KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!
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SMOKE AND STARS
A Rise of the Phoenix Novel
BY MICHELLE SCHAD
Blurb
Five years have been lost to a void in Reven Si’ahl’s mind. Now, everything Reven was is barreling at him faster than he can process it. Family, love, enemies, demons, and nightmares he can’t control plague him at all hours. The more he learns about his previous life, the more he questions his sanity.
Stuck with the small handful of survivors from the Phoenix Empire, Reven finds himself offering advice to his nephew, asking advice of his son, Kaleo, and learning that sometimes family can be your biggest enemy.
Meanwhile, the Kormandi King, Demyan, finds himself in need of the bard’s aid again as he is left to sort out how to escape a nation hell bent on killing people with Power. By sheer luck, and with the help of Idris Acai – an assassin and Reven’s other son – the miraculous is achieved until reaching Tierra Vida with the others. What should be a warm family reunion turns into Reven’s greatest nightmare when Kaleo is taken by the Queen of Torment herself, Madhavi. Now Reven has to accept his new role, and go rescue his urchin before it’s too late.
- Publisher : Chaos Publications; 19th ed. edition (April 21, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 296 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1954413106
- ISBN-13 : 978-1954413108
SMOKE AND STARS
A Rise of the Phoenix Novel
BY MICHELLE SCHAD
Excerpt
General Tondra Caelestis made a face of disgust as she stared at the empty, decrepit manse before her. Three days searching the densely forested hillsides of the Sierra Alto mountains yielded nothing in her hunt for the traitorous brat who attacked the Amatessa and the Esbethi Anointed One. Not only that, but he freed two prisoners as well.
The edifice before her gave the illusion that it might crumble if someone sneezed too loudly and left an odd sensation between her wings, shoulder blades twitching no matter where she stood. It was as if the building watched her.
Sitting outside the manse was an elderly gentleman, a human, with a graying goatee and balding head. He’d named himself Sergio, but said little else since they found him. He’d returned to the manse with a wagon full of supplies, surprised to find the building crawling with avian soldiers rather than the home’s inhabitants. Tondra narrowed her eyes at the old man, stepping over to where he sat in the filth that used to be a shrub.
“I know you understand me,” Tondra began, looking down at the man. He looked up with benign, innocent black eyes staring at her. “Where have they gone? People do not just vanish into thin air. Where would they go? Somewhere here? Somewhere else? Tell me, and you can go.”
The man offered only a silent grin in response.
Tondra’s lip curled in anger. There was absolutely no sign of where they could have gone.
About Author Michelle Schad…
From a young age, there have been voices inside of Michelle’s head. No, not those kinds of voices – or, maybe they are; who really knows? Rather than fear those voices, Michelle wrangled them like wild mustangs on the prairie, make each one bend to her will in its own time. Well, what does that mean?
It means that Michelle has been writing stories of the fantastic, the horrific, and the mysterious for as long as her little fingers have been able to hold a pen and probably longer, but memory only goes back so far. In a world that passes for ‘normal’, she is all of the ‘normal’ things one might expect: mother, wife, keeper of fur-babies. She is also a student of life, meaning if there is something to learn, she will learn it, thus making her a veritable font of only partially useful knowledge.
The whimsy and ChAoS that actually controls the rest of Michelle’s existence has earned her a place in two different arenas so far: Bards and Sages Quarterly and Corrugated Sky Publishing. While wielding the unwieldiness of words is her primary function, she is also an avid crafter, collector of “creepy” ball-jointed dolls, and can run through a Target in under an hour with only two extra items from her intended list. Talent!
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Links to Michelle’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VEvf5m
Buy Link (Amazon & Nook):
https://mybook.to/SmokeNStars
Shop Indie:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/smoke-and-stars-michelle-schad/19952742
Website: https://tamingchaos.net/
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Special Giveaway: Michelle will give away a $10 Amazon Gift Card to one lucky reader who enters her Rafflecopter giveaway. Enter HERE:
URL: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/9751c04280/?
Happy Reading!
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Thanks, Michelle, for sharing your book with us!
Don’t miss the chance to read this book!
This book sounds intriguing! Thanks for sharing with us.
Good morning, Michelle, and welcome back to Karen’s Killer Book Bench. I enjoyed your excerpt. It’s intriguing, as is the cover. Fabulous cover! Thanks for sharing you book with us today!
It sounds like you’ve built a complex world! The book sounds interesting. Thanks for the excerpt!
Your book sounds like a great read! Thank you for sharing about it. One thing I would like to forget is a person made fun of me one day at school.
I would like to forget all the mean things that people have to said to me. Thank you
One thing I would like to forget… the pain of losing a beloved pet.
pain
Heartache and pain