N.O.A. Rawle: Through the Eyes of a Stranger

My annual retreat to the Pindos mountains is a means of escaping the heat of summer. I do not rest though - mountain houses need work; snow-melt drains must be cleared, ceiling holes filled, brambles cut back. I endure all this as the climate and vegetation at 1200+ meters above sea level in Greece are similar to England, so I feel right at home. My kids also love running wild and experiencing raw nature. They gathered enough early blackberries to make a delicious pie and a pound of jelly, and I collected oregano for the whole year. Blackberry and apple pie . The highlights of this year had to be feeding Marios the fox cub who, with his brother Max, and his sister Maria, scavenged for tidbits around the houses in the settlement, after dark. Watching the meteorite showers from the mountain top and, most significantly for me, finally getting to see the Milky Way! (I've always been in places too light polluted or there's been too much cloud cover!) The squirrels in the roof...

This morning, I decided to take part in Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge on the theme of insomnia that he posted on his Terribleminds blog about a week ago. (Yes, I squandered all that time...) There's nothing like a little horror on a Friday afternoon! I give you: Night’s End By N.O.A. Rawle Alex turned to the left, pulling up her legs before her and tucking her chin onto her knees. Her breathing  rattled in her ears, eyelids scratching her eyes. She could feel the blood coursing through the capillaries, threading routes across her vision. Twisting face down in the sweat soaked pillow, the feathers forever tainted with a stale whiff of iron. She hoped to slip into sleep. 1:34am. The house around her creaked as it always had and out in the garden the greengage trees scraped against each other their fluttering leaves reminiscent of a rushing stream. Somewhere far off, thunder bowled across the mountains like an erratic heart beat. The minute hand t...

I have an electronic copy of Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong? , which includes my steampunk story 'Balancing Act', to give away! All you have to do to be the lucky winner is tell me a funny story (real or imaginary) about a time that something went wrong for you. Srictly one entry per person. Leave the tale in the comments below, along with your email address (prize cannot be awarded if you don't add this). State the format you prefer: epub, mobi Kindle or PDF. Comment  before June 10th 2016 (Midnight 9/6/16 in Greece, is cut off time). The winner will be notified by email.

Peculiar goings-on after authors participate in Lit Select's Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong anthology. Strange reports have been coming in that contributors to Lit Select's Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong anthology didn't know what they were getting themselves into when their work was accepted for the anthology. Time Out for Teachers Our correspondent from Northern California reveals that middle school teacher and writer, Jan Flynn, has developed an alarming disability. "I began having trouble with my right thumb," she confessed earlier this week. "At first, I thought it was a minor complaint due to the sheer weight of marking and writing I have to do." But when she developed an odd, hard lump near the distal knuckle, she knew things were not quite right. "It tingles with pain when I type on my keyboard; when I write in longhand, it obliges me to adopt an odd, claw-like grip on the pen in order to write at all." she says. ...

Today I am pleased to introduce Jan Flynn the author of "Itself" the opening story in the forthcoming "Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong" anthology from Lit Select. Things go wrong. Just when you’ve got your head above water, right when the bills are paid and the car is fixed and your pay increase is approved, just when you have some breathing room and think maybe it’s finally time to plan that vacation or fix up the bathroom . . . it all goes to hell. Your company gets acquired by a conglomerate that offloads your entire division on Friday afternoon. Your daughter calls from college to announce she’s changing her major and is will need at least another year to complete her degree. Your dog swallows a tennis ball and requires emergency surgery. Why is this happening to you? The random nature of misfortune is maddening, isn’t it? Ah, but when the poop is hitting someone else’s fan, especially if it’s someone you don’t like, and most especially if it’s som...

I'm proud to say that the honour of the cover reveal for Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong? the awesome new anthology from Lit Select , has been given to me! What will you find inside, you ask me? I can guarantee you 15 fantastic stories of plans gone awry. 15 awesome authors interpretations of a REALLY bad day! Don't believe me? Inside the gorgeous cover, you will find work from Jan Flynn , Bryan Nickelberry , Holly Riordan , Matthew Harrison , Dan Szczesny , Ben Howells , Gregory Norris , Larry Lefkowitz, Jonathan Shipley , Ed Ahern , Eric J. Guinard , Charles Gramlich , TS Alan , T.R. North and N.O.A. Rawle . Not intrigued enough yet? Here's an excerpt from my contribution, 'Balancing Act' : “Gentlemen! Just starting out on the rocky road to marriage? Want the kinks in your future smoothed out before you start?” The spindly gentleman tugged on his fine moustache for dramatic effect, “Ladies! Want to know that you and your partner will share equal footi...

Beth Cato talks about Characters, Cooking and of course, her latest Clockwork Dagger off-shoot, The Final Flight.   It is my very great pleasure to interview Beth Cato about the last story in The Clockwork Dagger series, The Final Flight  and what lies beyond this. Her first novel, The Clockwork Dagger is a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel, The Clockwork Crown was released from Harper Voyager last year along with a novella, The Deepest Poison and Nebula nominated novella  Wings of Sorrow and Bone. First of all, tell us a little bit about the last story in the Clockwork Dagger series, ‘The Final Flight’. This story follows a minor character from the first book in my series. Captain Hue of the airship Argus had a hard time of it in The Clockwork Dagger, but now things are even worse: his ship has been commandeered by a Clockwork Dagger and Caskentian soldiers as part of some sort of covert mission. Hue's teenage son is aboard,...