Well, I’ve gone and done it again. This has been a weird year for me. We had a small family emergency, and my workplace kind of went crazy, along with the need to dedicate some time to my daughter. There hasn’t been much time for writing in the mix. Fortunately, for me, I had three finished manuscripts to deal with.
One of these is book-one of an intended trilogy, so I’m holding it back for now. One is a new story about Lizzie and the hat, that might come out near Halloween. This brings me to one of my solo titles. This book is called “Once Upon a Time in the Swamp.”
It’s about a farm wife trying to live her best life. Mari is performing one of her regular chores when the book opens, and I tried to allow her to find some joy in it. Great place to develop setting and her normal world. When she returns to the farm, tragedy hits her hard. Someone has massacred her entire family.
She has to walk to town to get the authorities on the trail, but it seems they have more politically important things to deal with.
This leads Mari on a personal vendetta to get some kind of justice for her family. She has limited skills, and is a little out of her element.
I’m not ashamed to tell you it was inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns of old. However, I still want it to be somewhat unique, and to be one of “my” books. It needed a certain something that I provided in the form of a post apocalyptic setting. I also added a little bit of Voodoo that gives Mari a very small edge.
Sean Harrington did a wonderful job on the cover. The ox and pickup-bed wagon feature prominently in the story. I love the decayed satellite dishes in the background to help sell the setting.
Blurb: Mari and her husband opted for a simple life as farmers. It’s been decades since the world tore itself apart, pitting neighbor against neighbor and family against each other. They were happy in this re-emerging world, until disaster struck.
Mari sets out on a solo quest to avenge the deaths of her family and loss of everything she holds dear. She’s ill equipped for the task, but seems to have time on her hands. Time alone in the wilderness to deal with her personal demons along the way.
She is helped by a few sympathetic elders and a couple of animal companions with lessons Mari can use if she pays attention. Can Mari find justice for her family?
Set in a post apocalyptic, Gulf Coast world, this is a story for fans of the old Spaghetti Westerns.
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I’m also suffering from tour burnout. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve published quite a bit over the last few years, and I’m sure my regular hosts are getting tired, too. I always try to keep my posts unique, and that won’t change. This time, I’m going to post them all here. I hope you’ll swing by to see what I have next, and tell your friends about it. Reblogs are wonderful, and any sharing you can do on social media are all appreciated. If anyone does a review post, I’ll try to share it here and drive you some traffic.
As far as the book goes, you can pick up a copy right here: https://mybook.to/OnceUponTimeSwamp
You can also click on the cover in my sidebar.
For the subsequent posts, I’ll clean them up by putting the cover, blurb, and purchase link at the bottom. This was the announcement post, so I made the cover a little bigger and more prominent.