Moccasin Trace by Hawk MacKinney – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on he tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish emotional bombast. Life is good for widower Rundell Ingram and his hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton. Between the two of them, they take care of Moccasin Hollow, their rustic dogtrot ancestral home, a sprawling non-slave plantation in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east Georgia. Adjoining Ingram lands is Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer, their daughter Sarah and son Benjamin.

Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children. Against this rustic idyll of hard work and gracious living comes inflexible discord and divided loyalties that mutilate ties of blood and bond, tearing at their lives as smoke and battle no longer so faraway crashes and maims ever closer. Ahead of the on-coming ranks of Blue, foragers and bumlers burn, loot, scavenge and kill. Hamilton faces agonizing sacrifices with dreadful consequences. With little else than his wits, he tries anything to protect Sarah, their unborn child, his sickly father, and Sarah’s family.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Rundell liked munching raw potatoes. He favored the smaller fresh-dug ones he called new potatoes. He’d use the bent kitchen knife that’d lost its handle on the withered moldy ones that hadn’t been taken. Sometimes he didn’t peel them, just rubbed off the dirt and gnawed away.

The Hollows had been spared, but damn little else had. Growing up a gangly towhead on the sprawling acres of Moccasin Hollows, Hamilton never gave much notice to outside goings-on. On his seventeenth birthday near four years ago, he got his first notion of the world beyond.

Rundell usually kept his feelings close to home, seldom using strong language, but that day his disgusted papa’d remarked, “Damn few prudent heads among the lot of them,” as he flung down the Augusta newspaper. “Constitutionalist editors and those pigheaded politicians. They couldn’t get off a water moccasin if it was chewin’ on their big toe. Fools got no idea what they’re stirrin’. Most likely don’t care neither.”

“What happened?” Hamilton had never seen a turmoil fret his papa so.

“I suppose it’s gettin’ to me more’n I thought. Benson Crouder stopped by, that’s what. All gussied up in his top hat and new attire like some up-town Beau Brummell, that fancy rig of his hitched with his matched bays, their mane and tails all curried. Cain’t figure some folks. Let them get money in their pockets, they act like their sweat don’t stink. All fired up, heading into Queensborough for the big meet, asked if I was going. I told him I didn’t see no point to another meetin’. Far as I could tell too many done decided they were finished with talk.”

Not many days went by before Rundell swallowed his distaste for politics and got knee-deep in the middle of the commotion at the capital in Milledgeville. Hamilton harnessed and hitched the buggy for him.

Reins in hands, Rundell looked at his son. “Don’t figure my bein’ there’ll make much difference. Suppose it cain’t do no harm neither.”

“I’ll handle things. Things’ll be fine here however long you need to be gone.”

Hamilton would remember that day, watching Papa drive off, and how at the time the day hadn’t seemed different. When he thought back, he could think of no one thing which seemed to’ve change, except he recalled the yellowish-orange morning light seemed sharper with a change to the air.

For way too many folks stench and fear rode the breezes, carrying the smell of char and ashes. Each day had become a hunt for food and shelter. Tending the meager gardens at the Hollows barely managed enough food, but it was food. The lawless churning mayhem, moving far and near, sometimes too close to the Hollows for Hamilton’s liking–his wife and son, their unborn, Papa, Mother Greer and Sarah’s brother, Benjamin. Gaunt chimneys haunted the ashes of Wisteria Bends, Hamilton’s second home, the grand plantation manor where Sarah and Ben had grown up. Without money there was no point going into town. Except for land speculators, gold jingling in their pockets, there wadn’t that much food to be had in Queensborough nohow.

A blizzard of thunder and hell-hot hate had smashed most homes in the countryside around Queensborough Towne. With Sherman and his army gone, worse than carpetbaggers and a lot more dangerous were the lawless bands of white trash infesting the countryside. No questions asked, easier to kill anyone that happened in their way, and get on with the stealin’. Human locust pillaging what they could get their hands on, torching homes, farms, what was left of the Queensborough courthouse. With parish land records in ashes a fair number of low-lifes claimed land which was never theirs.

About the Author:

In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk MacKinney has authored several works of fiction—historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his protagonist in the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series: Hidden Chamber of Death, Westobou Gold, Dead Gold, Curse of the Ancients, and Blood of the Dragonfly.

Hawk’s science fiction novels include The Bleikovat Event, Vol I in The Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series, followed by Vol II, The Missing Planets, and Vol III, Inanna Phantom.

Hawk MacKinney served in the US Navy for over 20 years. While serving as a Navy Commander, he also had a career as a full-time faculty member at several major state medical facilities. He earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history. He has taught postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel. He now makes his home in Augusta, Georgia, where he writes full-time.

Goodreads | Website

Buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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The Cairns of Sainctuarie series by Hawk MacKinney – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Cairns of Sainctuarie
Volume I – The Bleikovat Event
Volume II – The Missing Planets
Volume III – Inanna Phantom

From a rocky outcrop a battle-widowed Etkaa, gazed down at the death and upheaval. Rancid green Murian blood stanched the dusklit breezes from the haze-dimmed river marshlands. Nothing has been spared by the Green Dragon forces of Bleikovia. In skirmishes along the Feldon River, Etkaaâ’s mate is fatally wounded with deadly selvon poison. Through a gruesome mountain trek of icy blizzards, they elude the Green Dragon. The battered starving Feldovats reach the coast at Eedov City only to be confronted by their implacable enemy determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble. Taking passage on crowded Maalon freighters, the refugees escape toward a new life among their Maalon hosts. Enraged Bleikovats move against the Klarvkons, bringing indiscriminate bloodshed. War once again surfaces, as it did in the muddy filth along the Feldon River of Malfesov, and becomes a different kind of war.

Generations after the great Murian upheaval of the Malfesian War against the Bleikovats, the Accords between planets Terato and Myr are signed.

Provisional Outpost Terato is under construction near a farm where Teratoan orphan Eklam a’Qoc lives with his uncle and cousin. Inquisitive strong-minded Eklam, Ek to everyone in the village, is captivated by the off-worlders technology, and becomes an apprentice to the Outpost Terato’s Murian commander, Grand Duke Korvo. Uncle a’Qoc disapproves; wants nothing to do with these outlanders, wants their shimmering doorway portals-of-travel banned from Terato. As Outpost Terato becomes operational it seems to become a harbinger stirring ageless secrets of The Old Ones and their frightful weapons, of ancient Teratoan ruins, mysterious glowing lights, unexplained killings, a sacred book in a language no Teratoan can read, a moon that doesn’t behave like a moon in its wobbly orbit.

From cosmic reaches beyond space and time the ominous secrets of Terato’s ancient ruins become more threatening. Ek and Korvo realize both their worlds face extinction with any hope buried somewhere in unknown galaxies far beyond a pastoral Terato or the sophisticated star-empire of the Murians; of missing planets in a star system with its single star in a galaxy far-removed unknown to Terato or Myr. They travel across the universe to a place long forgotten to fight this unknown foe with weapons only dreamed of. Together they face the beast that wishes to consume the entire universe.

The threat of rift invasions seems long passed. Plentiful harvests abound. The Murian first-contact Terato Outpost has grown into the sprawling Terato-Murian Terminus Terato with a hub of relay portals reaching across the vast uncharted galactic expanses and connecting with its eon-extinct Lantaraan prehistory. An exploratory Terato-Murian Jupiterr outpost is established on the gas giant seventh planet, and its quantum and gravitational energies are used to power outpost portals for an archeological survey of the fourth planet, Eorthe. The Lantaraan database aboard Terato’s ancient Downday moon shows that one or more planets of the Solaris planets have apparently been lost. Expanded archeological records on other Lantaraan orbital bodies in the Solaris system show the fourth planet from the star—Eorthe—to be a sterile wasteland. Except it is not. Eorthe’s civilization is not to the level of the Murian Empire, but it is far advanced to those of a pastoral Terato. Terato and Eorthe form the confederated United Terran League under the nominal figurehead leader of League High Judikarr Eklam a’Qoc. Jupiterr outpost expands into a major League stronghold, Jupiterr Base, when civil unrest erupts in the League, the unexpected return of rift intrusions threatens, and the Murian Emperor Klarvko Celo is assassinated. As they prepare for confrontations with an unknown ancient enemy, the internal tensions on Myr and Eorthe push Murians and Teratoans to dangerous discords.

Enjoy an Excerpt from BOOK ONE: THE BLEIKOVAT EVENT

The catafalque of the old Dowager Queen rested on the high rostrum of the Temple of the Goddess Myraa. There was little ceremony to the cremation of dead. Yet, all that had passed made this requiem for the Dowager Queen Klarvkaa Etkaa Bremanova Celovaa Bremanova symbol of the changes which had swept so many lives. Long annuals before the ascendancy of The Klarvkon Dynasty, the massive wood and granite Temple to the Goddess Myraa had been destroyed in the firestorm which laid waste Eedov City. After the close of the Malfesian War the temple was rebuilt, but not the city. On the ashes of the old temple, immense columns rose above the sanctuary and vaults. Iridescent alabaster and polished marbles greeted pilgrim supplicants who had come to the shoreline plains washed by the Green Sea.

Dowager Etkaa Klarvkaa…wife, myäat, founding matriarch of the Klarvkon Dynasty, gave hope from a time without hope. As was her wish, she would be cremated on the soil of her birth, her ashes to mingle with those of her consort, Klarvko Celo. Their son, His Imperial Majesty Klarvko Celo the Second, decreed it would be. At the enormous base of the great temple…a spectacle never seen before and seldom since those times, came an undulating ocean of banners. Some of clans which no longer existed, even the once-hated Green Dragon of Bleikovia. Murians had taken her to their hearts…and never relinquished her. Her shadow would reach across the centuries, and measure all who followed.

About the Author:

With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. His professional writing includes articles on chordate neuroembryology, and aerospace research on muscle metabolic behavior in multi-orbital environments.

In addition, Hawk has authored several works of fiction including a historical romance Moccasin Trace which was nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. His Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series and his Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series have received national and international attention.

Website | Publisher

Buy The Bleikovat Event, The Missing Planets, and Inanna Phantom on Amazon.

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My Favorite Books by Hawk MacKinney – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

My Favorite Books

My favorite books are and aren’t in my genre – mystery or sci-fi. Yet, they are. When not stringing words across a screen, I’m constructing the building blocks of a manuscript between my ears among the nonfiction stacks. Call it research. Whether particle physics or historical background for setting or character, I am holed up among the volumes, browsing when not writing which is very seldom. Biographies of the great personalities and nonfiction of important events have it all – saga, setting, plot, failure, success, characters bigger than life. Picky detailed research? One best be picky to probe historical settings/characters/dialogue, not to mention what they wore. My favorite bio, Désirée, the one-time fiancée of Napoléone Bonaparte, married a French general and founded the Swedish House of Bernadotte – and he blew it. The Bernadotte Dynasty still carries the crown of Sweden. How’s that for imperial screw-ups and disasters, or should one say egos run amok? And the uninformed call history and public libraries boring. Not hardly. Librarians are some of the great unsung experts of the professions that involve writers. History, dialogue, settings, plots turned downside-up, mysteries with mayhem, victim and collateral damaged innocents, characters’ strengths, and more intriguing, their weaknesses mesh into tales being told. Fiction and nonfiction involve the same constructs. It doesn’t matter where the approach begins; a face in the crowd, a title, setting, conflict, passion, lust can trigger a whole volume of scenes that expand with lightening speed…and I like to go fishing or sit on the porch swing with a hot cup of tea.


While dangling a fishing hook from his flat bottom skiff before dawn, former SEAL-turned-PI Craige Ingram spots grey-black smoke coiling above the treetops across the river in the direction of the Georgia bayous and Corpsewood Manor. Bayou or bogs, fire in the uncut cypress and pines bodes a sense that the river is no barrier to the fire that threatens his ancestral home, Moccasin Hollow. Neither are the bodies later found in the burned mansion of Corpsewood Manor. Craige wastes no time in helping his ex-SEAL buddy Lt. Graysen MacGerald who is now Head of Buckingham Homicide Investigations by unofficially investigating the bodies and an exquisite dragonfly brooch found in the mansion with a reputation for evil, hauntings, and mystery.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“How many times you got to be told to stay away from this place?” Clenched fist, a threatening stomp through the ashes and rubble of Corpsewood toward Kenyon, was no bluff.

Kenyon said, “Ain’t got no other place ‘cept them leaky sheds behind the garage. Least before the fire, I had a place to sleep. Got kicked out of my other place.”

“I’ll just bet they let your sweet cheeks sleepover. You’re just the kind of meat they liked to sucker in.”

“Now I got no place, an’ nights are gettin’ colder.”

“Get a job. Quit blowing your money, and you’d have a place of your own. They the ones that hooked you on crystal?”

Kenyon whined, “I told you. I don’t do drugs.”

Steady raven-black gaze, “Cut the crap. Ever’body’s heard all your stories. Out’a your mouth never been nothing but pity-me mewling.” Between a snarl and a chuckle, “I suppose you never done meth, push crank up your nose—whatever’s on the streets to stoke in your arms.” Glanced at the needle tracks on both arms, “Or running out’a veins in your arms and using the ones in your ankles. Wash your stringy, greasy hair; take a bath, stop acting like some mangy animal.”

“I don’t snort crystal or Nazi dope,” Kenyon griped. “You’re like ever’body else, judging someone by the way we live.”

“I don’t care what you’re on, but anyone fool enough to supply you is askin’ for trouble if that goddamn homicide Lieutenant MacGerald starts nosing around, asking questions. And his friggin’ PI SEAL mate Ingram helpin’ him is worse.”

Kenyon wiped his nose across the grimy grunge sleeve of his jacket. “If you hadn’t torched the house, I’d still have me a place.”

Knotted a fist in Kenyon’s jacket, “Buttin’ into stuff that don’t concern you ain’t good for your health. I ain’t telling you again. I didn’t start no fire. I don’t know who did, but if I find out, they won’t be startin’ no more fires.”

Kenyon squinched his face, “Ever’body always puts the blame on me.” Didn’t want no cops finding out he’d done a couple of torch-for-insurance.

Yanked Kenyon eyeball to eyeball closer, “Don’t give me shit, and don’t make trouble. Get your ass off from around Corpsewood Manor, and don’t let me catch you around here again.” Shoved Kenyon backwards against charred support beams.

About the Author:Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspaper, served in the US Navy for over 20 years, earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history, taught postgraduate courses in the United States and Jerusalem, authored professional articles and chordate embryology texts on fetal and adult anatomy, and is well known for his works of fiction. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. Both his CAIRNS OF SANCTUARIE science fiction series and the MOCCASIN HOLLOW MYSTERY series have received worldwide recognition.

Website | Goodreads

Buy the book at Amazon.

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NASA – What’s new in the last ten minutes? by Hawk MacKenney – Guest Blog and Giveaway


This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

NASA – What’s new in the last ten minutes?

We sci-fi nerds are eclectic readers. With one foot firmly in unlimited black hole fantasies and the other shoe rooted in the almost-real-but-feasible that is NOT fantasy.

“- beam me up.” That fictional dialogue is but one instance where sci-fi fiction & quantum behaviors, i.e. quantum entanglement, meet. “Spooky action at a distance” juxtaposes sci-fiction suggesting that fantasy & magic are labels for fundamental laws we’ve yet to discover – much less understand. And this quaint System Solaris is by no means finished with the surprises for the 4-limbed space-species known as “man”.

Beyond our wondrous blue marbled cosmic dot of a planet, NASA’s discoveries across unimaginable distances as well as right on our proverbial doorstep are changing by the hour – or faster. Old concepts of aborning new stars and aged long-extinct galaxies revealing fantasy-become-fact are discarding established rules, changing fundamental laws, and introducing writers/readers to the unexpected, the unforeseen and the surprising in the realms of sci-fi fiction-become-fact.

Many sci-fi readers enjoy the technical, the specs, and system requirements along with the tools to not only manipulate spooky action at a distance but to learn the rules & how to make them work for us as well. We – writers of science fiction – got no choice. Goin’ a’venturing and explorin’ is almost part of our DNA obsessions.

Many prefer action and let their fantasies fill in the pieces. It’s reader’s choice. But a writer involved in the changing realms of what we thought we knew MUST do the research and stay up to date. The mind with all of its realms is the greatest show in the world(s)! The cosmos is a violent arena, and to step into it we’d better be ready, or nobody is gonna hear much of us once we’re done went & gone.

3D illustration. Sci-Fi futuristic abstract gradient blue violet pink neon. A glowing corridor on the reflection of the concrete floor. A dark interior room.

The threat of rift invasions seem long passed. Plentiful harvests abound. The Murian first-contact Terato Outpost has grown into the sprawling Terato-Murian Terminus Terato with a hub of relay portals reaching across the vast uncharted galactic expanses and connecting with its eon-extinct Lantaraan prehistory.

An exploratory Terato-Murian Jupiterr outpost is established on the gas giant seventh planet, and its quantum and gravitational energies are used to power outpost portals for an archeological survey of the fourth planet, Eorthe.

The Lantaraan database aboard Terato’s ancient Downday moon shows that one or more planets of the Solaris planets have apparently been lost. Expanded archeological records on other Lantaraan orbital bodies in the Solaris system show the fourth planet from the star—Eorthe—to be a sterile wasteland. Except it is not. Eorthe’s civilization is not to the level of the Murian Empire, but it is far advanced to those of a pastoral Terato. Terato and Eorthe form the confederated United Terran League under the nominal figurehead leader of League High Judikarr Eklam a’Qoc.

Jupiterr outpost expands into a major League stronghold, Jupiterr Base, when civil unrest erupts in the League, the unexpected return of rift intrusions threatens, and the Murian Emperor Klarvko Celo is assassinated.

As they prepare for confrontations with an unknown ancient enemy, the internal tensions on Myr and Eorthe push Murians and Teratoans to dangerous discords.

Enjoy an Excerpt

The first anomalies were logged by remote nanoparticle quantum-field sensor arrays positioned on uninhabited dwarf planets, moons and long-orbit asteroids of the star systems of the League. The inconsistencies were short sub-fracture durations and were seismically unremarkable. Across the League’s far-flung frontier systems, seasoned operators monitored the encoded decryption of the scan-logs. Through decades of use, the linknet had become indispensable; supplanting the slower interstellar particle entanglement-based trans-light travel. Linknet protocols established allowances for such random background fluctuations with standard deviations measured against system parameters. The diverse configurations of the link systems were accepted as fail-safe.

Senior specialists assigned to Terminus Terra II protocol-consoles maintained continuous scans for minor time-sync misaligns. Scan records were stored in Murian-designed crystals in tiered sublevels of mantle crust beneath Terminus and in Myraa City. Link schedules of freight shipments, personnel, and communications remained on tight schedules.

The erratic anomalous spacetime oscillations data was logged. The ruse was almost perfect. Except star-core substrate logs registered converter power for the unsanctioned personnel requisition of translinks coordinates for specific network portals. It was a simple oversight but one that had sa s’Blikova’at consequences. Besides, waiting one more day wouldn’t matter.

The following morning Marleen and her three sons would be alone.

About the Author:Hawk has authored several works of fiction including a historical romance Moccasin Trace which was nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. His Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series and his Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series have received national and international attention.

With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. His professional writing includes articles on chordate neuroembryology, and aerospace research on muscle metabolic behavior in multi-orbital environments.

Website | YouTube | Twitter | Goodreads

Buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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What Would I Tell a New Author? by Hawk MacKinney – Spotlight and Giveaway


This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

What Would I Tell a New Author?

Seems like it was about the same time Moses was leaving Kemet-Egypt that this writer was ‘new’. We writers are solitary modified nerds. We change the world – we handle the spotlight as part of our marketing, but all said and done, we like our solitude; i.e., peace of mind. Without it the creative juices are sidelined and crippled.

MAIN STUFF

 Write it. Edit it and edit it again. There’s no such thing as being done, but there is a caveat – one can over-edit and change good to pitiful.

 Don’t say NO to the person in the mirror.

 When words and actions don’t match…don’t sign any contract with anyone like that. Don’t be professionally associated with them – the marketing-publishing world is small – everyone talks.

 Don’t publish excerpts of your unpublished works on the Internet. That’s public domain, and most publishers usually won’t consider it after your manuscript has been published in any form.

PITFALLS

 Don’t throw anything away, including any scribbles/ideas/deletions, AND keep your backups current.

 Trust editors you know. Those you trust, listen to them. That doesn’t mean do what they say…but consider it. I shy away from editing others’ works—their work comes from their structuring of tales and characters, etc. etc. I’ve no access to those juices. I like editing my own work – sometimes as much as 12-20 times with each title.

 Watch out for quickie critiques from those who just talk instead of actually sitting down and doing the work of writing.

 Use rejections as personal opportunities to learn – especially from editors/publishers you trust. They’re rare as oak trees on the moon. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it—quality has always been rare.

 Ignore putdowns about “Have you published?” It’s jealousy and ego trouble. Are you an author? If you’ve written something you’re an author!

 Have a marketing budget. You’ve done the work. You’ve edited it; made it shine. Crow about yourself BUT DO NOT put others down. If you achieve success as a writer, you have an obligation to help other new authors.

 In presentations and Q&A audience participation panels, I-I-I-I and me-me-me are ego sputter and self-serving parades. Answer questions from the audience when asked, but if you are fortunate enough to be invited to participate on a panel, don’t use it to simply talk about yourself. For example, I often get asked about where I’ve taught/faculties/multiple postdoctoral degrees/commission officer military services, Dead Gold being Book 4 in a Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series and how I did so-and-so which I am happy to answer but only if asked. As writers, it is not our talents and gifts that make us what we are BUT how we use them. Runaway ego-putdowns ain’t cuttin’ it.

 Love your work. Never quit writing. An author is a loner in a room full of paper – ain’t it fun!

The dazzling lure of Olympic gold fame is a spotlight glare hotter than any fifteen minutes of fame.

During plans for a cross-country ski vacation, Aspen Police Department Criminal Investigation Division Detective David “Spinner” Krespinak and SEAL-bud Craige Ingram are ensnared by glamour, upmarket glitz and bling, and greed in the deadly champagne powder world of a money-gets-you-anything high-country ski-mecca. Body parts start turning up in the most unlikely places. As the two friends start their investigation, A hornets nest of the local elite do not want the publicity. For good reason it seems, they may be part of the mystery of bodies and body parts piling up at the morgue.

The closer they get to the killer the more confused they become. Who is behind the murders and mutilation? The list of suspects grows as they close the net on the killer.

The tender underbelly of Aspen is not what it seems. It is a raw open sore that oozes blood, drugs, and murder.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Spinner staggered the clutch and gear-shift. Kept his foot off the brakes as his vehicle slewed in the razor-edged chunky refreeze of the deep off-road ruts until coming to a stop. Killed the motor, and set the hand brake. Gusts of wind sliced at a square jaw on his devil-may-care rugged face as he climbed out and turned up the collar on his sheepskin coat. Big thick champagne-powder snowflakes clung for a moment to dust his dark hair, and just as quick blew-gone in the capricious strong up-slope drafts. He ducked under the fluttering yellow plastic ribbon with its black letters: POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS.

The charred black remains of the older model sedan slumped in a sooted blotched circle surrounded by undulating pristine white and candlestick-caked trees. It spoke loud and clear to Spinner—the burn had continued for some time after the storm. Wheel rims, frame, heat-crazed windows were still smoldering from hood to trunk.

As he walked toward her, salt-and-pepper-haired Pitkin County Medical Examiner-Coroner Candelaria Lopez didn’t have to look up. She knew the cadence of Spinner’s footsteps. “Looks like we have us a bungled hurried torch job.”

About the Author: Hawk MacKinney served in the US Navy for over 20 years. While serving as a Navy Commander, he also had a career as a full-time faculty member at several major state medical facilities. He earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history. He has taught postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel.

In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction—historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers. His titles are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series—murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. Hidden Chamber of Death, the first book in the mystery series, was followed by Book 2, Westobou Gold and his latest, Book 3, Curse of the Ancients. All have received national attention. The Bleikovat Event was Vol I in The Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series followed by Vol II, The Missing Planets. Vol III, Inanna Phantom is in final galleys.

Website | Amazon Author Page | Barnes and Noble Author Page

Buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Curse of the Ancients by Hawk MacKinney – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

As Craige Ingram climbed the stairs of the derelict building, that peculiar stench of a dead body hit him. It was the same smell no matter where—SpecOps SEAL encounter gone sour, or in a vacant, roach-infested apartment. Inside, his SEAL buddy-turned head of Buckingham Parish Homicide’s Investigative Support Division, Grayson MacGerald, was huddled with the coroner next to a swollen decaying corpse that was days old and hardly more than oozing dead meat. The PI inside Craige had a gut feeling that there was more to this than a dead body, and Craige’s Grannie always told him, “Trust your feelin’s.” But that was before Mihály Keaulescu set down two of his Black Falcon choppers on Craige’s Moccasin Hollow private airstrip in an uninvited stopover. It got worse. From his airstrip to Israel, to Turkey and a nightmare-dream of one-of-a-kind ancient artifacts that not only threatened the serene life Craige knew and loved at Moccasin Hollow, it would destroy the world.

Enjoy an Excerpt:

With a twist of one strap he hoisted his heavy canvas field pack of fence-fixin’ tools over his shoulder. Cut across the hayfield behind the house toward the new section. At the fence he looped the strap over the corner gatepost he’d set and cemented two days earlier. He slipped on heavy-leather gloves, and grabbed the post-hole digger. Humidity already thick, it was gonna be another one of those early sweat-and-lots-of-water days. As he jammed deeper into the rusty red sticky sandy-kaolin hole, his handset gave an interrupted buzz. Not many people had access to any of his numbers; even fewer had the code to his scrambled satellite uplink. He leaned the posthole digger against the stump, shucked his gloves and knocked them together to get rid of the gritty clods. His tattered sweat-soaked straw hat pushed to the back of his head, he brushed back the wet brown curls plastered across his forehead. He needed a haircut.

He reached inside his pack and grabbed the handset, “Ingram.”

Gray said, “You tied up with anything you can’t turn loose?”

The tone of Gray’s usual studied voice was a bit more hurried than let’s-grab-an-early-lunch. “You sound full-awake even after River Disco.”

Gray said, “Getting around to breakfast this morning was a bit slow.”

Craige could tell this was business. “Stringing new fences and burying posts has waited this long. No reason it can’t wait longer.” He gave his caked gloves a final whack against his snake boots and brushed a shirtsleeve across his eyes, smudging the sweat off his forehead. Gray was not one for beating around the bush when it came to homicide business. It was one of the things about Gray that Commanding Officer Craige Ingram relied on.

About the Author:

With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions at several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to his work in classrooms and laboratories, he has written numerous professional articles on chordate neuroembryology and authored several novels that reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his protagonist in the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. Hidden Vault of Secrets and Westobou Gold, Books 1 and 2 in the series, have received national and international attention. Hawk is also writing a science fiction series, The Cairns of Sainctuarie.

Website

Buy the book at Amazon.

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The Missing Planets by Hawk MacKinney – Spotlight and Giveaway

12_3 MISSING MBB_TourBanner_TheMissingPlanet copy

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

12_3 MISSING BookCover_TheMissingPlanetsPlanet Terato has become a member of the assembly of the Confederated League of Allied Star Systems. The Murian Outpost Terato once commanded by His Imperial Majesty’s Lord High Chamberlain Herklo Korvo XXXIV is now Teratoan staffed and under the command of Teratoan Eklam a’Qoc.

From the uncharted reaches between galaxies, attacks of extraordinary weaponry come against Terato and the Myr worlds of the Murians. Terminus Terato’s expanded link-portals and converter power modules are virtually useless. Power loss, defenses, communications and travel are totally disrupted. High Chamberlain Korvo’s unexpected return to Terminus on a mission for His Imperial Majesty leaves him stranded on Terato. Attacks grow more massive, more unpredictable; spread across the worlds of the League, as an isolated Terminus struggles among the shattered rubble and whispering remains of an ancient Polity of star-walkers.

Family and friends are lost, empires and civilizations in disarray, Terminus and Planet Terato almost defenseless. Desperate for answers, their worlds being overwhelmed by this remorseless aggressor, Eklam and Korvo reach across unexplored space in a despairing gamble and the last reserves of converter star-substrate, seeking one insignificant star system of gas giants and rocky inner planets for possible relics of the elusive Lantaraan Polity.

Enjoy an excerpt:

The portal hummed with a pulsating drone; grew louder. Korvo recognized the cascade effects of a portal overload. “Converter intermix-portal lock!” he yelled. Shoved Martin hard, “Get away!”

Magnetic loops of plasma streamed out; superheated beyond a Sol corona; mixed with hydrogen substrate; sucked into the white-hot rim of the portal frame. Converter commands useless. Arnov and Drov jumped away from their smoking consoles. A belch of uncontained hydrogen-plasma sublimated a cloud through the camp. Vidscreens sizzled; acrid smoke drifted up to curl toward the inanimate beast consuming the portal. Cermet footings fused; a console imploded. Arnov, tossed against one of the supports; green blood oozed along his shoulder. Drok’s head bumped against cermet supports. The pounding drone of the portal growled like a wounded Murian swamp dragon. Bundles of raw stellar core screamed through Jupiterr’s turgid atmospheres, tearing at the planet. Colossus Jupiterr magnus rolled with disruptions. Agitated plasma entangled with antimatter; churned methane storms into frenzies, giant arcs exploding through the clouds; snaked around their camp. The white-hot remains of the portal a bubbling melted puddle.

Ek shielded his eyes from the scorching brightness; helped Arnov up. Through the shredded side of the shelter, glimpsed Korvo scramble from under a scorched field stand, its collapsed bracing ripped away. Martin pushed himself up. The air inside their camp ionized; darken to oranges and yellows and purple-blue charged photon auras. Converters still pumping, sucking substrate, at the same time sagging in seared taffy-puddles, their shell alloys disassociating in sputtering kaleidoscope rainbows and blistering caustic nose-stinging swirls.

About the Author: 12_3 MISSING AuthorPhoto_HawkMacKinneyWith postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.

Hawk began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Walking the Pet is Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series. The first book in another mystery-thriller series is scheduled for release in 2015. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012. Its sequel, The Missing Planets, has just been released.

Website ~ Sage Word Publishing ~ Arche Books
Buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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