Book Tour: The Ferryman by Amy Neftzger @Neftzger @VBTCafe #Giveaway

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Book Tour: The Ferryman by Amy Neftzger @Neftzger @VBTCafe #Giveaway

Title: The Ferryman

Author Name: Amy Neftzger

Author Bio:

Amy Neftzger (born June 23) is an American researcher and author who has published fiction books, non-fiction books, business articles, and peer review research. Her works have reached an international audience.

Amy was born in Illinois and graduated from Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. She received her bachelors degree from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida and her Masters in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She graduated from both Universities with honors.

She has written numerous business and journal articles, but her fiction works have been the most commercially successful. In 2003 she published Conversations with the Moon, which was also translated into Korean and published in South Korea. In 2005 she collaborated with her husband, guitarist Tyra Neftzger on a children's book called "All that the Dog Ever Wanted." The book was designed to introduce children to jazz music at an early age and included a CD sampler of jazz tunes. In 2007 she worked as an editor on a business fable called "The Damned Company." She's also written "Confessions From a Moving Van" and "Leftover Shorts."

In 2013, Amy released her first Young Adult book called "The Orphanage of Miracles." The sequel to this book, "The Orchard of Hope" is scheduled for release in June of 2014, and The Ferryman (adult fiction) is scheduled for release in October, 2014.

Author Links -

Book Genre: Fiction/ Fantasy

Publisher: Fields of Gold Publishing (Imprint: Fog Ink)

Release Date: 10/07/2014

Buy Link(s): Amazon

Book Description:

Like most large career moves, this one happened by accident. Karen spent a lot of time planning what she was going to do with her life, but Fate had other plans for her, as she often does for most of us. Karen just happened to rob the wrong grave.

Excerpt:

Karen studied the coffin she had just uncovered. The lid, once a shiny lacquered surface, was now partially decayed and fell apart as Karen pried it off. Bits of wood turned to dust on her hands as she worked diligently to make an opening. Her arms were tired from digging and the fatigue made it more difficult to be gentle with the rotting wood. She paused to shake her arms vigorously and relax the tension in her muscles and upper body. As she breathed in the chilly night air, she could smell her own sweat mixed with the fragrance of the rich earth and decaying wood. She took a few more deep breaths and turned back to the task of opening the grave. She worked patiently to handle the lid with care and managed to remove a large chunk that was nearly a third of the entire lid. Through the hole she had made she saw the top half of a well-dressed skeleton.

The grave was on the edge of the cemetery, in a neglected corner that looked as if it could be part of the adjoining land. The gravestone had fallen over years ago and weathered so much that it looked like an ordinary limestone rock. A few days earlier when Karen recognized that it was actually a grave, she decided to rob it. She was hoping that no one had gotten to it before her.

This particular plot was an older grave from a time when individuals placed ancient coins over the eye sockets of the corpse, although the coins weren't ancient when they were buried. Most of these graves had already been robbed, but due to the location and lack of distinct marking or some other mystical reason, this one had gone unnoticed by robbers until now. It was almost as if the grave had been hidden until the right person came along. Karen wasn't the typical grave robber, and perhaps the corpse found this attractive. Regardless of how the grave had remained unspoiled for so many years, Karen was the one who finally opened the casket and plucked up the coins. It was at that moment that Fate appeared.

Guest Blog:

Six of My favorite Villains in Literature

Let's face it, villains make for great story lines because they create the conflict that often evokes empathy for the main character while moving the plot forward. Villains are necessary to literature and most of the time we love to hate them. Here are a few of my favorites:

Voldemort from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
He's dark. He's merciless. He even attempted to murder a baby. It doesn't get more evil than baby killing. Voldemort embodies everything we were taught to despise, and yet he cultivates a loyal following. Very few villains get more evil than Voldemort, which is why he tops my list.

Cruella de Vil from The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith
If you're not going to kill babies, the next most evil thing you could do is to kill puppies. This is why Cruella ranks as number two on my list.

Mrs Danvers from Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
I despised Mrs Danvers from the first moment I read her interacting with the second Mrs. de Winter. This villain is arrogant and hateful, and she's constantly seeking for ways to humiliate our poor protagonist. She's just a spiteful old hag who can't stand to see someone else happy. She's like a human dementor.

Moriarty from The Sherlock Holmes Books, by Arthur Conan Doyle
Moriarty is just plain cleaver, and reading about Sherlock Holmes meeting his match is a treat for readers. Of course, we're all rooting for Holmes, but it's nice to see someone give him a challenge, and Moriarty does that for us. He makes Sherlock shine, and for that I love him as a villain.

Mr. Hyde from Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The scariest thing about Mr Hyde is that he's a part of Dr. Jekyll, and Jekyll doesn't know it. He represents the darkness within all of us - that part of ourselves of which we're unaware and the part that can most easily destroy us. That's more frightening than anything that another person could ever do to us.

Elphaba in Wicked by Gregory Maguire
She's the villain who turns out not to be the villain we all thought she was. Elphaba is on my list not because she's evil, but rather because she was believed to be evil for so many years … until this cleaver re-telling of the familiar story. I love the way the author turned the tale on its head when he wrote Wicked, and that's why Elphaba made this list. She shows that good and evil are not always black and white.