THE SEVEN HUNGERS Blog Tour
I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on THE SEVEN HUNGERS by Morgan Quaid Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Title: THE SEVEN HUNGERS : Rise of the Crimson King
Author: Morgan Quaid
Pub. Date: April 20, 2022
Publisher: Morgan Quaid
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 357
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle
Read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited membership!
“Jaw-Dropping action, a great blend of investigation and horror, I’ve never quite read anything like it!”
Censured Crown sorcerer Ambrose Drake is hired to investigate a bizarre emergence in a city halfway across the world from his native London. Drake soon learns that a being from one of the Seven Hungers beneath our world is attempting to cross over. Flanked by his ex-lover and betrayer, Agent Karen Winter and a young acolyte with a severe lack of magical ability, Drake must plunge once more into the depths to save humanity.
The Seven Hungers is a fast-paced fantasy thriller which blends sorcery, horror elements and the exploration of dark new worlds with intense emotional struggle.
Perfect for fans of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, Charles Stross’s Laundry Files, and the Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacka.
Making the Impossible Real
Morgan Quaid
I realized the other day, while struggling with a particularly recalcitrant passage of text in an upcoming book, that most of my writing tends to revolve around trying to make the impossible feel tangible to readers. I tend to write speculative fiction (sci-fi, horror, urban fantasy), so the mythic, intangible, and fantastical are kind of my stock in trade. That means I spend a lot of time trying to make the utterly bizarre sound commonplace.
Sorcerers harness the power of the ether to protect or attack, strange clockwork devices twitch and tickle the ineffable, giving rise to communication with demonic beings, darkling critters communicate with a series of airborne mists and strange hues; each of these is, on the face of it, thoroughly ridiculous, but completely viable within the world of the story.
Of course, in planning out a novel (or letting it spontaneously evolve) you need to work through the essential conflict, the primary movements of key characters, and the practicalities of who does what to whom. But, for me anyway, these components are simply the bones of the project. Struggling with descriptive phrases, wrestling with the right words and images to situate readers within the strange and often unsettling world of imagination; that’s the true joy of writing for me. Well, that and throwing in twists and turns that will leave readers wondering what on earth just happened!
It’s an odd thing, when you really think about it, to devote so much of your time to crafting a believable world which doesn’t actually exist. Like any craft or profession, you get better with experience and exposure to new stimulus and experiences that stretch your abilities. You use certain tools and rely on others who have gone before you to help enhance your skillset. But it doesn’t change the decidedly odd fact that, as a writer, I’m trying to take readers out of reality and place them in a fantasy world of my own design.
This is where being the first reader comes into play so vividly. You see, as readers, we’re not the first travelers to strange new worlds. The writer is the one who breaks new ground and forges the path ahead of us. So, I’m the first one to smell the acrid scent of clawing beings as they emerge from a puddle which just happens to intersect with another reality. I’m the first to hear the chattering of a thousand tiny voices, whispering their strange insults from inside the desecrated remnants of a dead god’s skull. I see the indescribable vistas, taste the tangy fruit, interact with characters who are both alien and familiar.
This is what excited me so much about my early years reading fantasy books as a kid, and it’s also what keeps me motivated as a writer. Being able to explore new worlds and, beyond that, engineer them from the ground up, is one of the greatest thrills imaginable. More than that, having people follow after me and explore those same worlds, fall in love with those same characters and stake their own claim in the conceptual landscape of the story is simply a joyful enterprise.
What amazes me about this process is the way that different readers interpret the worlds of my books in their own unique ways. Some will insist that a certain character doesn’t read true until the second book in the series. Others will say that the same character is so vividly portrayed and so believable that they feel they really know them. One reader might experience a guttural reaction to a particularly tense or monstrous scene, while a different ready simply smirks, seeing the whole episode as being more humorous than it is horrible.
All of that is to say that each reader invests the world of each book with their own experiences, biases, and desires. To me, that’s incredibly exciting, because it speaks to ownership. Each reader owns not only their reading experience, but also the world that they create in their imagination as the words on each page perform their magic.
I might not be the most adventurous sole in my real life (plane travel, hotels, foreign pollen, no thanks!), but as a writer I have the privilege of being an explorer of imagination, laying out a path and walking ahead, hoping that others will follow and perhaps even make their own paths.
- MQ, www.morganquaid.com
About Morgan Quaid:
Morgan Quaid is an Australian-based writer of speculative fiction, fantasy and horror, specializing in fast-paced page turners set against expansive fantasy backdrops. Quaid writes comics, graphic novels, short stories volumes and novels.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
2 winners will receive a finished copy of THE SEVEN HUNGERS, US Only.
2 winners will receive an eBook of THE SEVEN HUNGERS, International.
Ends September 6th, midnight EST.
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
| 8/1/2022 | Two Chicks on Books | Excerpt |
| 8/2/2022 | @jaimerockstarbooktours | IG Spotlight |
| 8/3/2022 | Beers Books Boos | Excerpt/IG Post |
| 8/4/2022 | @allyluvsbooksalatte | IG Spotlight |
| 8/5/2022 | BookHounds | Guest Post/IG Post |
Week Two:
| 8/8/2022 | #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog | Excerpt |
| 8/9/2022 | Writer of Wrongs | Excerpt |
| 8/10/2022 | A Dream Within A Dream | Excerpt |
| 8/11/2022 | Lisa-Queen of Random | Excerpt/IG Post |
| 8/12/2022 | @jael_and_jenessa_reads | Review/IG Post |
Week Three:
| 8/15/2022 | Epic Book Society | Review/IG Post |
| 8/16/2022 | Rajiv’s Reviews | Review/IG Post |
| 8/17/2022 | @jodieangell_author | Review/IG Post |
| 8/18/2022 | @enjoyingbooksagain | IG Review |
| 8/19/2022 | Lifestyle of Me | Review |
Week Four:
| 8/22/2022 | @jypsylynn | IG Review |
| 8/23/2022 | GryffindorBookishNerd | IG Review |
| 8/24/2022 | Wanderingwitchreads | TikTok Review/IG Post |
| 8/25/2022 | The Momma Spot | Review/IG Post |
| 8/26/2022 | Two Points of Interest | Review |
Week Five:
| 8/29/2022 | @jacleomik33 | IG Review |
| 8/30/2022 | History from a Woman’s Perspective | Review |
| 8/31/2022 | Locks, Hooks and Books | Review |
thanks for the contest
Congrats on your tour! Best wishes!
Speculative fiction, fantasy and horror are genres that are new to me.
Sounds like a good book.
What an exciting book! Interesting post on your writing. Thanks for sharing.
cool cover