Inanna Phantom

Inanna Phantom

by Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENRE:   Science Fiction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

Chatting With the Author

  1.Did you always want to be an author? Absolutely – from day-1 & the first serial mystery written for my 6^th grade class paper (a weekly one-page biggy). I luved writing it. I was hooked.

2.Tell us about the publication of your first book. 

Moccasin Trace - historical romance, prequel to the Moccasin Hollow mysteries, and my first book published by a traditional, royalty-paying publisher.

The construct of Moccasin Trace involved many aspects of the tale told. The historical had to be well-referenced, then re-referenced several more times after the so-called expert at a major university edited out colonial parishes except for Louisiana - which wasn’t a colony! Parishes stayed in the manuscript – censoring history is ethically brain-dead-dumb & NOT permitted. The political had to be considered BUT only as a background for setting & supporting characters. The emotional aspects of it being a romance – a love story that changed lives in the conflicts& upheaval of the American Civil War and gave strength to bloodlines that reached across generations into the lives of other characters. All the genres – all in bundle. The writing was the fun – multiple editing was a great learning experience – publication was a business arrangement. Marketing was the work – but that’s another tale.

3.Besides yourself, who is your favorite author in the genre you write in? I don’t write in genres – it limits the expections of the tale being spun. 

4.What's the best part of being an author? Using words from countries beyond the river/mountain culture I grew up in to breathe life into make-believe worlds on this planet & others that NASA is discovering. This applies both to my science fiction series and my mystery series.

The worst? Not enough time to create the worlds & characters & fantasies being explored.

5.What are you working on now?

            Sci-fi - The Cairns of Sainctuarie

Vol I – The Bleikovat Event - published

Vol II – The Missing Planets - published

Vol III – Inanna Phantom - published

Vol IV - [galley edit]

            Mystery thrillers - The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series

            Bk I – Hidden Chamber of Death - published

            Bk II – Westobou Gold - published

            Bk III – Curse of the Ancients - published

            Bk IV – Dead Gold - published

            Bk V – [galley edit]

            Bk VI – [3^rd edit]

            Bk VII – [draft edit]

            Historical Romance - Moccasin Trace - published           

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

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.

www.hawkmackinney.net

Book Video: https://youtu.be/MUnhN8U0Zp0

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ HawkMacKinney

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/698008.Hawk_MacKinney

Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Inanna-Phantom-Cairns-Sainctuarie-Book-ebook/dp/B07Y2DQRT3/ref=sr_1_1

Barnes&Noble.com: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/inanna-phantom-hawk-mackinney/1133914447?ean=9781732918252

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Bleikovat Event

The Bleikovat Event - The Cairns of Sainctuarie

by Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

Among the close-kin clans of western rural Malfesian Murians, farming and gelf ranches are long held traditions.  Times are good…full barns, fat gelf calves and large families thrive among the sprawling grain fields and hamlets and the river from which they derive their name—the Feldon.  Word comes with the trade caravans that times are not so good in the regions far to the east of the Feldon River:  tumultuous changes stir among the remote province of Bleikovia.  Old timer Feldovats shrug it off as one more squabble between clans over boundaries or water rights…too distant to affect the Feldovats.

The western clans learn too late, however, it is no local squabble.  Outnumbered and unprepared, Feldovats resist a hoard bent on plunder and conquest.  Days of battle along the Feldon River stain the riverbanks in green Murian blood.  In the finals days of exhausted fighting, Judikar Klarvko Celo, leader of the Clan Klarvkon and the Feldovats, is fatally stabbed with the slow-acting sevon poison.  The Judikar’s consort, Etikaa Klarvkaa, becomes Regentkaa, and with Celovat Field Commander Korvo Celo serving as her advisor, she leads the demoralized Feldovat survivors on a gruesome ill-prepared winter trek through high mountain passes of ice and blizzard snow in an attempt to elude the Green Dragon forces of the Bleikovats.

Etkaa’s only son, Klarvko Celo II, helps spirit Feldovat young across a remote mountain exodus to the west toward Eedov Province. The battered, starving Feldovats reach the Malfesian coast at Eedov City only to be confronted with their implacable enemy determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble.  Taking passage on crowded lumbering Maalonovion freighters, Feldovats and Malfesian refugees set sail.  On arrival in Maalon City they are welcomed among their Maalon hosts, and settle into a new life.

But famine and a pandemic pestilence stir old hates and nurse former ambitions.  The enraged Overseers of Bleikovia move against the Klarvkons, this time bringing bloodshed to Maalonovia.  The exiles from the Feldon must fight once again, but starvation and plague across the Planete Myr make it a different war from the battles along the Feldon…a na’ä blikovat…the Bleikovvat Phenomenon…an event with unexpected consequences and outcomes none could have foreseen.

Before the vendetta killing is exhausted, the Regentkaa Klarvkaa and her son are swept onto the Maalon throne, setting the Klarvkon Dynasty and the Murians toward an intergalactic golden age, and a star-flung destiny the once-agrarian Feldovats could never have envisaged.

EXCERPT:

There had been warnings; far from the Feldon River, across the flat prairies and far-flung farming settlements, in the grain fields and remote gelf ranches of the far-west reaches of Feldon provinces. Most dismissed them, “…idle gossip from those with too little to do.”

The onslaught struck late and faraway during the last harvesting moons of the growing season, and once again unsettled whispers passed. Among the markets and along trade routes far from the fields and farms of the Feldovat fiefdoms the word spread.

That was before dispatch riders and message runners on ponderous muscled claks brought more disturbing news: Heavy raids and ambushes all along the hinterlands this side of the Bleikov-Bormeikovat frontiers.

One grizzled Murian farmer’s slit-pupils narrowed to thin slivers. Gently tightened the reins, hooked to the plough. The lumbering gelf plodded to a stop. He laid the planed-wood handles of the plough sidewise onto the fresh furrow. Without moving from the trenched rows the gelf reached its thick neck to nibble the green tufts around its feet. The weathered work-aged farmer carefully slipped the reins off his shoulder. Fingered the split creeping along one sweat-stained handle, muttered, “…get this to the woodworker before spring ploughing times. Get it braced before I have to barter for a new plough handle.” Pulled off his wide-brim woven hat; wiped his forehead. Uncorked his gelf-leather water pouch; took long slow swallows. Spit a bitter-chewed slurry of brown chakklu; scowled,"…ill-tempered uplander Bleikovats." After another long swallow he re-plugged the pouch. Bit off another twist of dried chakklu.

Coming up the next furrow behind him, his nephew pulled the harrow to a stop across from his uncle. Kicked loose a couple of big weeded clods wedged under the harrow frame and brushed dirt off the mottled green scab on the back of his hand he had cut yestermorn while sharpening the plough. Reached for his water bag. "Bleikovats are sure stirring a big fuss.” Put down his water bag to help stack the shocks; hefted another bound sheaf.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

With 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.

www.hawkmackinney.net

www.sagewordspublishing.com  

www.archebooks.com   

http://youtu.be/IFbsl36LTC8

http://youtu.be/-m-H8pfoh-A

http://youtu.be/OvV8gqls688

http://youtu.be/tLOOHlQ3IYs

www.amazon.com   

www.barnesandnoble.com

Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Use the rafflecopter link below to enter. You can find his schedule at http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/03/blurb-blitz-bleikovat-event-cairns-of.html

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Missing Planets

The Missing Planets

By Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:  

Planet 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.

EXCERPT:

Uncle a’Qoc hadn’t been wrong; much had changed. Like the ancient Teratoan proverb… change is part of life, change had come. In ways big and small it had touched all of them. Touched worlds beyond what even Uncle a’Qoc and his determined nephew foreknew, and changed things even the mighty Murian Empire could not know—a tumult of the unexpected. Ek was already a Senior Apprentice the first time he met Herklo Korvo; was one of four honor escorts at the hurried change of command: ruddy-faced Outpost Commander Kartn Gurlo relieved by the steely green-eyed Grand Duke Korvo. Ek sensed Gurlo’s anxiety as Gurlo and the Grand Duke talked with one another. During his apprentice time in Outpost Terato, Ek had started learning the Murian syntax; had studied the complex grammar of the Murian tongue, usually spoken with a soft evenness, and caught only the uttered harsh bleak abrupt Murian idiom.

Since then Ek hadn’t heard the expression. The discordant tone of the expression struck a jar to Ek’s ears. In time he learned the expression came from the Malfesian War, when the slaughter of western Feldovat clans destroyed some bloodlines. “… s' bleikovaat... ” Carried an intense meaning for Murians. “… events with unforeseen results... ”

None of the others in the honor escort picked up on Gurlo’s disquiet or the cause of it, Ek likely the only one with a grasp of the Murian idiom. And none of the apprentices were aware of its breakpoint implication, of the unexplainable upheavals rushing toward their home-worlds.

 AUTHOR INFORMATION:

With 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.

www.hawkmackinney.net

www.sagewordspublishing.com

www.archebooks.com

http://youtu.be/IFbsl36LTC8

http://youtu.be/-m-H8pfoh-A

http://youtu.be/OvV8gqls688

http://youtu.be/tLOOHlQ3IYs

www.amazon.com

www.barnesandnoble.com

Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Use the rafflecopter link below to enter. You can find his schedule at http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/10/book-blast-missing-planets-by-hawk.html

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Review Moccasin Trace

If you came for Beyond the Book, scroll on down, but why not take a look at this post too? I wrote a book review for this one.

Moccasin Trace

by Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

… it was about the land…a tale of love and loss and hope…

“The most engaging and brilliantly crafted historical work since Margaret Mitchell’s great classic.”

Barbara Casey

Author, The Gospel According to Prissy

Hamilton Ingram looked out across the fertile Georgia bottomlands that were Moccasin Hollows, seeing holdings it had taken generations of Ingrams to build.  No drop of slave sweat ever shed in its creation.  It was about the land…his trust, his duty to preserve it for the generation of Ingrams to come…

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 Hollows, 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.  The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.

But a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that might be impossible to stand before.

EXCERPT:

Bessie's head jerked around, "...them gun shots."

           

A stooped-over Sarah looked up, "What?"

           

"Gun shots..."  Bessie put down the box of jars and headed toward the cellar door.  "From the direction where the men be.  We gittin' upstairs, an' gittin' now."

           

Sarah's heart pounded as they came up out of the cellar and looked in the direction of more shots.

           

"Come on..."  Bessie hurried into the pantry where she reached down the powder horn from the top shelf, then the rifle and pistols. "Git 'em ready with all that shootin'.  Till we know different, we make sure two-legged low-downs don't sneak to the house."

           

Sarah rushed to the window and murmured, "Hamilton..."  She feared  for him, for their child, for all of them.  "Surely you don't suppose it's Federals?"

           

"Might be better if'n it is 'stead of what else be skulkin' in them woods.  Stay away from the winder, an' finish rammin' this powder."

           

Sarah poured the ball and powder firm, rammed it, pulled the rammer out, and whispered, "Bessie listen...birds stopped singing."

           

"Except that cawin' crow seein' somethin' what don't belong."

           

Sarah took another quick peek, "There's several horses, but I don't see any riders.  Mules are still hitched.  I don't see anyone at the plow, but there's men on among the trees."

           

"You watch the front door."  Bessie snugged the pistol in her apron pocket.  "I cover the back.  Anybody tries comin' through the dogtrot door or through the parlor, we back into here, keep 'em from circlin' us."

           

"What about Papa Rundell?"  Sarah's stomach was queasy.

           

"He keep his rifle ready.  Anyone bust in his room be dead 'fore they twitch a hair."

           

With a crash the kitchen door flew open.  Sarah brought her rifle up and fired, the shot splintering door and jamb.  The sound thundered through the house.  Bessie's rifle steadied dead-on.

           

The silhouetted head and shoulders ducked into a hunch and Hamilton yelled, "Sarah!"  His hand smeared at stinging blood-speckled splinters of wood along his cheek.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

With 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… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. 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.  Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012.

"Without question, Hawk is one of the most gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy--these are the things that take Hawk's main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation's capital and across Europe and the Middle East."

Barbara Casey, President

Barbara Casey Literary Agency

www.hawkmackinney.net

http://www.amazon.com/Moccasin-Trace-Hawk-MacKinney/dp/1595072608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400172529&sr=8-1&keywords=moccasin+trace

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/moccasin-trace-hawk-mackinney/1008084042?ean=9781595072603

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Review:

Things I Liked:

I enjoyed a glimpse into everyday life in another century. We get to see the South both before and after the war. MacKinney carries readers to balls, masquerades, hunts, and other social events, even a honeymoon. We take a lot of things for granted today, but he showed how bad transportation was, and of course people couldn't listen to daily news to find out how the war was going. I was also interested in his description of the ladies' clothes. Making them by hand was much harder than going to the department store. 

Some things don't change, though. People still love their families, hold political opinions, and try to be true to their principles. 

I was interested in the characters' take on the war. They decided that slavery was not the real issue of the war, but it was a good excuse to rile people to action. 

And speaking of slavery, I'm not sure what to think about that. One of the slaves said she loved the white children of her masters as much as she did her own son, and when her son ran away, the master didn't put out any runaway slave notices. I'm just not sure that's realistic in most cases.

A couple of things irritated me. The dialect slowed the book down for me, and since presumably the rich plantation owners were educated people, I found their vocabulary to be somewhat lacking. I also don't know how closely young ladies of wealthy families were chaperoned, but these characters had the freedom to sneak off and share intimacy before marriage. 

Overall, though, I enjoyed this look into a vanished world and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. This little snippet is a good example of what I'm talking about.

In the muggy morning bright sun Hamilton made his

way through the fragrance of steamy horse manure,

leaky turpentine kegs, open bales of mildewed cotton,

and the rankness of where dockhands and vagrants had

relieved themselves. The docks were one milling multitude

of shirtless, cussin’ teamsters off-loading cargo from

wagons onto several steamers, while a company of uniforms

boarded through one forward gangway.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Blood and Gold Virtual Book Tour

 

Blood and Gold, Book 3 in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series

by Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

Blood and Gold, the third book in The Craige Ingram Mystery Series, once again tests the instincts and skills of retired Navy SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram. Lust, greed, body parts and unrestrained wild sex parties are what await Craige Ingram when he leaves the comforts of his South Carolina home to visit his former SEAL buddy, Detective Spinner Krespinak. Set in the Colorado underbelly of a sordid sable and faux glitz ski mecca, Detective Spinner Krespinak suspects drugs have made their way to the snowy playground that is Aspen. An Olympic ski hopeful is brutally murdered, Spinner vanishes, and Craige Ingram is shot as events spin out of control with a Catch-22 no one anticipates.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilhelm Hans “Ski” Janoski lived fast.  His reckless ice-blue wildfire eyes ready for any thrill…snow-covered mountain, sunny beach, his latest bedmate, or two or three.  So many bodies, so little time.  He pointed his ski pole up toward the high peaks they'd traversed, “That portion across the ridge drifted more than I thought.”

           

She licked his neck and ears; gave him a wicked purring simper.  Christy liked the fast lane; hunted any novel untried thrill…fast living…faster men.  She loved the wild streak in Ski…the wilder the better.  “It wouldn't have taken much for those cornices to break loose.”

           

“You knew those upper slopes were closed before we took those trails.”

           

“Sure I did.”  He coughed; spit.  “Why let virgin deep powder go to waste just because some college jock puts on a ski patrol parka; marks boundaries he don’t know shit about?  Not the kind of skiing this Olympic gold medalist likes.  Ski boundaries and groomed slopes are for weekender fat cats who sit by the fire; guzzle martinis and margaritas; fat-up on chips and guacamole dip.”  Peacock bluster...Ski Janoski’s trademark.  Guffed, “All their BS about avalanches…gimme a break!  Even a half-assed skier can outrun an avalanche.  Avalanches are nothing but big balls of snow.  “No mountain ever bested hot-dogger Janoski.” Ski howled his challenge at Mother Nature.  “…no mountain ever will!”

Wilhelm Hans “Ski” Janoski lived fast.  His reckless ice-blue wildfire eyes ready for any thrill…snow-covered mountain, sunny beach, his latest bedmate, or two or three.  So many bodies, so little time.  He pointed his ski pole up toward the high peaks they'd traversed, “That portion across the ridge drifted more than I thought.”

           

She licked his neck and ears; gave him a wicked purring simper.  Christy liked the fast lane; hunted any novel untried thrill…fast living…faster men.  She loved the wild streak in Ski…the wilder the better.  “It wouldn't have taken much for those cornices to break loose.”

           

“You knew those upper slopes were closed before we took those trails.”

           

“Sure I did.”  He coughed; spit.  “Why let virgin deep powder go to waste just because some college jock puts on a ski patrol parka; marks boundaries he don’t know shit about?  Not the kind of skiing this Olympic gold medalist likes.  Ski boundaries and groomed slopes are for weekender fat cats who sit by the fire; guzzle martinis and margaritas; fat-up on chips and guacamole dip.”  Peacock bluster...Ski Janoski’s trademark.  Guffed, “All their BS about avalanches…gimme a break!  Even a half-assed skier can outrun an avalanche.  Avalanches are nothing but big balls of snow.  “No mountain ever bested hot-dogger Janoski.” Ski howled his challenge at Mother Nature.  “…no mountain ever will!”

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

With 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… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. 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.  Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012.

"Without question, Hawk is one of the most gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy--these are the things that take Hawk's main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation's capital and across Europe and the Middle East."

Barbara Casey, President

Barbara Casey Literary Agency

Links:

www.hawkmackinney.net

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Gold-Hawk-Mackinney/dp/1933300051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384707314&sr=8-1&keywords=blood+and+gold+mackinney

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-n-gold-hawk-mackinney/1107229202?ean=9781933300054

Readers, Hawke is giving away a $25 gift certificate to one random commenter, so follow the tour and comment often. You can find his schedule here.here.