Archive for December 6, 2013

Don’t you just love the cover art for Christmas in Dogtown?

Suzanne wrapped up her short story with a pretty bow!

I’m dying to tell you about this holiday story so let’s get to it!

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 Christmas in Dogtown

by Suzanne Johnson

Genre: Sweet Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Story Vault

Date of Publication: December 2012

ASIN: B009RBKTSG

Number of pages: 30

Word Count: approx. 11,000

Amazon / Barnes and Noble

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Synopsis

A woman who spent years escaping her rural past learns that Dogtown, Louisiana, hides more family secrets than just the recipe for boudin blanc…..

Resa Madere’s on the verge of losing it all. The boyfriend’s gone. The job’s history. Her beloved house is on the brink of foreclosure. She’ll do anything to save it—even spend a long Christmas holiday working in St. James Parish, Louisiana, helping her uncle run the family meat business. But the community of Dogtown, which has been home for seven generations of the Madere and Caillou families, has deep roots and deeper secrets. For Resa, going home is one thing.

Getting out might not be so easy.

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My Review

I love short stories. Christmas in Dogtown is wonderful.

Right from the beginning you are connected to Resa. She’s lost her job and been dumped by her boyfriend.

When her Uncle Emile calls asking her to come help him at Madere’s Meats in Paulina for the holidays, she figures why not. It would pay a few house notes and she’d be with her family for Christmas.

Life seems to be conspiring against Resa. She just wants to go back to New Orleans, but her family and fate may have other plans.

Resa has to decide what she really wants.

I live on the Gulf coast and am always on the lookout for stories with a southern voice.

Suzanne had me at boudin!

I had a roommate years ago who grew up in Houma, Louisiana. Every Christmas she’d go see her family and come back loaded down with Boudin sausage and gator balls.

Her mother and father made the best boudin. My eyes would water, my mouth would drool, and I’d stuff myself as full as the pork casings!

The gator balls are not what you think. They are punched out plugs from the tail meat of a gator. You can grill them or steam them. They are a lot like scallops and melt in your mouth.

Resa is a perfect cover girl for bayou life. She can clean and cook gar with the best of them.

For those of you who don’t know, a gar is actually a fish, an alligator gar, named as such because they get as big as some of the gators and resemble them when you see them rise to the surface.

I was told that the best way to cook and eat a gar is to nail it to a 2×4, roast it, then throw away the gar and eat the 2×4. In Dogtown, it sounds like they have a better recipe.

The fun begins immediately when Resa arrives in Paulina, called Dogtown by the residents. All 50 of them. Her family is up to their old tricks, trying to set her up with Chandler Caillou, a childhood friend.

When she opens the door to her little trailer, she’s face to face with him and he sure has grown. I knew before I read it that she was thinking, maybe she should rethink her protests about the matchmaking.

You’ll like Chandler too. At first you think he’s shy, but he’s really just self-contained. He’s certainly not a wuss. Afterall, he’s the towns gator man. His job is to catch and remove the troublesome beasts when they eat someones pooch or become too bold.

I found myself wishing Resa and Chandler would fall in love. I wanted my happy ending. They seemed perfect for each other.

But there’s a huge secret in Dogtown. I didn’t see it coming, and it makes me so happy. It leaves this story open to be developed into more stories. Don’t get me wrong, there is an ending. But there’s also an opening to follow this town and it’s folks.

I hope the author pursues this short story and gives us more. Dogtown opened it’s doors and made me feel warm and welcome. I want to return someday.

5 Stars

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Excerpt

“You are stupid,” Resa told her reflection in the tiny, scratched mirror of the WhiteCastle’s rose-pink bathroom. “Stupid, ridiculous, and absurd.”

She’d been wrestling with her curly black hair for a half hour, and the brown eyes that stared back at her from beneath freshly plucked brows and carefully applied eyeliner looked more jittery than sexy. “And idiotic.”

First, it had been almost a week since Chan had asked her to the Saturday night community dance, popping the question almost shyly as they hacked at the bodies of gigantic dead fish. They’d both been covered in blood and smelled like they’d been rolling in bait, which should have tipped her off that anything in Dogtown reeking of romance, well, reeked.

Second, her potential date had left immediately after asking her out so he could catch an alligator that had eaten somebody’s poodle in one of those backwater houses near the swamp. He burned rubber out of the Madere’s driveway after making sure he had enough duct tape to wrap around the gator’s jaws. Adequate duct tape was not an attribute she’d ever sought in a man.

About Suzanne Johnson

Suzanne  Johnson

Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance (under the name Susannah Sandlin) from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis’ birthplace, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick. She’s the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and, as Susannah Sandlin, the Penton Legacy paranormal romance series.

Website / Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew.

Have a wonderful holiday ya’ll!

A Gulf Coast Christmas

Freakin Fridays!

Freakin Fridays is my own little meme. I’ll be posting about books, movies, and all things scary.

Feel free to join in and do your own Freakin Fridays posts!

Tune in every Friday. Get your scare on!

Let’s have some fun!

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I’ve got a treat for you today!

Adam Light has a brand new novella just released today!

Check it out.

Serving Spirits

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Hunker down for a long night during a brutal hurricane with Natalie and Mitch Whitley. Which one of them will survive the night may depend on a father’s love.

This story was originally published as part of my collection TOES UP and is intended for adults only.

My Review

It was a dark and stormy… Just kidding. But it really was!

Hurricane Gwendolyn is battering the mansion. Natalie Whitley gets through it the howling winds and crash of tress falling by drowning it out with some Metallica. That and a Stoli and cranberry juice cocktail her husband mixed for her.

As the storm beats at the doors and windows, Natalie wishes she were in Vegas. But the mansion should be able to withstand the hurricane. It’s just a matter of waiting for it to pass.

I’ve been through my share of hurricanes and it always seems the worst of the storm occurs at night. All that crashing and howling and loud bumps makes for a long and scary night. Then the power goes out and it really gets bad.

The author sets the mood for you and all you can do is hang on.

You have a great cast of characters.  Seth, Natalie’s father, is a famous horror writer and is traveling abroad, researching his next big hit. Natalie is the apple of her father’s eye.

Mitch, the husband, is everything Natalie’s father doesn’t want for his daughter and his suspicions are soon confirmed.

A large package arrives at the mansion. Seth is always sending Natalie odd finds. This one is beyond odd and quite grotesque.

You’re going to love what’s in the crate. From here on, Natalie has to fear what’s in the mansion as much as the storm outside.

Once I knew what was in the crate, I had an idea where this story was going. That doesn’t mean I didn’t relish every word getting there.

Adam infuses suspense, outrage, and terror in stunning doses. While Serving Spirits is a short read, it feels a lot longer while you’re experiencing it.

Looking for something scary for a dark and stormy night. Or a quiet one. I recommend Serving Spirits.

5 Stars

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Now for Toes Up

The complete collection

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Taken

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Jack Harden is your average good-old-fashioned American truck driver.
You can ask the girl he’s got duct-taped in the back of his cab, she’ll tell you.
Oh, don’t worry – it’s okay. His wife knows all about it.
She told him to do it.

My Review

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Way Out Of Here

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Meet Gordon Delanolan. Just call him Nolan, everyone else does. Nolan is bored with life and in dire need of adventure. The only problem is that he has done everything, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else left to add spice to his existence.

Then one night Nolan is shocked and terrified to hear a disembodied voice coming from his navel. Reality, he finds, is much more tenuous than he at first believed.

At first he thinks he may be going insane, but perhaps he has found the way out of his jaded existence afterall.

This short story was originally published as BELLY BUTTON WINDOW, but I have elected to release it under its original title with a modified cover.
It will still be available in the previous format as part of the Light Brothers’ short story collection THE CORPUS CORRUPTUM.

My Review

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Gone

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Adam Light : “This is my debut published short story. People who have read it compare it to “a lost episode of the Twilight Zone”. Fast paced and surprising; this is a tale of a man experiencing a most unusual, and terrible, sort of day. Fans of suspense, quick and compelling reads, or interested in checking out a fresh author should give it a try. I think you will really enjoy this.”

My Review

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Vengeance By The Foot

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Like a modern-day Franz Kafka or young William S. Burroughs, blossoming new author Adam Light presents the twisted tale of an unlucky man suffering the misfortune of losing his foot to diabetes. Amputation is a bad thing even on a good day, but it’s even worse when your severed foot holds a grudge.

My Review

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The Continuance Agency

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Daniel Sharpe survived the end of the world. Now he lives alone, fearful that he may be the last living person on earth. It’s too dangerous for him to venture outside – to try and find other survivors – with that ominous black cloud of death still looming in the sky above.

When a manila envelope mysteriously arrives with an invitation to join “The Continuance Agency”, an organization on a mission to save mankind, Daniel has to decide if it’s worth the risk to try to join up, to see if he can help to save whatever’s left of the world. But deep inside he wonders: is “The Continuance Agency” really what it claims to be?

My Review

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Adam Light

Adam   Light

I have always loved the written word. I fell in love at an early age and was fortunate enough to have a family that was in love with books. You could say I was nurtured on the language, and as I grow older I realize more and more that there are no boundaries to the impact words can have on everything.
I have been publishing my own stories for a couple of years now, and am inching my way towards the completion of a first novel. Until I finish that project, I will likely continue to pop out short stories here and there, and I am proud to say I just published a collection of short stories titled TOES UP, which contains one brand new story unavailable anywhere else, and five previously released titles.

Thanks to all who have read and reviewed my work, giving an unknown author such as myself a chance to unleash my madness upon you.
There is plenty more to come.

Goodreads / Amazon

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