Thursday, October 10, 2013

October: Virtual book tour with 'Oddities & Entities'

For fans of the supernatural, paranormal, and horror genres, during the month of October I'm once again touring the blogosphere in support of my second book, 'Oddities & Entities'.  For those who prefer perusing blogs rather than websites, I'll be posting excerpts from the creative essays I've posted to my website regarding 'Oddities & Entities'.  Today's post is an overall treatment of the book, but following posts will contain background on each individual story within the book.

If you can't wait to read everything, see it all at the 'Oddities & Entities' page on my website.  

To follow along the blog tour, the full list of dates are on my tour page at TLC Book Tours.  I also have the current list of dates and stop links at the bottom of this post.


Oddities & Entities, an anthology of six stories, marks my second stand-alone publication.  For this adventure I went down the road of the paranormal and supernatural, so it’s a bit of a departure from my first anthology, Remnant, in terms of subject matter.  But, as I’ve said in several places, I enjoy the challenge of going in different directions and trying something at least a little bit different as I move from story to story.

 Oddities & Entities explores the conflicts that arise when our everyday world brushes up against states of nature normally hidden from common perception.  Through trial comes truth and, for the characters of Oddities & Entities, it is the inner truth of their varied states of existence.  As the old wisdom goes, it's difficult to perceive ourselves in full until we are somewhat displaced from our inner perceptions of the world.  It’s not an easy thing to do.  Hence the symbolic context of the cover: the turbulence of water meeting land, the darkness of light broken by the glow of the moon rather than the sun, reality illuminated by blue twilight rather than golden sunlight.  States of nature coexist, even as they are at odds with each other.

 O&E, and the stories encompassed therein, came together in roughly two years’ time.  Unlike the stories of my first book, Remnant, which found their way together over a rather protracted period of time, and without any forethought to link them in an anthology, I wrote the stories of O&E with a steadily increasing clarity as to thematic context.  Starting with "Boneview", my interest in pursuing the strange world around us from different perspectives stoked the fires of my imagination and afforded a fresh wave of ideas.  Once "Boneview", "My Other Me", and "Gray" were all in hand, I then began to consciously consider the notion of a second anthology.  I knew I needed two, perhaps three, more novellas to flesh out such an anthology, and fortunately there was no shortage of ideas to work with.  "Appendage" was next to reach completion.  With its more philosophical aspects, it seemed most appropriate as the closing tale of the anthology’s arc.  So last but not least came "Elmer Phelps" and, with that in place, I felt the anthology was complete.  I never had any doubt as to the title I would choose: I felt that not only is "Oddities & Entities" a bit of a catchy title, but that it suitably describes the landscape in which much of the book dwells.

TLC Book Tour schedule:

Tuesday, October 1st: Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile
Wednesday, October 2nd: Wordsmithonia
Tuesday, October 8th: Ms. Nose in a Book
Wednesday, October 9th: Tiffany’s Bookshelf
Thursday, October 10th: The Reader’s Hollow
Friday, October 11th: No More Grumpy Bookseller
Monday, October 14th: BoundbyWords
Tuesday, October 15th: Sweet Southern Home
Wednesday, October 16th: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom 
Thursday, October 17th: Bibliophilia, Please!
Monday, October 21st: Pingwing’s Bookshelf
Tuesday, October 22nd: October Country
Thursday, October 24th: From the TBR Pile
Monday, October 28th: Luxury Reading
Tuesday, October 29th: Sara’s Organized Chaos

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