Cyclone

The women and men in Nude play out their desires and frustrations from Dublin to Paris, Delhi to Barcelona, and beyond. In these stories there are mercurial lovers, illicit affairs and mistakes that cannot be undone. And at the centre of it all is the unclothed body: in bedrooms, in art, and in and out of love.

Award-winning writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir uses her trademark sensual frankness, coupled with poetic language, to weave an intoxicating spell in these stories. If fictional worlds pivot on yearning, then the characters in these stories yearn for passion, for understanding and, sometimes, for freedom.

August 26th, 2009 | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Leave a comment

June 10th, 2009 | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (4)

dumbfoundry : Poetry news, poetry blogs, poetry magazines, poetry journals, poetry sites, poetry links, etc. Ivy Alvarez (author of Mortal) is one of the original dumbfounders.

Ivy covers Rob A. Mackenzie and Andrew Philiip in upcoming blogs.

June 1st, 2009 | Category: Blog profiles | Comments (1)

Throughout this collection, opposites collide — reality and delusion, political activism and apathy, friend and enemy, life and death. Messiahs parachute themselves to disused northern fairgrounds, a woman diets until practically invisible, trained apes teach a colony of drunks how to dance, a bingo night fuels familial despair and love, and an airborne cabbage blasts a cyclist into orbit. With precision of language and a colourful, anarchic spirit, Mackenzie’s poems focus on their subjects with humanity and hard-won compassion. They have a light touch, but are never trivial. They are for readers who trust that questions are rarely simple and answers never final. Ironic and humorous, complex and engaging, you can’t do without The Opposite of Cabbage.

June 1st, 2009 | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (7)

Megan Taylor Blog Stories

Megan’s blog features random ramblings about writing and publishing, along with some of her own short stories and the odd interactive blog story too. You can also find it on LiveJournal and MySpace.

Megan is an author, currently living in Nottingham. Her debut How We Were Lost was published by Flame Books in 2007 and she has recently completed her second novel, Before the Light.

To find out more about her writing, please visit her website www.megantaylor.info

February 25th, 2009 | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

A Brief History of Time, Beers’ first collection of poetry, is at once an exploration of what it is to grow up in rural America and a treatise for social justice. These poems, many of them award-winning, span a wide range of styles—from plainsong free verse to sestinas to nearly epic works.

The characters/speakers in Beers’ poems range from the rural working class to mythological characters. These poems look at the world with an honest, unflinching eye. She is one of the up-and-coming poets from Generation X we will be hearing a great deal from in the future.

February 10th, 2009 | Tags: A Brief History of Time, Shaindel Beers, virtual book tour | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (4)

Sarah is a novelist, short story writer and creative writing tutor. Author of Something Beginning With (ABCs of Love in the US), Tell Me Everything (both published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Ballantine in the US) and a collection of short stories, Leading the Dance (bluechrome). She also is the co-author, with Lynne Rees, of the experimental short fiction book, Messages, which led to the Your Messages November writing project — www.yourmessages.org. Sarah has two blogs, Sarah’s Writing Journal and A Quiet Sit Down. Her website is here — www.sarahsalway.com and Sarah is also editor-at-large for http://carrieanddanielle.com. Sarah will be taking part in Elizabeth Baines’ book tour Around the Edges of the World.

December 31st, 2008 | Tags: sarah salway | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

Caroline Smailes is a writer. In 2007 her first novel, In Search of Adam, was published by The Friday Project (an imprint of HarperCollins). Her latest novel, Black Boxes was published in September 2008. As well as writing, Caroline runs the BubbleCow Literary Consultancy, where she mentors new writers and edits manuscripts.

Caroline’s website can be found HERE and her blog can be found HERE. Caroline was one of the first fiction writers to be discovered by a cyber scout. Her blogging tends to be about books, about writing and often about Simon Cowell. Caroline joins Cyclone for Elizabeth Baines’ “Around the Edges of the World” Tour.

December 30th, 2008 | Category: Blog profiles | Comments (1)

These are stories about power: children without it and adults vying to get or keep it. A small boy struggles with his parents’ divorce, a doctor fails to understand the limits of his medical power, a wronged wife finds a uniquely powerful way to wreak revenge. Sometimes satirical, sometimes innovative and lyrical, the stories home in on those moments when power can spill into powerlessness: the split-second when a self-satisfied teenager is held at knifepoint by muggers, the trip to the woods with the ‘poor kids’ which teaches a small girl she’s no better than them. They chart the opposite moments when people wrest back power: a daughter rebels against her violent father, a struggling writer decides to expose a con man arts worker, a little girl who wishes her lost father would come back finds she has magic powers.

But it’s a slippery thing, power, and these vivid, wry stories spring surprises: for nothing, in the end, is ever quite what it seems.

December 16th, 2008 | Tags: Around the Edges of the World, Balancing on the Edge of the World, Elizabeth Baines | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (17)