Today I am so pleased to welcome T.A. Moore to Joyfully Jay. T.A.  has come to talk to us about her latest release, Stone the Crows. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

 

When Dr Nicholas Blake was a little boy he lived with his Granny in a little grey house in a long grey street in Glasgow. His granny wasn’t like other grannies. Other grannies told their grandchildren to be scared of strangers. His granny told him he only had to be scared of one stranger.

Once upon a time, she’d say after she tucked Nicholas in and looked under the bed and behind the curtains, in a place not so far away there was a man that everyone loved. The gods gave him strength and speed and sharp, white, teeth to gnaw through the winding sheet of the world into the Wild. His people admired him and called him brave, they gave him titles and respect and women.

He deserved none of them. For he was a fool and he was a man. He told people he had taken the gifts the gods gave him. The gods still loved him, and so they let him go unpunished and waited for him to realise the error of his ways.

“Surely, he’ll come back to us,” they’d say. “We loved him, we gave him everything, how can be deny us?”

But this wolf, who wasn’t really a wolf for all his sharp, white teeth,, had given himself pride. He thought that everything he’d been given was his by right, and he turned on the gods and his wise men and the women who told him the truth. He rejected the strong, for they might challenge him or remember that he wasn’t what he said, and raised the weak to his side.

Then the weak did what the weak always will, they sickened and they died. It was sad and it was bad, but no one really cared.

Now the man, who wasn’t really a man for remember his sharp white teeth, was alone. The gods had found other people to love. His people had seen that he was weak, and grown old. All the man had left were old bones to chew and his pride, so he told himself this was what he wanted. To be alone, to be godless.

Except bones don’t fill a wolf’s belly and silence doesn’t fill a man’s heart. Sometimes the man, who isn’t really  a wolf or a man but the worst of both, gets hungry and lonely so he comes down from his throne and he comes down from the Highlands.

Now you might think that people would be afraid and amazed by this. A wolf who was a man, or neither, come down from the hills in his bloody fight and inked skin. I would be amazed and you, you’d piss yourself wouldn’t you, my little budgie boy. But in fact no one gives him a second look. They think he’s the wind or a sour smell from the sewers. He’s not invisible, that isn’t how things work, he’s just not quite here.

He’s there. On the other side the world’s winding sheet, in the Wild where the gods live and the monsters wait. He goes where he wants and no matter how hard you run or where you hide, he’ll find you. Even if you cover the mirrors and draw the blinds and close your eyes, because he doesn’t need to peep through the holes in the world.

He can smell you. He can smell the meat and the blood, the lights and the liver, the wet marrow in the bones he’ll crack. Once he’s found you, then no one else will again. He take you away and eat you all up. Not quickly though, no, because as hungry as he is he’s also lonely. So he’ll eat you a bit at a time. A toe. An ear. Until all that’s left are bones for his throne.

So if you see a dark, bearded man with sharp, white teeth appear out of nowhere you’ll know who he is. And that he’s come to eat you all up.

So if you see him, you run away. Run away to your Granny.

Otherwise the Run Away Man will take you away and no one will ever see you again.

 

Blog Tour:

  • 25 May – It’s About the Book
  • 27 May – Boy Meets Boy
  • 28 May – The Novel Approach
  • 30 May – Love Bytes
  • 31 May – Dreamspinner Blog

Blurb

Stone the crowsWhen the Winter comes, the Wolves will come down over the walls and eat little boys in their beds.

Doctor Nicholas Blake might still be afraid of the dark, but the monsters his grandmother tormented him with as a child aren’t real.

Or so he thought… until the sea froze, the country ground to a halt under the snow, and he found a half-dead man bleeding out while a dead woman watched. Now his nightmares impinge on his waking life, and the only one who knows what’s going on is his unexpected patient.

For Gregor it’s simple. The treacherous Prophets mutilated him and stole his brother Jack, and he’s going to kill them for it. Without his wolf, it might be difficult, but he’ll be damned if anyone else gets to kill Jack—even if he has to enlist the help of his distractingly attractive, but very human, doctor.

Except maybe the Prophets want something worse than death, and maybe Nick is less human than Gregor believes. As the dead gather and the old stories come true, the two men will need each other if they’re going to rescue Jack and stop the Prophets’ plan to loose something more terrible than the Wolf Winter.


Bio

TA MooreTA Moore genuinely believed that she was a Cabbage Patch Kid when she was a small child. This was the start of a lifelong attachment to the weird and fantastic. These days she lives in a market town on the Northern Irish coast and her friends have a rule that she can only send them three weird and disturbing links a month (although she still holds that a DIY penis bifurcation guide is interesting, not disturbing). She believes that adding ‘in space!’ to anything makes it at least 40% cooler, will try to pet pretty much any animal she meets (this includes snakes, excludes bugs), and once lied to her friend that she had climbed all the way up to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, when actually she’d only gotten to the beach, realized it was really high, and chickened out.

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Giveaway

T.A. has brought a $20 Dreamspinner Press gift card to give away to one lucky reader. Just leave a comment at the end of the post to enter. The contest ends on Friday, June 1st at 11:59 pm ET.

  • By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.
  • Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win.  The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.
  • If you win, you must respond to my email within 48 hours or another winner may be chosen. Please make sure that your spam filter allows email from Joyfully Jay.
  • Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.
  • Prizes will be distributed following the giveaway either by Joyfully Jay or the person/organization donating the prize.
  • All book prizes are in electronic format unless otherwise specified.
  • By entering you are agreeing to hold Joyfully Jay harmless if the prize or giveaway in some way negatively impacts the winner.
  • Readers may only enter once for each contest.  Duplicate entries for the same giveaway will be ignored. In the event of technical problems with the blog during the contest, every effort will be made to extend the contest deadline to allow for additional entries.
  • Void where prohibited by law.
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