Sally Bend's Blog

Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we’re adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.

Together for the first time in one volume—all four novels in the dark science fiction epic, the Morgaine Cycle.

The gates were relics of a lost era, a linked network of portals that the ruthless Qual empire used to span Time and Space. The Science Buereau has come to believe that sometime, somewhere in the unreachable past, someone has done the unthinkable and warped the very fabric of the universe using these gates. Now, it is up to Morgaine, a mysterious woman aided by a single warrior honor-bound to serve her, to travel from world to world sealing the ancient gates whose very existence threatens the integrity of all worlds…

It started as a game. Six college kids at a party. Then someone suggested they try the Ouija board. The board that Corie had hidden in the back of her closet and swore never to touch again. Not after what happened last time. Not after Jake’s death…

They were only playing around, but the Ouija board worked, all right. Maybe too well. A spirit who called himself Butler began to send them messages—and make demands. Butler promised them a hidden treasure if only they would follow his directions and head off to a secluded spot in the mountains…A wild, isolated spot where anything could be waiting for them. Treasure or death. Or Butler himself.

Welcome to EnterPAINment – The Margaret Mayhem Show.

When former MMA fighter Dave Ferguson accepts a mysterious job with EnterPAINment Corp, he thinks he’s found the ultimate gig: a thousand dollars a day to work with elite MMA fighters in a secret facility.

Welcome to “Somewhere”—where pain is profit. Run by the gorgeous but icy Margaret Mayhem, “Somewhere” is a prison of pleasure and brutality, built to satisfy the darkest desires of the world’s richest women.

At Somewhere, fighters brawl for blood while prostitutes and servants cater to every vice. Surveillance is total. Escape is impossible. And beneath the luxury lies something far worse—rituals of power and pain that blur the line between sport and sacrifice.

Margaret Mayhem is the gorgeous high priestess overseeing the temple of the world’s pain. As Dave descends deeper into the madness of EnterPAINment, he must decide whether to play the game—Margaret Mayhem’s brutal game—or let it destroy him.

In Wol-vriey’s trademark blend of dark humor, eroticism, and horror, EnterPAINment exposes a world where violence is currency and pleasure demands a price no soul can afford.

I’m still feeling burnt out and exhausted, but I’m making progress on Empire of the Dawn and should find time to review by B.J. Frazier this week.

Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance (and erotic-romance) anthology celebrating the full, beautiful spectrum of gender expression and identity.

Check out the official Call for Submissions and feel free to submit.

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!

Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we’re adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.

Two seasonal purchases this week, one a book and one bookish. Let’s start with the bookish purchase – a gorgeous Pet Sematary t-shirt, celebrating my first and favorite horror novel of all time. As for the book, I nabbed the hardcover of Empire of the Dawn, the conclusion to Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff, which (much to my delight) arrived a week early on Canadian shelves.

I’m still trying to tread lightly on review titles, given that my review stack has become somewhat towering (and life overwhelming), but Echoes of Fortune: Shadows Over Cozumel by David R Leng is a short novella that I know I can polish off on a cold Autumn night.

As I said last week, “it never rains, it pours,” and the deluge has continued right through the end of October. and the deluge has continued right through the end of October. I’m exhausted, burnt out in so many ways, and struggling even to escape into fiction. I did, however, manage to finish The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson (a fabulous read about the consequences of epic war and how catastrophe can bring enemies together); I began reading Empire of the Dawn after trick-or-treating last night; and I’ve got an early copy of by B.J. Frazier cued up on my Kindle.

Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance (and erotic-romance) anthology celebrating the full, beautiful spectrum of gender expression and identity.

Check out the official Call for Submissions and feel free to submit.

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!

Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we’re adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.

Two new purchases this week. I had preordered a trade paperback copy of No Life Forsaken, the Second Tale of Witness by Steven Erikson, but with the release date being pushed back to January, I nabbed the e-book this week instead. I also took the plunge on The Second Death of Locke by V. L. Bovalino, finally shifting it from my watchlist, with the paperback arriving early this week.

I’m trying to tread lightly on review titles, given that my review stack has become somewhat towering, but The Bloody Brick Road by Maude Royer was hard to resist. In this wildly creative, horror-soaked reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, nothing is as it seems in Dorothy’s dystopian nightmare. Fans of Tender Is the Flesh and Maeve Fly will want to follow her twisted journey down the yellow-brick road.

You know the saying, “it never rains, it pours?” Well, the last 2 weeks have seen our daughter-in-law rushed to the hospital (twice) for emergency surgery, my mother rushed to the hospital after a horrendous car accident, and my spouse losing their job due to budget cuts. Between all of that and a busy slate of editing work, I haven’t had much time to read, but I am creeping up on the end of The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson.

Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance (and erotic-romance) anthology celebrating the full, beautiful spectrum of gender expression and identity.

Check out the official Call for Submissions and feel free to submit.

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!

Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we’re adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.

A trio of new purchases this week, starting with a pair of true stories of turn-of-the-century adventure and exploration. The River of Doubt by Candice Millard is the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon, enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within the expedition’s own ranks. Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen recounts the story of American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood, who endured disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain to meticulously uncover and document the remains of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya.

And then, a late addition to the shelves (as in this morning), it’s another historical tale, this one a fictionalized account borne of deep historical research. It’s Circle of Days by Ken Follett, the deeply human story of one of the world’s greatest mysteries: the building of Stonehenge.

There was one new review title storming the porch this week and demanding entry to the bookshelves. Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God is a thrilling story about Conan the Barbarian facing violent abominations, written by Bram Stoker Award Winning author Tim Waggoner.

Between first pass editing at a client’s 120k-word novel, managing short story submissions to Gender Ever After, and screaming ourselves hoarse at the Blue Jays games, there hasn’t been much time for reading these past 2 weeks, but I’m chipping away at The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson (in preparation for October’s release of No Life Forsaken) and haunting the pages of A Grave Duet: Collected Halloween Horror by Melisa Peterson Lewis, Kasey Fallon, Rissa Miller one story at a time.

Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance (and erotic-romance) anthology celebrating the full, beautiful spectrum of gender expression and identity.

Check out the official Call for Submissions and feel free to submit.

Well, if it’s another weekend, then it must be time to bend our hearts and minds around preparing for the week ahead, and how better to do that than with some Weekend Freebies!

Every weekend I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might interest visitors to the ruins. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

Enjoy!