FREE boxed set of 12 amazing YA sci-fi & fantasy novels called Future Tense is OUT!

Amazing YA sci-fi & fantasy FREE BOXED SET!
Yup, you heard that right.
Future Tense has just launched and it costs nothing.

From twelve USA Today, Amazon and award-winning authors comes Future Tense, an electrifying YA sci-fi boxed set. Inventive first in series with trans-humans, sexy alien romance, Martian pioneers, cyborg gunslingers, unusual dolphin research, time travel, computer games with doors into faerie realms, mind readers, eternal life adventures, extraordinarily gifted teens and so much more. Available for a limited time.

Susan Kaye Quinn's OPEN MINDS: When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

Vincent Trigil's THE ENEMY OF AN ENEMY: In a universe of science and magic a new hero will arise.

Anthea Sharp's FEYLAND: THE DARK REALM: When a high-tech computer game opens a gateway to the treacherous Realm of Faerie, only two teen gamers can save the mortal world.

Catherine Stine's FIRESEED ONE: What if only your very worst enemy could help you save the world?

PK Hrezo's DIARY OF A TEENAGE TIME TRAVELER: Welcome to Butterman Travel, Inc., where time is always in your hands. 

Patti Larsen's DIDI AND THE GUN SLINGER: When an Underlord kidnaps her father, Didi Duke resurrects an obsolete cyborg gunslinger to rescue him.

Cidney Swanson's SAVING MARS: Jessamyn is just an ordinary pilot-in-training until the Mars colony's food supply is decimated and her brother is chosen to fly to Earth for supplies.

Lisa Nowak's DECEPTION: What if the Pacific Northwest seceded from United States? By 2063, it has.

Rose Garcia's FINAL LIFE: Multiple past lives she can't remember, an enemy driven to finish his task. Can Dominique survive her final life or will she die for the last time? 

Magan Vernon's HOW TO DATE AN ALIEN: What happens when an awkward teen girl falls for an alien boy?

Amy Evans' CLICKS: An inspiring sci-fi romance about an island off the coast of California where the dolphins and the lifeguards have more in common than they know.

Lee Strauss' PERCEPTION: Eternal Life is to Die For.

Get it FREE from Amazon US, Amazon UK, iBooks, B&N, Google Play, Kobo

Do Genes Dictate Who We Are? & other fascinating questions, celebrating the re-release of Galanti's A Human Element

Today Idea City is helping to celebrate the re-release of Donna Galanti's thriller, A Human Element. Donna explains her fascinating motivation for the book idea:

Do Genes Dictate Who We Are? 
Adoption and being an only child runs through A Human Element. I am both, and they both had a deep impact on my life. In A Human Element three characters have similar lives. Laura's adopted and an only child raised by loving parents. Ben is an only child but abandoned when his parents die, to live a lonely existence in foster homes. X-10 is raised alone in a government facility, an unloved experiment. One common thread connects them all. They grow up alone and eventually parentless. 

Adopted children often suffer abandonment issues and feel like they never belong, that they aren’t ‘blood family’.  Being adopted myself I understood this. But as an adopted child I was lucky. I had a loving family and I learned my heritage (and am very glad I was given up. Read more about that here). I got married and had an amazing son. In having him, I have my own ‘blood’ now. I do belong–with my family.

In A Human Element all three characters have similar backgrounds, but how are they different? Ben isolates himself, Laura has an open heart, and X-10 hates the world. Is it their genes that shape who they are or their environment? I’ve found it’s both. I like to think we can overcome our genes and thrive in an environment that allows us to do so. In such an environment we can conquer our obstacles and achieve anything, but without love we're lost. I believe that our genes do not dictate who we are–and this gives me hope. Without hope change is not possible. Laura believes we all have something redeemable in us, no matter how small. Do you believe that too?

Excerpt with X-10. Can he overcome his genes and environment?

As he lunged for Laura she sensed his conflicting feelings. She saw the scientist who experimented on him and caged him his whole life, taunting him with her existence and fueling his hatred.
She saw all this in the two seconds it took for him to reach her. His sorrowful life punctured her like a knife digging into an old wound. His wounds made her wounds. It was a small window of opportunity to grasp, but all she had. Could she convince him to turn away from evil?
X-10 grabbed her by both arms and pulled her up. His freakish face loomed inches from hers. Her feet dangled above the earthen floor. Scenes from his life blasted across her mind. 
A tormented life. A tormented soul. Images of blood and killing and rage. And such loneliness. He had suffered such loneliness. He was an animal as he had been treated like an animal all his life. She pitied him and feared him.
"Charlie," she whispered. Pain coursed through her. He gripped her harder. She stared into his yellow eyes that shone bright, burning with hate.
"What did you say?" He shook her and she moaned in pain.
"Charlie. I called you Charlie, isn't that what you want?”

About A Human Element:
Evil comes in many forms…
One by one, Laura Armstrong’s friends and adoptive family members are being murdered, and despite her unique healing powers, she can do nothing to stop it. The savage killer haunts her dreams, tormenting her with the promise that she is next.
Determined to find the killer, she follows her visions to the site of a crashed meteorite in her hometown. There, she meets Ben Fieldstone, who seeks answers about his parents’ death the night the meteorite struck. In a race to stop a madman, they unravel a frightening secret that binds them together. But the killer’s desire to destroy Laura face-to-face leads to a showdown that puts Laura and Ben’s emotional relationship and Laura’s pure spirit to the test. With the killer closing in, Laura discovers her destiny is linked to his, and she has two choices—redeem him or kill him.

**Get your evil on with this re-release by Imajin Books! Newly edited, new scenes & cover!** Purchase A Human Element here

Praise for A Human Element: 
“Be afraid. Be very afraid. And be utterly absorbed by this riveting debut that had me reading till the wee hours of the night. A thriller star is born.”  –bestselling author M.J. Rose
“An elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart.” –Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author

About Donna: 
Donna Galanti writes murder and mystery with a dash of steam as well as middle grade adventures. She's an International Thriller Writers Debut Author of the paranormal suspense novel A Human Element, A Hidden Element (August 2014), the short story collection The Dark Inside, and Joshua and The Lightning Road (2015). She’s lived everywhere from England as a child, to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer.
Website, blog, twitter, Facebook

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Studying the Anthony Murder Trial for Tips on Writing Suspense

Has anyone been following the Casey Anthony trial? I hate to admit it, but I’ve gotten transfixed. This has only happened a few times with me: during the OJ and the Menendez brothers’ trials.

How does this relate to writing, you ask? A lot. I’m interested in analyzing what goes into a good mystery or thriller, or simply how to write great, prolonged suspense.
A complex trial like this one, with so many unexpected twists and turns, and with such rampant lies and weird pathology, by its very nature, is buzzing with suspense.

How could a pretty, popular mom kill her child? Is Casey Anthony a violent sociopath, or was her two-year-old daughter's death a swimming accident? There were no eyewitnesses, so the prosecution must build its case on what's called “circumstantial” evidence—putting together pieces of the puzzle, such as a search on the home computer for chloroform 84 times! Or the question of why would one need to apply 3 layers of duct tape to a drowning victim. And why did this mother decide to throw her father and brother under the bus by saying they did nefarious things to her, when all along the father and brother were her staunch defenders? And then, there’s the meter reader, Roy, who found the little girl, Caylee’s skull, buried up to its eyeholes, in a trash dump. If you believe the defense theory, he arranged the bones and duct tape to get the cash reward (That he never received). If you believe the prosecution, Roy was the hero, who finally found the remains of little Caylee, and helped bring her one step closer to justice. The way the lawyers present their witnesses, and all of the forensics testimony, is truly fascinating to me. One person is a hair expert. Another is an expert in detecting volatile gases. And they all want to drivel on about their gadgets.

Will I ever try to tackle writing trial scenes? A very intimidating idea! One would have to speed through the typical minutia of an actual trial to get to the meat, where someone’s sobbing on the stand, or obviously lying, and perjuring themselves. In the Casey Anthony trial, even though spectators have traveled from all over to get in the courtroom, many have fallen asleep from the droning “experts” only to be kicked out for snoring.

Has anyone tried to write a trial scene? To Kill a Mockingbird comes to me. Have you learned how to write suspense from watching a trial, used forensics in a scene, or written a mystery with any of these aspects? Anyone recall a children’s or YA novel that includes some part of a trial? Dish here.

Thrllers in Print & Film--Inception and Salt

I’ve now seen both SALT and INCEPTION, and for the most part, they rocked. However, in both cases, I wanted more story and less shoot ‘em up action. Don’t get me wrong; I thrill to a good chase. Fast pacing is crucial in both literary and on-screen thrillers, thus the measure of chase to back-story (or real-time story moments) is always a fine balancing act.

Without a good understanding of the character, we don’t care why he or she is being chased, or what someone’s searching for. But without enough action, the story becomes a snoozefest. In a novel, one can often sandwich more story between the action that one can in films. However, I sense that moviegoers are eager for much more story than Hollywood assumes.

Case in point: In SALT, Anjelina Jolie excels in gritty stunt work, and in breaking the traditional mold of the female femme fatal spy. She even dresses as a man in one scene, and does a stand-up job of the walk, the talk. Even so, I found myself fidgeting in my seat, wanting more of the backstory about her childhood training on a remote Russian island to be part of a sleeper cell, than her masterful trouncing of every poor sod who got in her way.

Inception was better at lingering on the story between the action, and in blending the two. The concept of stealing dreams or implanting ideas is certainly nothing new. But it’s still such a potent concept, that I’ve stumbled on at least three writers’ blogs, lamenting that they might have to junk their novels or stories in-progress because their ideas are so similar to Inception. For that matter, Inception’s concepts are strangely similar to the 90s anime series Ghost in a Shell. Indeed, is there nothing completely new under the sun? Well, that’s the subject of another possible post. Despite the longer and richer sections of story in Inception, the shoot ‘em up scenes grew tiresome. Particularly the scenes in the arctic headquarters, where all the enemy combatants wore white military snowsuits. Too similar to a video game? I dunno. It seemed almost clownish.

Bottom line? Don’t underestimate an audience’s ability to digest story; the rich, connective tissue—sweet, bitter, or bittersweet—that supports the pursuit, the pursuer and the search.