Guest Post, New Release By Lyn Croft & Can't Forget The Funnies...

Hey everyone! It's Friday and it's March 1st...

What does the first of March have to do with anything? Well, it certainly means I am a busy girl today.

First of all, I'm guest posting over at my friend Carol's blog. Carol and Tom Phipps are the co-authors for "Elf Killers" and the "Heart of the Staff" series, which includes "Good Sister, Bad Sister", "The Collector Witch", "Stone Heart" and "The Burgeoning". So drop by and check out my post here or here.

Today is also RELEASE DAY for my friend and fellow Demon at Hellfire Publishing, Lyn Croft! How exciting release day can be! Her book, "Blood and Lilies" is currently available in eBook format at Amazon and at Smashwords.

Come by on Monday when I will be interviewing Lyn!


In the meantime, have a good weekend and enjoy some funnies. Because I can't ever forget the funnies...

Giveaway & Review: Elf Killers by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps...

Hey everyone! This is the review I promised of Elf Killers. If you want to receive a copy of this book in my GIVEAWAY here is what you have to do:

Comment to this post. One entry per comment and sorry, multiple comments will not garner you additional entries.

Yep, that's it. Easy peasy, right? Of course! I'll announce the winner on Wednesday August 24, 2011.


Elf Killers by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps:

Product description (Courtesy of Amazon.com):

It is the very worst time to be in the woods.

Oisin’s plan is to come with his bow to help Aedan and Doona lead a party of children into the forest to gather the maidenhair seedlings his people would take across the sea as they flee the trolls who hunt them as prey. Maybe he can be back in time for supper.

Dyr's plan is an early evening head smash for the foolish Elves who think they can steal away to the sands of the endless eye sting water and build their strange float huts. They will make a glorious feast.

But on the way, Dyr's brutes stumble across Oisin's gathering party and attack, leaving Aedan mortally wounded and scattering Doona and the children to flee in terror into the dark mountain woods, only to be run down and captured by the bloodthirsty trolls.

Can Oisin find the bonfires of the trolls and rescue them before it’s too late? And what then? Will any of them live long enough to reach safety?

My thoughts:

Elf Killers is a fast-paced, descriptive ride of emotional turmoil and flight or fight drama right from the get go.

As the young Elves are gathering their seedlings to head off to a new land to regroup and recoup their numbers after being hunted by the Elf Killer trolls for so long, they're attacked once more to be thrown into the cook-fires.

Not knowing if all of the young Elves are dead or alive, the elder Elves have no choice but to sail away for distant lands on schedule, sacrificing the few young ones to save the even fewer of the race.

Carol and Tom provide a glossary in the back of this epic fantasy because of the Trollish language and the Elves Gwaelic speech. If you want to understand the book a little more in-depth, I suggest you read through the glossary first. At the beginning, it was a little difficult for me to get in to simply because the Trollish threw me off guard. Being an avid fantasy buff, though, I was not going to let that deter me.

The book is full of rich, imaginative scenery, Elves (which I absolutely adore and love anyway) and beautiful names, unusual creatures (more so than the Elf Killer trolls) and of course unicorns and Sprites. There is much to learn about this world, which I felt I was only given a bare glimpse of, because the pace was heart racing and the need for survival at the fore-front. But even with such a fast rush, I found the book difficult to put down and the authors found time to show that love can blossom, even in the most harsh of situations.

There were a few errors in the book, but nothing so bad as to throw you off the trail of the story. This book is well written, detailed and smooth. Once you get immersed in the Trollish language, you get the gist of what's going on and can't wait for ... well I can't tell you!

If you like epic fantasy, you will like Elf Killers. A sound story of good versus evil, overcoming all odds in adverse conditions and survival of the fittest.

My Skull and Crossbones rating:

Four solid Skull and Crossbones. What can I say, I'm a pirate and a sucker for fantasy.

Available Here:

Amazon $5.99 Kindle Version
Smashwords $5.99

Okay, now leave your comment below to be entered in the drawing. Winner will be announced Wednesday August 24, 2011. Thanks!

{Edit~ I will leave this giveaway open longer. New drawing date will be Monday, August 29, 2011. Thanks!}

Interview: Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps of "Elf Killers"...

I had the privilege of reviewing a cool fantasy called "Elf Killers" by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps.

I'll be doing a giveaway of their book. Want easy? How about this, all you have to do is look for the review and then leave a comment to be entered into the drawing! Can't get any easier than that, now, can you?

I'll be posting the review in a few days, but thought you all might like to get to know the authors first. So without further ado, here it is:

1) Tell us all a little bit about yourself and Tom:

Carol Marrs Phipps: Tom and I have spent the last twenty years (not counting the last two) teaching on Native American Reservations in the Southwest. (Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.) Since we own a farm in Illinois, each year when the school year was finished, we would return to the farm for the summer. The traveling was great for most of those years, but it began to wear on us after awhile and we decided we wanted to get closer to home. Meanwhile, what we longed to do even more was write.

We moved back east and Tom took a teaching job in southern Illinois. Jobs for elementary teachers, however, were scarce at the time and we decided to take the opportunity for me to begin writing full-time and hopefully, Tom could do the same in a year or two. That is still the current plan.

2) Tell us a bit about "Elf Killers":

C.M.P.: "Elf Killers" is a story about a peaceful populations of Elves who are being hunted as prey by a large clan of night stalking trolls that believe themselves to be the only true people in the world. Hence, every other creature is theirs to do with as they please, including the Elves who have become the main staple of their diet.

Although the Elves have magical ability, they learned from their very earliest encounters with the Elf Killer trolls that the creatures were utterly immune to magic of any kind.

Eventually, the Elves began to fear extinction of their race and decide the only chance they have to survive is to sail across the sea in search of a new land to rebuild their lives and their numbers.

When the Elves are nearly ready to set sail, a group of young Elves are sent off into the forest to collect seedlings from the trees the Elves have used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the trolls encounter the young Elves and one of the leaders of the seedling expedition is mortally wounded while the others scatter frantically deeper into the woods.

The young wounded Elf manages to mount his unicorn and gives it instructions to return to the beach camp where his people are making the final preparations for their journey. Sadly, when the unicorn arrives at camp, the brave young Elf is already dead leaving his people to conjecture about the fate of the rest of the group of youngsters.

Believing that the group of young Elves could not have possibly survived, the rest of the Elves set sail on schedule. The youngsters are left to cope with the Elf Killer trolls as best they can, save for a small group of the older Elves who refused to believe that their children were all dead.

3) Was collaborating with your husband difficult?

C.M.P.: Actually, no. Collaborating with Tom was amazingly easy. We got to where we'd take long walks together and brainstorm until it was clear where things should be going with the story, then, it just kind of all flowed seamlessly together. Of course, we've been writing together now for about fifteen years. We have an epic fantasy series (nearly complete) that we've written together that we hope to start getting published in the near future.

4) What made you choose fantasy as a genre?

C.M.P.: I love to read fantasy above all other genres, so I just naturally gravitated to it when I began to put pen to paper, as it were.

5) Do you write in any other genres?

C.M.P.: Not yet, but that isn't to say that I/we won't.

6) Do you have any other books in the works?

C.M.P.: As I mentioned in question three, Tom and I are currently writing an epic fantasy series. It is called Heart of the Staff and we have completed the first four books so far. The epic spans the lives of four generations of a wearing family who are direct descendants of the First Wizard.

7) How did you choose the names of the Elves in your book?

C.M.P.: The Elves names are all from a list of Irish names I got from the internet. End of that mystery.

8) And now a completely random question: What is your favorite snack while writing or watching a movie?

C.M.P.: Popcorn...definitely popcorn.

Thanks so much, Carol and Tom! I loved the Irish names, knew they were Gaelic in nature but wanted to make sure. I have a Sorcha as well. ;)

All right, remember, keep an eye out for the review of "Elf Killers" by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps. Post a comment on the review and that will be your entry into a drawing for your very own copy! See you then!