Virtual Tourist 10/07/22

Table of Contents

News/Musings StoryOrigin Swap 1
Virtual Tourist – Ghostwire Tokyo StoryOrigin Swap 2
All Genre Review Copies Dark YA Reads for Fall
Reviewers Corner!

Greetings!

The EBM (Evil Back Muscle) has been appeased! At least for now. Huzzah! Now I am playing catchup. Whee!

I did get to read several great books though, so it wasn’t a total loss! 😋

Temps have been lower the last couple of weeks, which has been fabulous! It’s amazing that it’s already October.

News/Musings

Being an author, regardless of whether you are published by the biggies, the small pubs, or you go independent, is not just about writing books. There are a ton more hats that you end up having to wear. And one of the hardest things for us to get our heads around is the fact we’re a business.

Weird, isn’t it? 😋

Speaking of treating things like a business—the Daiyu Wu series is now exclusively at Amazon so I can do a Kindle Unlimited experiment for 90 days. The peeps at Ad School recommended the change to better focus the ad spend and visibility. If it adds little to nothing to sales, then the ebooks will go wide again. I’ll let you know how that works out. (All my other works are still wide.)

This month should see the release of Romeo’s Revenge – A Daiyu Wu Mystery Short Story. It’s set around Halloween, though back in the 1930’s it was nothing like what we know today.

I need to get the blurb polished – the quick one I used during the release of the JOY of Murder when using it as a bonus needs tweaking in a bad way. 😋 I should have more info by the next newsletter.

We have two reviews so far for The JOY of Murder Audiobook! Brandon really did such a great job narrating. Both reviewers gave it 5 stars. Yay!

Extra content today:

1) StoryOrigin Swap 1 (Freebie)

2) StoryOrigin Swap 2 (Freebie)

3) All Genres Review Copies Group Promo

4) Dark YA Reads for Fall Group Promo

 

Scroll on down to get all the deets. 😉

Wedding of the Torn Rose

Wedding of the Torn Rose

StoryOrigin Swap 1 (Freebie)

A merchant who abandoned his birthright… A princess with a dark secret…

And an encounter destined to change their lives forever…

Down on his luck, Kaine Khalia was gathering mushrooms in the forest to sell in the nearby capital. A young woman’s screams were the last thing he expected to find. Dashing to her rescue, Kaine finds himself face to face with a monster that should not even exist, fighting for his life as well as hers.

His world only gets crazier from there. Kaine returns with Princess Lydia to her father’s castle, where he discovers himself in the king’s good graces. Confused and leery by a reward beyond gold, Kaine reluctantly agrees to remain and help with Lydia’s younger siblings. Life could not have thrown him more.

Plunged into a world of magical intrigue, unrest, and political maneuvering, each new event leaves Kaine feeling out of place and, worse, dangerously exposed to a growing threat. The Darian Kingdom stands at the crossroads. Lydia’s upcoming wedding to the prince of the Throatian Kingdom will soon become the defining moment in Kaine’s life.

With secrets revealed, and the perils of war looming on the horizon, it is going to take every ounce of loyalty, imagination, and willpower for Kaine to survive, and, if he is fortunate, stop the fast approaching storm from burning his world to the ground.

Journey with Kaine as he attempts to prevent a war and save a kingdom in the first volume of the Symphony of Crowns and Gods series.

Wedding of the Torn Rose is a fast-paced fantasy adventure with mystery, action, and magic.

Ghostwire Tokyo

I fell in love with this game when I saw the promo. Snagged it when it went on special. Bwahahahaha!

Ghostwire: Tokyo is an urban supernatural action game. A man has set off an event that has separated 240,000 people in an area of Tokyo from their bodies leaving behind their spirits. He plans to use them as energy for his mad scheme to resurrect his wife.

Akito, a young man on the way to visit his sister at the hospital, had just been in a terminal accident just before the evil fog arrived. The mysterious man KK moved to inhabit Akito’s body so he can fight to stop what’s being done. But though Akito had died, his spirit is still there and prevents KK from taking over. The two must now work together.

Those of you who have been following the newsletter for a while know that I am a sucker for Japanese stuff. And since this one has a lot of folklore woven into it, I was all in!

The game has a main story line and also side quests, which deal mainly with supernatural phenomena. While the main monsters are almost all modern inventions, you also get to interact/see/capture multiple ones that have been part of Japanese mythology for ages.

As you buy food, pick up objects, and enter new areas of the city, the game will share info about it. You also get to be a onmyoji – a Japanese spirit wizard – and get to remove curses, purify areas, use paper spells, etc. You even do the two-fingered hand motions (or you can let KK do it for you!)

You even have to hunt down Tanukis who are hidding in disguise around the city! (You can find them by looking for their tails, which is not as easy as it sounds!)

Unlike a lot of games where you get a sort of radar sense to find hidden things, the one in this game is not only visual but also relies on sound! It took me forever to put that together. DOH!

The game also start easy, but gets progressively more difficult as you gain abilities and more movement options. I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it! 😁

You can see all the currently uploaded pics here.

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Everything begins at this famous crossroads in Tokyo.

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Akito after he comes to. The black stuff around him is KK.

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The fog rolls into Tokyo. When it touches a person, their body disappears, leaving only their clothing and possessions behind. Their spirits are being gathered up for nefarious purposes.

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The madman responsible for the crisis.

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Power imbued boxes being used to trap the helpless souls.

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The Yokai (Monsters/Ghosts/Demons) Parade – mutated from the mythological version to one that includes the modern monsters of the game.

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Close up on one of the modern monsters. Eek!

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Akito talking to KK. As the game progresses, we get to find out more about the ex-cop and those who he was working with to stop the madman before the fog arrived.

Berikatanyan Dawn

Berikatanyan Dawn

StoryOrigin Swap 2 (Freebie)

On Earth a stranger is convicted of murder, though he has no memory of the crime. A young architect wins his Masters degree, but — still battling his demons — he makes a momentous decision. A young woman waits for her father to come home, but her troubles are only just beginning. These three people share a connection they have yet to discover.

On the remote world of Berikatanya the people suffer the most cataclysmic failure of Elemental magic in their history. How will they deal with the loss of so many powerful magicians?

Berikatanyan Dawn is a prequel novella that can be enjoyed on its own, and also sets the scene for my SF/Fantasy trilogy: The Berikatanyan Chronicles.

GROUP PROMOAll Genre Review Copies! (No banner – boo!)

Dark YA Reads for Fall Group Promo Banner

Dark YA Reads for Fall – group promo for Oct 2022!

🌟 Shout out to Reviewers Corner! 🌟

Thanks this month go to:

Alien Redemption – Panner.

The JOY of Murder – brf1948, Bonnye Reed Fry, Chazzi, and drsyko.

The JOY of Murder Audiobook – Lavender Jade and BigT.

A great big thanks to all the reviewers this month!

(Do you want your name in here, too? All you need is to post a one or two-sentence review at Bookbub, Goodreads, Amazon, or send me a link if it’s posted elsewhere and I will add you here next round!)

I hope you have a great weekend! 😁

 

Gloria