To a year of chasing dreams!

Welcome to 2017 everyone! I truly hope that this year will mark a new beginning of wonder, a middle of everything that’s beautiful, and an ending of circumstances that no longer serve a purpose in your life.

A new year is normally a time for resolutions, but I’ve never been fond of making those, so I’ll just tell you what I have planned for Chasing Dreams in the next few months:

Dream in Words Competition

I’m so excited about this competition. Even though Chasing Dreams is still a small one-person startup, I’m collaborating with an amazing artist and people who are passionate about writing to hold this event. The deadline is really close, so if you’ve got a story that you would love to bring to life, make sure to send your synopsis and first three chapters through to entries@chasingdreamspublishing.com before the 31st January.

Jozi Flash 2017

At the end of 2015, the Jozi Wrino’s organised a Flash Fiction Anthology challenge. The resulting stories were published by Chasing Dreams in 2016 in a free to download e-book. The stories are a crazy, topsy-turvy mix of genres, with the only common theme being the prompts and the fact that the authors are all South African.

This year we’re doing it again, with amazing artwork from Nico Venter providing prompts across 8 different genres. The anthology will again be available, free to download from the end of March 2017.

You can download the original Jozi Flash Anthology here.

After the End

Due to the holidays and the general chaos with which 2016 ended (for both myself and Sharon), the release of After the End has been extended to 20 March 2017.

For those who don’t know, Sharon is currently living on a farm in a small town in South Africa, and building her own house out of recycled materials. After the End features ten short stories from her which explore life in post-apocalyptic worlds. While Sharon’s own circumstances are far from post-apocalyptic, she certainly has some experience with surviving disastrous circumstances and starting life afresh, with new adventures every day.

The extra time taken to polish and refine After the End, will make it a collection well-worth owning.

If you would like to be involved in the blog tour which has been moved to 13th to 19th March 2017, please signup here.

I’m looking forward to sharing a year full of dreams with you. Here’s to 2017!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Invisible Crown Blog Tour

Once again, I’ve teamed up with Royal James Publishing on their blog tour of The Invisible Crown by Charlie Cottrell.

I’ve always enjoyed a good detective story, and The Invisible Crown, book one in the Hazzard Pay series, proved to be an amusing addition to the genre, with a few sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure.

While at first glance the novel appears to fall into the classic noir genre, it detours a little from the norm. Today, I’d like to take a look at the top ten characteristics that distinguish noir from hard-boiled detective stories.

• Deep 1^st person narrative. Traditionally, the noir genre takes you deep into the mind of the character, with a narrative told from their often quite twisted perspective. Eddie Hazzard, the narrator of The Invisible Crown, fulfils this criterion splendidly, with a voice that’s mildly annoying, often ironic, but never dull.
• Doom and gloom. Noir is not about happy endings. Or middles, or even beginnings. More often than not, things go from bad to worse, and then end up in hell in a bucket. Needless to say, check this one off the list for Cottrell’s story as well!
• Morals, or lack thereof. The characters in a classic noir novel, have few to no morals. They won’t hesitate to lie, steal or kill to get their way, and their actions shove them over the edge of doom – ensuring the happily never after ending. In The Invisible Crown, Eddie Hazzard doesn’t quite manage this, making him a strangely endearing anti-hero.
• According to Otto Penzler, “pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation…” Check another one off for Cottrell. The characters in the novel are twisted and strange, not just because of their genetic modifications (which are fantastic to imagine), but because of their motivations. As for the gen-mod descriptions they’re woven into the narrative so well, that for a while I kept walking around expecting to meet a talking gorilla.
• Self-destruction of the narrator. Because it’s not enough that the world hates you and you’re doomed to eternal misery; you also need to try and destroy yourself – slowly. Eddie Hazzard meets this criterion with an often annoying aptitude. His hangovers, while entertaining at first, soon became tedious – a sad distraction from his other charms which could have been avoided had Cottrell given the reader slightly more insight into his addiction. Of course, bordering on noir, Hazzard doesn’t need a reason to drink – he just has to live with it.
• A corrupted system. Check, and double check. The layers in this novel just sink deeper and deeper into rot. The sense that there was, quite literally, no completely innocent person in the entire city of Arcadia, was created so perfectly by Cottrell, I needed a shower to wash off the stench of corruption.
• Frank descriptions of violence and sex. Tick this one off. While there were no erotic scenes in The Invisible Crown, Eddie Hazzard certainly has an eye for the ladies, and there was no shortage of violence and death.
• The femme fatale. Enter Vera Stewart. Rich, sexy, dangerous. Just how dangerous, depends on how far Hazzard is prepared to go to solve the case she brings to him.
• A hyper-localised setting. The city of Arcadia may be vast, but we only ever see a few settings throughout the whole novel. The descriptions of these settings are vivid and emotive, evoking a surreal clarity of the environment Hazzard operates in.
• In noir, the protagonist is the victim, suspect or perpetrator. This puts The Invisible Crown firmly into the hard-boiled category, as Eddie Hazzard is not only a raging alcoholic, but the PI hired to solve a mystery.

All in all, while The Invisible Crown doesn’t quite fit into the noir genre, it certainly makes it into the hard-boiled detective category and does so exceedingly well. I look forward to what the rest of the series holds in store for us.

CLICK HERE  OR VISIT ROYAL JAMES PUBLISHING’S FACEBOOK PAGE TO ENTER TO WIN A $20 AMAZON GIFT CARD AND A DIGITAL COPY OF, THE INVISIBLE CROWN BY CHARLIE COTTRELL.

The Traveller Series – Blog Tour

I’m so happy to once more be part of Royal James Publishing’s blog tour – this time for Tiffany Teoh’s collection of poems titled The Traveller Series. I love doing author interviews, because it gives some truly wonderful insight into the creation of the book, as well as providing an opportunity to meet some fantastic people. The book itself is an exquisite collection of images and poems, and well worth adding to your poetry collection.

How gorgeous is this cover!?

About The Traveller Series:

 The series started from a longing to want to travel after hearing all the good and bad tales from long term backpackers.

Every single piece that made it and didn’t make it in this is book has a special place in my heart as they were the beginning of a journey of a memory that never happened, but a longing that was constant.

We all naturally have it in us to wonder and wander, it’s just a matter of allowing it to take you to places.

When did you start writing poetry?

I first dabbled in song-writing at around ten years old which later led to writing poetry in my teenage years to get some angst out, though I started writing more seriously two years ago when I was 23.

Most of the poems seem to be written in freeform. Have you written any formal styles of poetry, or do you prefer freeform?

I’ve played around with many form of poetry and proses. To be honest the abab rhymes are my favourites. However, most of the poems in this book are free-form because they are meant to take the readers on a journey of the character’s thoughts, rather than to just entertain the readers. I wanted to make the readers feel as if they are there.

The Traveller Series was inspired by your desire to travel and see the world, but a lot of the poems in it also seem to deal with love and loss. These seem to be universal concepts experienced by anyone who’s ever been in a relationship. Do you think that travelling – specifically the immersion into one place before leaving for another – is a metaphor for the experiences that love brings to people?

Actually, The Traveller Series was first inspired by a boy I fell in love with once, but we couldn’t be together as his first love was to keep travelling and he couldn’t remain with me. I wrote the first few poems to help me get through the heart aches and further developed the series when I started travelling myself. The book as a whole is meant to encapsulate the experiences of a traveller i.e.  The excitement of being in a new place, a love for the world as they learn to see it, and meeting as well as having to part with people that you meet.

There’s a simple elegance in your poetry. I especially love this one:

 “Humanity is my father,

Nature is my mother,

the world is my home.”

What inspires you to write and do you follow a routine or write when the urge takes you?

Thank you, that’s one of my personal favourites as well. My inspiration comes from people. I enjoy hearing the philosophies and stories of others. Sometimes they move me so much that I feel they have to be preserved in a physical form. That’s usually when I have the urge to write. I try to have a routine but I’ve learnt creativity can’t work that way all the time. It’s better to just have a pen and paper ready at all times when I feel something profound coming.

 Which poets/authors would you say have influenced you the most, if any?

I find so much bravery and sweetness in Lang Leav. It’s not always easy to share with the world some matters of the heart, plus readers would assume that the author is the main character all the time which is not always the case. I also love Oscar Wilde’s romanticism and elegance – I think those elements should always be preserved in poetry. Edgar Alan Poe’s work was actually what got me into writing poetry instead of songs. I love the stories he tells in poetic form. Annabel Lee is my favourite.

 If there’s one thing you would want readers to take away from your poems, what would it be, and why?

I just want them to finish the book and feel awakened with a renewed sense of empathy towards people. There’s always more to the story than the summary of it. We are all just travelling through life and it makes this world a better place when we are kind and mindful to each other.

About Tiffany Teoh

Tiffany is a Malaysian born Chinese, of Peranakan heritage. She was raised in Kuala Lumpur until the age of 17 and proceeded to live in Australia for 8 years until the age of 25. She is currently hitchhiking and traveling around the world with her fiancé and their puppy. For more on Tiffany, visit her website.

WEBSITE/FACEBOOK/TWITTER/INSTAGRAM

Royal James Publishing is hosting a promotional giveaway. Click here  or visit their Facebook page to enter to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card and a digital copy of, The Traveller Series by Tiffany Teoh.