Cover Reveal: Snpgrdxz and the Time Keepers

Here is the cover for my latest book in the Snpgrdxz series. It's number 4. You can start the series, if you haven't already, by clicking the book 1 image on the right.

This new story will be available as soon as it passes muster with Amazon.

Enjoy

Here's the Scoop
Love birds Jennifer and Bryan travel across time with their friends to battle Bangers (smarter than zombies, dumber than dung) and Klergs (alien monks who prefer teens who taste good over teens with good taste). Their coming of age misadventure  brings them into conflict with the usual terrors like daemons, lycanthropes, nosferatu, trolls, zombies, and of course, Jennifer’s dad, Dr. Hawkins, who doubles as their high school principal. Snpgrdxz (pronounced Snip-grid-ix), the teenage alien hermaphrodite shapeshifter, joins them as the group’s sardonic but secret weapon. Free-wheeling noir humor abounds in this sci-fi, fantasy, romance, thriller – well, you get the idea. It's a page turner for romantics and thrill seekers alike.

Supervillain Daemon Turpelator Returns in Book 4
And he is hell-bent on destroying Bryan while keeping Jennifer for his own pleasure. He already possesses multiple versions of Jennifer captured during her past time travel misadventures so why not sidle up to the original? And with Tony Romano, the high school’s hippie-dippy art teacher, set to retire, who will replace him as the Time Keeper?

More horror comedy combined with teenage romance from the author of Hags and other top sellers. Perfect for fans of Shayne Silvers, Jeff Strand and John P. Logsdon. Also great for horror fans who wish Stephen King had a sense of humor.

Young Adult/Adult Crossover. Find out why sci-fi/fantasy readers enjoy the Snpgrdxz time travel series by clicking on the LOOK INSIDE button to sample the book.

Interview with Paul R. Lloyd
Why should readers check out Snpgrdxz and the Time Keepers?
If you like to laugh your way through a horror story, and who doesn’t, then you owe it to yourself to read the Snpgrdxz series. The first three books act as a prequel to book 4 so go ahead and start with the fourth book: Snpgrdxz and the Time Keepers. You can always backtrack to the first three episodes.

Snpgrdxz and the Discount Offer

Purchase Snpgrdxz for just 99 cents today.

The modern novel is about two things: action and emotion. Action moves the story along so that you can’t put it down because of the nonstop forward motion. Emotion is about laughter, joy, excitement. It’s about anger, fear and angst. It’s about the exhilaration of needing to know what will happen next. Above all, it’s about falling in love with one person in one place, and with one book, one author. For love conquers everything including the monsters who’d love to kill us, eat us, or transform us into something unspeakable in the world of Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters.

What if one night that teenage girl you have a crush on appears at the foot of your bed, pistol in hand, and threatens to shoot you? But your best friend and a terrorist burst into your bedroom and kill her in the nick of time? But the next night this same girl shows up in your bed again? This time she’s ready for love. When did your dead crush become your girlfriend? Wild dreams? Since when did your nightmares leave actual bullet holes and blood stains behind?

Join the crazy journey of Bryan Ganarski, Jennifer Hawkins, Gilbert Armstrong, and of course, Snpgrdxz, the teenaged space alien shape shifter who can be either a boy or girl depending on his or her mood. Hormones fly, earther and other, in this madcap misadventure.

Is Bryan totally insane or is there a part of him that can still fall in love with one of the many versions of his time-traveling girlfriend? And will Bryan work up the gumption to kiss Jennifer in front of the whole sophomore class like she asked him to? She did ask him, didn’t she?

This love-crazed tale of time travel features a group of friends who become stuck between the wrong time on earth and a troll world filled with monsters far worse than those pesky tiny bridge trolls and the really tall, hairy mountain trolls. An evil daemon, werewolves, nosferatu, and a few ghosts are among the many monsters waiting for you in Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters. It’s the first novel in my new sci-fi/fantasy horror series.

Enjoying a great read begins with action and emotion. Act now to purchase Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters on Kindle today for only $0.99 US. Save $2 US and pay less than a buck. Such a deal! Don’t miss out on it. Click here now.

You can get all emotional later as you read Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters.

In case you missed it, here’s the link to my new novel on Amazon: Click here.

Death Takes a Vacation

We often think of death as an angel sent to take away your soul to judgment, leaving your body as an empty shell for the fire pit or burial ground. But the world is so overrun by people that one angel simply can’t snatch all the souls fast enough, especially in a war zone. So what’s Death to do?

It turns out the Death Department operates a whole cadre of death angels, each assigned to its own territory and given a quota to  meet. Death angels, known in the Vatican archives as Deathabus, circle about their area of responsibility to snag those souls ready for the great beyond.

On occasion, the Deathabus is authorized to take a vacation. Now, you may be picturing the agent of Death as this mysterious skeletal creature wrapped inside a floor length hoodie, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The angels of death, all of them, are either handsome young men in appearance or attractive, well-figured females. The one who kisses you depends on your preference. Death knows your secret desires to be sure.

Learn more about the deathly kiss of greeting by reading Little Miss Forgotten. It’s available today free on Amazon. Download your free copy by clicking here.

Today’s nostalgia post: Day 1 describes the first day of a road trip taken by my adult son Joseph and me back in 2009. In this post, I channel Robert M. Pirsig despite my then desire to wax Hemingway-esque. Click here to read.

Little Miss Forgotten

My writing style has evolved over time as has reader tastes. Novels I write today begin with a strong hook. For example, my new novel Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters, begins with this line:

From where she stood at the foot of my bed, fifteen-year-old Jennifer Hawkins couldn’t miss, but would this sweet girl shoot me?

The idea of the opening hook is to entice you into wanting to know what happens next. Will Jennifer Hawkins pull the trigger? There was a time when a story about a teenage girl and a gun would end up with the girl not firing. But this is a 21st century girl who has been raised in an era of high violence, often meaningless, involving teen-on-teen crime.

So does Jennifer pull the trigger? The odds are very high that she does, but I’ll let you find out for yourself when you read the free portion by clicking the book cover on Amazon. Click here to visit Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters on Amazon. BTW, Snpgrdxz is pronounced as if spelled Snip-grid-ix. It’s all explained in the novel.

This brings us back to Little Miss Forgotten, a strong female character who appears in my short story of the same name. This is an older story of mine, and it features a more languid opening style of stories written decades ago when readers preferred a little more setup before the action blazed hot.

Here is the opening:

"Do you wanna dance?" Okay, it was the name of a top ten hit, and today's kids would sneer if they heard me, but in 1967 it worked.

She hesitated. She frowned. She stared for what seemed an eternity, (about three seconds). "Sure, why not?"

I don't remember the song. The band was on break, and the young kids who worked as house deejays were playing records. It was a fast one. You just didn't ask a girl to dance a slow one the first time. You had to dance a couple of fast ones first. At a nice suburban Catholic church hall like Holy Cross, a girl accepting a slow dance was giving you an invitation to climb all over her.

We danced that first one, and then a few more fast dances. They were the usual Mashed Potato, Watusi and Stomp. Then a slow one came on, my all-time favorite: "Angel Baby" by Rosie and the Originals. (High falsetto, andante: "It's just like heav-en, be-ing here with yo-oo, 'cause you're like an an-gel, too good to be true-oo, but after-ah-all, I love you, I do-oo, An-gel Ba-by, my An-gel Ba-by," etc.) These lyrics won’t mean much to you unless you already know the song, but trust me, the tune was great for slow dancing.

***

Set during the Vietnam war era, the rest of this short horror fiction is yours free for your Kindle by clicking here today. Beware the kiss of death and as always, stay away from those pretty little blondes.

Okay, you don’t have to avoid the blondes, but you still have to watch out for that one kiss from Little Miss Forgotten that will change your life forever. Click here for the free download.

Today’s nostalgia blog post is from May 22, 2009. Click here for a sweet yarn on yet another strong young lady and my take on wisdom.

Where is Snpgrdxz?

My new novel was supposed to be launched the other day, but one of my characters hi-jacked my blog when I wasn’t looking. Claiming to be my nephew, which he’s not, this young character told you more than you should know about Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters and most of it may or may not have been true.

By focusing on his own adventures, Bryan Ganarski neglected to introduce you to Snpgrdxz, the space alien teenage space shifter. Bryan pretty much does this in my novel also. He’s supposed to be Boswell to Snpgrdxz’s Samuel Johnson. But instead he spends way too much time telling you about Jennifer Hawkins, the sophomore he has this huge crush on.

With Bryan you learn more about Jennifer than you want to know, like the location of that birthmark she’d prefer to keep to herself and the multiple versions of herself. That was supposed to be kept secret. Wait until the NSA hears about that one. They don’t believe in time travel in Washington. If they did, they’d figure out how to balance the budget, but that’s another story.

According to my outline, Snpgrdxz is supposed to be the story of an alien shape shifter stuck on earth for decades. His big problem is the U.S. government which wants to capture him so they can slice, dice and dissect him. Bryan Ganarski is supposed to run away with Snpgrdxz and record his adventures while narrowly escaping the men in black.

But that’s not what happened.

Teenagers.

Who knew there was a time portal hidden under Lincoln High School in downtown Wheaton, Illinois? Well, actually the trolls knew about it.

And Maria Gonzalez obviously when the trolls kidnapped her.

And Mr. Romano, the art teacher, must have known about it because he’s the one who led the gang to the Wheaton When Portal in the first place. But none of this has anything to do with running away from those pesky guys in the black suits.

Oh well. That’s what you get when you leave a kid in charge of your story.

Go ahead and read this sci/fi time journey adventure romance thing. I have to admit the love story is romantic, except for the parts where people get shot at… and hit by real bullets. And attacked by monsters. But hey… no wait. You know too much already.

Just read the darn thing and you can let me know how you liked it later. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do to bring back that part about the feds chasing Snpgrdxz in a future novel in this series.

Click here.

Snpgrdxz Has Landed

Jennifer Hawkins crept into my room last night and plopped on my bed. We talked after midnight on a school night. In her jammies. Bare legs hanging out. That Jennifer Hawkins. The one with the long, straight brunette hair and fat ruby lips and high cheek bones. A bit on the skinny side but tall. Principal Hawkins’ daughter. Old Mrs. Hawkins, the choir director at First Pres’s, daughter.

I know this stuff is hard to believe, but I swear I'm not making it up. My name is Bryan Ganarski, BTW, and I don't make stuff up unless my old man asks me a question.

You’re reading this because my Uncle Paul said I could use his blog account. There’s no way I’d post this where Jennifer Hawkins could see it. Or her mom or dad. Or any of her girlfriends. Or the guys. Well, I guess it's okay if the guys know.

I don’t even know why I’m telling you my story except Uncle Paul said everybody would figure it was just part of that new novel he wrote.

Right.

Like you can write a novel on a blog.

So there I was with Jennifer Hawkins, the prettiest sophomore at Lincoln High, getting mighty friendly at one-thirty in the morning. She grabbed my face in her hands and made me look up into her big, brown bedroom eyes. That’s what Uncle Paul calls girls with big eyes. Bedroom eyes. Especially if they’re all drooping and wet like you better hurry up and kiss me or something lame like that.

Uncles.

Anyway, Jennifer stared me eyeball-to-eyeball as I melted. “Hi, Bryan. Guess you’re wondering what I’m doing in your bedroom in the middle of the night, huh?”

“Kinda.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I like you.”

If you’re expecting a major make out session, you’d be right except this was all a freaking dream. The real story began when I opened my eyes, like I said in the middle of the night, except Jennifer Hawkins wasn’t making kissy face with me. 

In the real world, the teenage girl you have a crush on wakes you up late at night because she wants to blow your head off with the Glock she’s pointing your way.

Welcome to my world.

Yes, she pulls the trigger, but I’m not about to tell you anymore here because I’ve already used up my allotment of words for this blog post so you’ll just have to read it for yourself.

Who knows? Maybe Jennifer will love me tomorrow night.

Snpgrdxz.

And the Time Monsters.

Click here.

Cover Reveal -- Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters

It's time to unveil the cover or my new novel,  Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters. It's the first book in my new Snpgrdxz Series. The first three books in the series will be available in Kindle format right away with the paperback version available by next week. Here's a brief description of Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters...

From where she stood at the foot of my bed, fifteen-year-old Jennifer Hawkins couldn’t miss, but would this sweet girl shoot me?

What if one night that teenage girl you have a crush on appears at the foot of your bed, pistol in hand, and threatens to shoot you? But your best friend and a terrorist burst into your bedroom and kill her in the nick of time? But the next night this same girl shows up in your bed again? This time she’s ready for love. When did your dead crush become your girlfriend? Wild dreams? Since when did your nightmares leave actual bullet holes, dead bodies and blood stains behind?

Join the crazy journey of Bryan Ganarski, Jennifer Hawkins, Gilbert Armstrong, and of course, Snpgrdxz, the teenaged space alien shape shifter who can be either a boy or girl depending on his or her mood. Hormones fly, earther and other, in this madcap misadventure. Is Bryan totally insane or is there a part of him that can still fall in love with one of the many versions of his time-traveling girlfriend? And will Bryan work up the gumption to kiss Jennifer in front of the whole sophomore class like she asked him to? She did ask him, didn’t she?

This love-crazed tale of time travel features a group of friends who become stuck between the wrong time on earth and a troll world filled with monsters far worse than those pesky tiny bridge trolls and the really tall, hairy mountain trolls. An evil daemon, werewolves, nosferatu, and a few ghosts are among the many monsters waiting for you in Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters.


My new novel should be ready for purchase by the time you read this. Visit my author's page on Amazon to buy it. UPDATE: YOU MAY PURCHASE SNPGRDXZ AND THE TIME MONSTERS BY CLICKING HERE.

In the meantime, here's the cover:

Extraordinary Characters

It isn’t enough to make the characters real in speculative fiction. At least some of them have to be fantastic. For example, do you see that tall, thin man sipping black brew here in the coffee shop where you sit now reading this blog post on your tablet? He appears normal enough, doesn’t he? But he is a fairie with beautiful filigree wings hidden under that business-like collar shirt he’s wearing. Go ahead and follow him when he leaves. He doesn’t have a car in the parking lot. He’ll walk around the corner to that dark alley across the street where he’ll strip off his shirt, spread his wings and fly to the office.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, ordinary stories feature ordinary characters in ordinary situations. Speculative fiction may have its share of ordinary characters, but you also find a few extraordinary characters in extraordinary places doing extraordinary things. And like any good story, not all the characters survive.

My current work in progress (WIP) fits neatly into the speculative fiction box because it covers a wide range of storytelling with elements of science fiction when a space alien is marooned on earth and has to fit in with the other teenagers at the local high school, fantasy as a group of friends venture into time travel that leads them through an underworld of strange and amazing creatures, a romance as two star-crossed lovers seek to find their way, horror as the friends battle monsters as evil as any straight out of Hades, and historical fiction as the time travelers spend months in different periods.

My focus novel for this month is Hags. It’s the story of fantastic characters from the faerie like the one described above to the regular-looking guy who moved back to Naperville, Illinois, after 15 years in prison, to the girl next door who… well, we’re not sure at the beginning of the story… but could she be a hag as wicked as any from the Middle Ages? And what about the local high school principal? The principal is your pal unless you happen to be a teenage girl. Need I say more? As my focus novel for October, Hags is only $.99 for the Kindle edition this month. Click here to purchase.

Novel Quote
“The creature wore blue jeans and a red shirt tucked into his waistband as he flitted about from golden daffodils to blue forget-me-nots like a bee shopping for nectar.”
Hags by Paul R. Lloyd