don’t get lonely, but, well, there you are again. Did I say Skipper? I did, didn’t I? I said Skip. And Pansy June? So there’s her, n’ Rags, n’ Solly. The last two are both boy cats, they come from the same litter, real little wild cats, too. An’ John? ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘I just called Bob Wheeler and asked if you’d really been released with no probation,’ and he said, ‘Not likely.’ So then John says, ‘Who’re you gonna believe, a goddamn P.O. or your own son? Would you just give me the gall-darn keys, please?’ And I said, ‘Honey, now I know you think your wife’s driving you crazy, but if you’re feeling crazy it’s because you’re doing things that are making you crazy.’ I told him, I said, ‘That’s just the way it is. That’s the way it was with your dad, n’ that’s the way it is for you, too. So if you really want to do something about it the first thing you need to do is to just stay away from her until you get yourself together.’ Now that’s exactly what I told him.

Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble |  RJJulia

About the Author

Dale Herd has published four books of short stories. His writing has been shaped by the many experiences he has had working as an itinerant laborer on construction sites, wrecking yards, in fast food kitchens, gas stations, Salvation Army yards, slaughterhouses, train yards, and in social work. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife. They have three sons.

 

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