I redesigned the covers, using the same cover photos, to make the series a bit more unified. This is the first book in the series, Broken Angel, and the third book in the series, Hunted Angel.
Another awesome announcement is that I have chosen to make “Broken Angel” permanently FREE! It will be available through Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, and more! Hope you all enjoy this great deal and if you pick it up and read it, please leave a review for me! It means so much to us authors to hear what our readers think of our hard work and the characters we love so dearly.
Not only will Broken Angel be available through multiple digital channels, but I am working on getting all my eBooks out there to Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo, and more so that everyone (whether they have Kindle or not) can enjoy my books. It’s been a great experience being Kindle exclusive for the past few years, but I feel like I need to spread my wings and fly out a little further. I can’t wait!
I was contacted this morning that my books was featured in an article on Wiki.Ezvid.com and that it had made #4 of 12 on their list of Fantasy Books That Aren’t Afraid to Get Dark! This was a surprise to me and I am very grateful they chose me of the many many great indie authors out there who write dark fantasy. It’s a great article, too! Not only do they give a list of 12 great novels with links to their Goodreads pages, but they also give a list of fun activities for Fantasy Fans, 8 Great Fantasy Horror Films to watch (with one of my favorites “The Craft” as #1!), a list of common Fantasy tropes or themes, and a YouTube video with in-depth look at the mythology of monsters! Please go and check out the full article on their website. If you’re a dark fantasy fan, I promise you won’t be disappointed!
What happens when civilization falls and the dead rise?
The devastating outbreak of a new strand of fatal flu has the world concerned. As every lab in the country tries to come up with a vaccine to stop humanity from being wiped out, another threat rises—the dead. While some ignore the warning signs and fall victim to the wandering hordes of zombies, others band together in small groups in a desperate attempt to survive. Many struggle to understand, as they watch their friends and family die, whether this is a challenge to overcome or a new, permanent reality.
Christine and Liam are building a life together in a small town in northwest Indiana. They live in a nice apartment, both have promising careers in respectable fields, and are about to take the plunge into matrimony. When the zombie plague devastates the couple by taking what small amount of people they love in the world, they have to make the choice to step up or hide behind closed doors. It’s a good thing Liam has been practicing with a bow and arrow since he was five-years-old.
Zack Kran is the couple’s next door neighbor and Liam’s best friend. He owns a comic book and gaming store in the heart of Chesterton, Indiana—a small town on Lake Michigan. It was his dream to share his love of comic art and epic fantasy battles with the world. But as debt weighs on his shoulders with no one coming into the shop, he struggles with the decision to sell or not. The only ray of light to shine through the hovering gloom is a young woman named Anita, who comes in the stores simply to flirt. When the zombies overrun the town, Zack vows to find this woman he barely knows and spend the rest of his short life making sure she survives. Will the hours he spent maneuvering collective swords in front of the mirror be enough to get to her?
Carolyn Bock is a HR representative at the local steel mill. Eternally on the quest for a suitable husband, she is blindsided when she finds her neighbor eating someone. She seeks shelter with Luke Benson, the librarian across the hall whom she always had he eyes on, only to be betrayed and locked inside her apartment under suspicion of being bitten. When the only person who knows she’s in there flees the building, she has no choice but to find her own way out before the dead find a way in.
Gale, Gretchen, Lonnie, Rowan, and Mitchell are a group of misfits wandering the expansive wooded area of the Dune’s State Park to hide from the growing hordes of zombies. Lonnie Lands was appointed group leader from his acts of heroism that saved the other members. But as his head swells with power, will he become the new threat to their survival?
The “Dead Soil” trilogy is not only about the horror of living in a world overrun with rotting, shambling corpses out to eat everything with a pulse. It’s about the changes that many need to make in order to survive a world that’s out to get them.
Since this was my first time using IngramSpark as my publisher instead of Amazon exclusively, the release dates got messed up, but to your advantage! “Dead Road” is now available in paperback and ebook!
For some reason it decided to publish “Dead Road” in ebook everywhere available now except Barnes & Noble’s Nook got it right and it’s available for sale there for pre-order, though the pre-order is only $2.99 instead of the full price of the ebook which is $4.99. Another mess up that benefits my wonderful readers! Pre-order for half off with Nook! Next time I publish with them, I hope to have all the kinks worked out, but this time enjoy the early release and discounts!
Hardcover release date is still set for July 31 (as far as I know!)
The second book in the bestselling Dead Soil series continues with the group of wanderers and the group at the apartments together waiting out the winter in the Dune Ridge complex. All have suffered great loss in the first months of the zombie plague and it is starting to take a toll on some of the members. But there is hope in the form of a scientific journal left behind by Christine’s fiance, Liam. It may hold the key to a cure. All they have to do is deliver it to the Disease Research Center in the heart of downtown Chicago. With zombies thawing from the cold and roaming the earth in numbers like never before, can everyone survive the road to restoration?
When we left Christine Moore she had just lost the love of her life. Now, she battles with her inner voices telling her to abandon the group and seek to restore the world on her own…before she loses anyone else she cares about.
Zack Kran has become the leader of the group of misfits, though not by choice. He carries the heavy burden of life and death on his shoulders as he makes decisions that effect everyone in the group and their safety.
Gretchen Moore, Christine’s older sister, struggles with the poor choices of her past as she seeks forgiveness from her younger sister for abandoning her all those years ago.
And the rest of the group bands together with these three in a combined effort to restore the world to what it once was, a safe and zombie-free place.
It almost sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? How can a Christian woman write zombie fiction? This is something I struggled with since I became a devoted Christian a little over a year ago (which is also why I have not written or published anything since). I prayed a lot about my calling in life. I knew it was writing, but now that I had a new set of beliefs and values, how was that to be integrated into my fiction? Because I was a Christian, could I only write Christian Fiction now? Zombie fiction had been a huge part of my writing since I started back in 2012. How was I supposed to write about such horrors now? I questioned whether I should abandon my work, even though many of my series were only half-finished or just started. Could I really never finish these stories I had created and held so dear to my heart for so long?
In my prayers about what I should do next as a writer I felt in my heart that I needed to finish what I had started. I asked God how I could do that now and my answer was to use my writing to glorify him. But how could I glorify him with zombie fiction? It didn’t seem possible. Either way, I knew what I heard and I knew it was what I had to do, so I set fingers to keyboard and dove in without really knowing what the outcome would be. And I have to say, I am so glad that I did! When I didn’t have the right words, I trust Him and He provided me with them.
“Dead Road”, the second book in my bestselling zombie series “Dead Soil”, is the first fiction book I’ve written as a Christian woman and author. Though yes, there are still zombies and gore and horrors to be had in the story, they felt more like symbols for the terrible things we all face in life today. Though zombies do not roam the earth, we still lose loved ones to horrible circumstances, we still have hurts and pains that need healing, we are still scared, anxious, and sometimes isolated because of the world around us. These are the themes I focused on in this novel.
My character inspiration for Christine Moore, the main character of the Dead Soil series. Click here to check out my blog of all character inspiration!
Christine Moore, the main character of the series, started out as a confident, outspoken, young lawyer in my first book “Dead Soil”, but the world and losses she faced stripped her of everything she knew about herself. When we meet her again at the beginning of “Dead Road” she is a broken woman, unsure of herself except in her ability to kill zombies. She may even be a little mentally unstable. She has seen some truly horrifying things and they have stuck with her, burying themselves deep in her heart and hardening it. She isolates herself because of her pain. What Christine feels may sound all too familiar to any of us who have experienced loss and pain in our lives. In “Dead Road” my goal was to start Christine down the road to recovery and victory over these feelings, which I do believe is a great way to glorify God and His awesome healing powers. My own experiences with healing through Celebrate Recovery’s “STEPS” program was a huge inspiration for this. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who has painful hurts, bad habits, and things they just can’t let go of.
Inspiration for Zack Kran after the fall. For more character inspiration for the Dead Soil series, CLICK HERE
Another character I used to glorify God’s healing power was Zack Kran, Christine’s only friend left in the world really. He faces the weight of responsibility over the lives of the people in his group. He carries the heavy burden when one of them does not make it and feels it is his own fault. He struggles with forgiving himself and others for the things that have happened in a world that is falling apart. He tries so hard to control everything around him, to keep everyone safe, but slowly realizes that he is not in control, as none of us really are. Through his journey we see him teeter on the brink of losing hope and faith in restoration. What Zack goes through is dear to my heart and he is one of my favorite characters in the book for it, because I believe what he feels is so similar to what so many of us feel when we are faced with trials. We all feel the burden of responsibility, we all struggle with forgiveness, we all struggle with our faith sometimes, and it can be all too easy to lose hope. I hope that through Zack’s journey in “Dead Road” I have created a character many of you can relate to. I also hope that he helps many of you see how to never lose hope and to always extend forgiveness.
So, you see, though “Dead Road” is a zombie fiction book, it is so much more than that. The themes I’ve placed throughout really do glorify God and all his goodness. I wanted to create a story that doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes. I didn’t want to write about all the rainbows and unicorns and good times of being a Christian, because that’s not reality. Being a Christian is hard. We face trials. We lose our loved ones. We are at fault a lot of the time. We are not perfect even though the world expects us to be. We struggle. We lose hope. We make mistakes. We have our own monsters within us that we deal with daily. I’ve brought those monsters to life with zombies and I hope you enjoy reading about how my characters defeat them and find victory in life again.
Dead Road (book 2 of the Dead Soil series) available in Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks, paperback, hardcover, and more this July 31st!
If you would like to catch up on the series before the new release, you can find “Dead Soil” on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Audiobook.
Just a warning, it was written before I became a Christian so there is some bad language in it, but through God’s good work there are a lot of Christian values and beliefs woven into the fabric of the story as well without me even realizing it at the time when I wrote it. He really does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?
It’s almost here! The release of the second book in the Dead Soil series! I know you all have been waiting on the edge of your seat for this one and I’m sorry it’s taken me SOOOO long to get it together.
If you’re new to the scene “Dead Soil” is the first book in the self-titled series. It is my best-seller and has great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads!
A great book that covers new ground (pun intended). Fast paced start. Interesting (but not always likable) characters. I can usually guess the direction a lot of books will take, but this one played out in ways I didn’t see coming. I’m looking forward to more in the series. “
Author James Minton’s 5 Star Amazon Review
Here is the book’s summary on Amazon:
What happens when civilization falls and the dead rise?
The devastating outbreak of a new strand of fatal flu has the world concerned. As every lab in the country tries to come up with a vaccine to stop humanity from being wiped out, another threat rises—the dead. While some ignore the warning signs and fall victim to the wandering hordes of zombies, others band together in small groups in a desperate attempt to survive. Many struggle to understand, as they watch their friends and family die, whether this is a challenge to overcome or a new, permanent reality.
Christine and Liam are building a life together in a small town in northwest Indiana. They live in a nice apartment, both have promising careers in respectable fields, and are about to take the plunge into matrimony. When the zombie plague devastates the couple by taking what small amount of people they love in the world, they have to make the choice to step up or hide behind closed doors. It’s a good thing Liam has been practicing with a bow and arrow since he was five-years-old.
Zack Kran is the couple’s next door neighbor and Liam’s best friend. He owns a comic book and gaming store in the heart of Chesterton, Indiana—a small town on Lake Michigan. It was his dream to share his love of comic art and epic fantasy battles with the world. But as debt weighs on his shoulders with no one coming into the shop, he struggles with the decision to sell or not. The only ray of light to shine through the hovering gloom is a young woman named Anita, who comes in the stores simply to flirt. When the zombies overrun the town, Zack vows to find this woman he barely knows and spend the rest of his short life making sure she survives. Will the hours he spent maneuvering collective swords in front of the mirror be enough to get to her?
Carolyn Bock is a HR representative at the local steel mill. Eternally on the quest for a suitable husband, she is blindsided when she finds her neighbor eating someone. She seeks shelter with Luke Benson, the librarian across the hall whom she always had he eyes on, only to be betrayed and locked inside her apartment under suspicion of being bitten. When the only person who knows she’s in there flees the building, she has no choice but to find her own way out before the dead find a way in.
Gale, Gretchen, Lonnie, Rowan, and Mitchell are a group of misfits wandering the expansive wooded area of the Dune’s State Park to hide from the growing hordes of zombies. Lonnie Lands was appointed group leader from his acts of heroism that saved the other members. But as his head swells with power, will he become the new threat to their survival?
The “Dead Soil” trilogy is not only about the horror of living in a world overrun with rotting, shambling corpses out to eat everything with a pulse. It’s about the changes that many need to make in order to survive a world that’s out to get them.
Phew! That about sums up the first book. The second book focus promises much more zombie thrills and chills for the group of survivors you’ve come to know and love! Don’t miss it.
Grab your copy of “Dead Soil” today by CLICKING HERE
(I mean, what’s three dollars, really? Go on!)
Character Inspiration for Dead Soil series: From top left to right
Zombies, Zack, the Sherman family, Lonnie Lands, Carolyn Bock, Dan Anderson, Rowan Brady, Mitchell Barnes, Gale Lewis, Lee Hickey, Gretchen, Anita, Liam, Christine.
