Jay Nichols's Blog - Posts Tagged "coming-of-age"

My new short story, Emily Smiles for April, will be free for download on Amazon Kindle today and tomorrow (4/29-4/30). It’s a young adult/chick lit story, but the themes are universal. Anybody can read it. No, scratch that. Everybody should read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Emily-Smiles-fo...

Here’s the breakdown:

Emily receives a bouquet of violets for her sixteenth birthday. She thinks they remain in a vase on her nightstand, but they keep showing up in the most unusual places.

In a perfect world, this mysterious phenomenon would elicit a bewildered smile from Emily, but Emily doesn’t doesn’t smile much anymore. Then again, Emily’s world is far from perfect.


If you like this story, check out my other ones too.

You should be reading Canis Major. As in right now.

Because you know this summer is going to be just miserable. If a tornado doesn't knock you five miles eastward, a hurricane will. And in the unlikely chance neither of those two disasters affects you in any way whatsoever, the heat will surely fry your pale ass to a bacony crisp.

So what's a reader to do? Venture out, assemble with other activists, and protest the big oil companies, whose extraction of poisonous compounds from the earth's crust and suppression of alternative energy technologies is likely fostering the climate change that is increasing hurricane strength and tornado activity, not to mention raising world-wide atmospheric temperatures, which in turn is frying your aforementioned ass? Nah, fuck that. It's too hot outside.

I'm no activist, but I am a writer, so this is what I'll be doing this summer:

I'm offering you a deal. Since I want as many interested people as I can find to read my book this summer, I will be offering it for free at Smashwords on select days. (It is free this weekend, 6/1-6/3). All I ask in return is for you guys to actually read it, or attempt to read it. I don't want any of this "Hey, a free book! I'll download it and add it to my To Read list with the 524,124 other books I'll never get to!" Also, I really want you to read it this summer. Since Canis Major is a summer book, it only makes sense.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Here's the link for a free download (remember: you must at least try to read it this summer)


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...



And a description:

After seventeen-year-old Russell Whitford confronts and kills a rabid dog, he seeks to prevent the news from reaching the dog's owner, whose hair-trigger temper is well-known in the small town of Riley, Alabama. Russell can count on silence from two of the three witnesses who watched him hack Hector Graham's Bloodhound to death, but the third, Michael O'Brien, isn't like the other two. His allegiance isn't as fixed as Russell would like it to be.

When the Centers for Disease Control arrive in town, and dogs begin running away, and gun shots start ringing out in the dead of night, Russell's summer goes from bad to worse. All he wants to do is play his piano and guitar, maybe walk his dog every now and then, not have the weight of the universe hoisted upon his shoulders.

My debut novel Canis Major will be free the first five days of August. You can catch it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Canis-Major-Jay...

Fair warning: This is a loooong novel. The payoff is worth it, though. You will never read anything quite like it.


That's all.

Jay

For twelve-year-old Jessica Noonan, getting slathered up with Army-grade sunblock in a parking lot before a soccer match is just one indignity she must endure. The taunts and jeers from her teammates are another. Even the adults in the stands get in on the action. All because she's an albino.

http://www.amazon.com/Slathering-Jess...