Halloween Reading: Pink Slip by Amy Spector

October 31, 2017 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Halloween – I’m thinking pumpkins, candy, costumes, horror movies and ghost stories…and in Sweden, we have none of that *sigh*. But, I’m not gonna let that ruin the fun. Are you looking for something to read for the holiday? Pink Slip by Amy Spector is a rather short romance story that takes you on a wild ride through the corn maze.

It’s the first release in a short story series called The Tattooed Corpse Stories. The tagline to the series is: Different Time. Different Place. Same Body. And that’s what the series is – stories taking place anywhere, at any time, with different characters, but with the same recurring body. And I’ve written one… It’s coming soon.

But, back to Pink Slip! Someone really should write a manual about what to do when coming across a dead guy. I mean there are so many options and then there is one thing that you definitely shouldn’t do – that’s the thing Jackson Winter and Tae Min Reese do.

This story had me laughing so many times. It’s sweet, it’s funny, and it has a few Wait? What? moments where you wish you reach into the story and tell them that they really shouldn’t do that LOL.

I loved that it took place, partly, in a corn maze. I’ve never been to/in one but it seems so cool. I was imagining the maze scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire but with corn instead.

Check it out!

Pink Slip Book Cover by Amy Spector Jackson Winter loves everything Halloween. He loves the weather, he loves horror movies and he loves his job at Hoffman Farm and Dairy’s yearly Trail of Terror. Now he thinks he just might be falling in love with the trail’s newest special effects artist, Tae Min Reese.

Tae is a disappointment all around. He’s not a doctor like his brother, he’s an art school dropout, and he has no interest in making his mother any grandbabies. Now it even looks like he’s going to lose his job at a second-rate, haunted farm. And he’s not even sure why.

When Tae decides he needs to break the bad news to the good-looking zombie actor who makes up any excuse to see him, a chance encounter gives them both something else to worry about.

Now, two angry drunks, a stinky car, and a dead body could ruin Halloween for Jackson forever. Or could it mean a happy ending for them both?

O Gränd – a writer’s body double

October 21, 2017September 27, 2018 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I sent out an email to my Mailing List where I told everyone that I’m cutting myself in half. It’s not quite as drastic as it sounds, but I’ve created another me. Those of you who have read more than one of my stories know that I tend to be all over the place genre-wise.

I’ve never seen it as a problem, always figured readers will read the blurbs, the categories the story is listed in etc, so despite knowing it goes against all marketing advice out there, I’ve jumped between romance, horror, weird fiction, gay fiction, paranormal and so on. I’ve always kept the MC a gay man (except A Christmas Princess where the MC is a transexual kid) and somehow been thinking that the LGBT flag has been enough to keep it all together.

Lately, however, the one-star reviews including warnings to the fellow readers out there about this not being romance story have left me a bit puzzled. Most of them make me laugh, but despite me finding it comic that someone is looking for romance in horror flash fiction the rating is still there and a reader is out there feeling cheated.

I talked to my writer buddies about it, because what more can I do than write THIS IS HORROR? They suggested removing the dark and horror stories without romantic elements from my name and put them on another. I thought about it for a while and then I did, because what do I have to lose? Except for the time of keeping two names going instead of one, not much. So meet O Gränd.

O Gränd—writer of coffee break sized fiction

O Gränd is an introvert living deep in the Swedish woods. She spends most of her days staring at the computer screen and dreaming up characters. Placing her writing in a particular genre is hard, though most of her stories lean towards the dark side and they’re most often short.

She likes the challenge of telling a story in just a few pages and has had some of her works published in a Canadian flash fiction magazine.

When she isn’t caught up in her writing, she is spending time with her husband, their four kids, three cats, one dog, and a various number of fishes.

#BiWeek and Spammers

September 18, 2017December 30, 2017 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Today I was planning on writing a post saying ‘Yay! It’s #biweek and to celebrate Beaten Track Publishing is offering a 50% discount on all the books with a bisexual MCs’ but guess what? The Beaten Track Shop has been spammed and is now offline.

I’m not gonna speculate on why someone (or several someones) thought it a good idea to crash a small publishing house’s shop but the fact is someone did. When the shop will be up again I don’t know, Debbie McGowan is working on it.

But, let’s not let this ruin the fun. It’s #BiWeek – Bisexual Awareness Week. Are you unsure about what bisexual means? I’m gonna steal Debbie’s definition because I think she managed to point out why we need a bi visibility day in her explanation:

In case clarification is needed, the definition of ‘bisexual’ at work here is this:

an identity marker that refers to the capacity to be attracted to people of more than one gender. It doesn’t require someone to have had relationships with more than one gender, and if someone identifies as bisexual, it is not up for question or discussion.

On a day-to-day basis, this causes lots of difficulties for bisexual people because their current relationship status is used as snapshot evidence to argue that they’re really gay (if it’s a same-gender relationship) or really straight (in an other-gender relationship).

They’re really bisexual, and the greatest form of awareness we can show is to simply accept that fact when it is given to us. We are far less likely question a person’s gayness or straightness, but in all cases, we don’t have that right. It’s none of our business.

So, to celebrate, Beaten Track is, as mentioned, offering a 50% discount on the books with positive portrayals of bisexual main characters and since the BTP shop is closed I’m directing you to Smashwords. Head over to Beaten Track Publishing for information about the books and to get discount codes that work on Smashwords.

You can also enter our giveaway where you’re able to win three ‘bi-books’ of your choice and a 10 dollars Amazon voucher.

RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY