Book Spotlight “Beyond The Mask”

There’s so much more to each hero beyond the mask…

Fighting crime is not always a walk in the park.

The power to protect citizens comes at a price… your identity. 

How do you live an ordinary life when you can do such extraordinary things?

All proceeds from the print and digital sales of this book will be donated to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, an organization that is a superhero to the many children diagnosed with childhood cancers. ALS’s mission is to change the lives of children with cancer through funding impactful research, raising awareness, supporting families, and empowering everyone to help cure childhood cancer.

Buy Your Copy Now! E-Book

At These eBook Retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play

From The Publisher (Fiction-Atlas Press)

Hello! Every year Fiction-Atlas Press publishes a charity anthology to benefit charity. This year we’ve chosen Alex’s Lemonade Stand as the recipient of all proceeds from our superhero anthology titled, Beyond the Mask. 100% of the proceeds from the ebook and print editions of this book will be donated to ALS. We also wanted to put together this fundraiser for those who wanted to make a greater contribution to this amazing organization!  Whether it be $5 or $50 every single contribution goes to help fund childhood cancer research!  https://www.facebook.com/donate/1450428665088151/

Fiction Atlas Pres

About Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

US 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization We share the vision of our founder and creator, Alexandra “Alex” Scott – a cure for all children with cancer. Our Mission: To raise money and awareness of childhood cancer causes, primarily research into new treatments and cures. To encourage and empower others, especially children, to raise money for childhood cancer by holding their own Alex’s Lemonade Stands.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

Want to do more? Donate Now!

About The Authors

C.L. Cannon

C.L. Cannon is a publisher, publicist, editor, author, designer, and lots of other occupations with the -er sound at the end!

She is a woman of many talents who never gives up or stops improving. She enjoys writing about love and friendship. She loves it even more when she can add fantasy and science fiction aspects to those themes!

She’s a self-proclaimed Harry Potter freak (Slytherin Pride people), lover of anything Joss Whedon (Spuffy forever), Tolkien fiend (who enjoys second breakfast), an addict of classic literature (Social class struggles turn me on… literally  yah see what I did there?)

She spends her days trying to #bookstagram (and probably failing), helping other authors grow and succeed (I love my job), and loving on her two babes (velociraptors), Seth and Petey.

She’s also sort of a social media enthusiast! You can find her basically everywhere on the net (man I just aged myself).

Or, you can visit her website for more content!

Sarah Buhrman

Sarah is an AuthorGoddess, one who embraces the divine honor of creating worlds with words in the hope of inspiring others. Sarah has been writing for more than 25 years, starting with poetry before moving on to non-fiction and fiction. She lives in the Midwest with two monsters (the kids), an ogre (the hubby), and whatever drama-llama is coming to visit this week. Sarah is the author of the Runespells series: Too Wyrd, Fluffy Bunny, and The Chains That Bind. She has short stories in several anthologies, including Counterclockwise: A Time Travel Anthology, A Twist of Fate: A Collection of 11 Twisted Fairy Tales, and Whispers of Hope: A Lexis Infinitum Charity Anthology. Sarah also has a blog via Patreon and makes funny videos about writing on her vlog, Practically Writing.

Matthew Stevens

Matthew Stevens spent years dreaming about being a writer before he found time late at night to create characters and worlds and the stories for them to inhabit. His current projects find him dabbling in a wide range of genres from his drafted novel, a paranormal thriller, to numerous fantasy and sci-fi shorts, along with an occasional blog post examining his perspective on his own writing journey and any intriguing geeky topic that catches his attention. He can be found online at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthewstevensauthor

Twitter: @matt_the_writer

Blog: theedgeofeverything.wordpress.com

K.Matt

K.Matt is an author and illustrator. Her main body of work is the Hell Bent series of graphic novel/prose novella hybrids. She can be found in Upstate New York, in pretty much the middle of nowhere. She’s a fan of comics (and especially the movies based on them) and is an unrepentant workaholic. Her story “Travesty” is a culmination of her love of superhero media (and her love of making her characters suffer).

R.M. Demeester

R.M. Demeester lives in Saskatchewan, Canada. She is the mother of three young children, and owner of a rescue dog, a chocolate lab, Gainer. R.M. Demeester has been writing for as long as she could hold a pencil. She writes women’s fiction, new adult, and sweet romance primarily. She has two women’s fiction novels set to be released in 2019, along with several short stories.

Devorah Fox

“What if?” Those two words all too easily send Devorah Fox spinning into flights of fancy. Best-selling author of award-winning books including The Bewildering Adventures of King Bewilliam literary historical fantasy series and several thrillers, she also penned Fantasy/Science Fiction and Mystery Mini Short Reads and contributed short stories to popular fantasy anthologies. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast with rescued tabby cats … and a dragon named Inky. 

Visit the “Dee-Scoveries” blog at http://devorahfox.com and subscribe to receive the free email newsletter at http://eepurl.com/LrZGX.

Rebekah Dodson

Rebekah Dodson is a prolific word weaver of romance, fantasy, and science fiction novels. Her works include the series Postcards from Paris, The Surrogate, The Curse of Lanval series, several stand-alone novels, and her upcoming YA novel, Clock City. She has been writing her whole life, with her first published work of historical fiction with 4H Clubs of America at the age of 12, and poetry at the age of 16 with the National Poetry Society. With an extensive academic background including education, history, psychology, and English, she currently works as a college professor by day and a writer by night.

Bob James

Bob James is a native of the Chicago area, growing up in Oak Park, Ill. He currently lives in Corpus Christi, TX. He retired after 25 years in the education business – one year as a sign language interpreter followed by 24 years as a teacher in the fields of Special Education and Technology. All of his unpublished work can be accessed through his new site, Bob James – The Author. He writes daily devotionals, Science Fiction, and Thrillers, and is also working on a book about the journey that he and his wife went through during her battle with breast cancer. Bob has been married to his wife Lucy since 1979. They have two sons, one daughter, one granddaughter, and one grandson.

Melissa E. Beckwith

Melissa has been writing books since before she had learned to read, in the form of picture books, and planned to be an author at age 4.  She spent her youth penning short stories, poems and writing in her diary.  At nineteen she married her high school sweetheart and started her family.  She has spent her adult life raising her three children and teaching herself the business and craft of writing.  Born and raised in beautiful Southern California she and her husband now live along the Ohio River in Indiana to be near their beloved grandson, Bryar.

Melissa enjoys the outdoors and nature, especially camping.  She has an interest in the natural world, particularly the wonder of birds and bugs.  She can’t grow plants to save her life, though she likes to try. She loves art and paints a little herself.  She has a great interest in history and plans on trying her hand at historical fiction in the future.  Someday she hopes to travel the world starting with Scotland, Ireland, Africa, and Australia.

Melissa loves to listen to heavy metal, Irish rock, and Celtic music…well, anything Celtic really.  She loves dangly earrings, big rings, bright clothes, the color red, yellow roses, orange cats, and little dogs, like her fuzzy Shih Tzu, Abby.

Most days you will find her tapping away at her keyboard, researching her next great novel, or catch her with her nose stuck in an epic fantasy or historical fiction story.

C.M. Lander

M. Lander is an emerging voice in the fantasy and science fiction genre. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Hofstra University where she focused on her first love–poetry. She has been featured as Tumblr’s Poet of the Day, placed 2nd in the Bartleby Snopes’ Dialog-Only Contest, and has been published by Newsday and ProtestPoems.org, among other publications.

Ms. Lander is currently a student of law and is devoted to marrying her love of writing with philanthropic causes.

Keep an eye out for her next novel, The Witch of Ildra Lac, due out in March 2019.

Someone Else’s Words – Stan Lee on Reading

Remembering Stan Lee

On Monday 12th of November I was eating breakfast and checking news posts, and came across some news that came as a huge shock.

One of my personal heroes, Stan Lee, had died at the age of 95.

At first I couldn’t believe it, because I’d seen such reports before, and there were also sites posting that news of his death was a hoax. But then my wife checked on BBC News, a source I’ve never had reason to question, and my fear was realized.

My Introduction To A Legend

I never had the pleasure of meeting Stan Lee, except through the works that he produced and inspired.

I first came across the work of Stan Lee in the early eighties, and I was probably seven or eight years of age. Saturday mornings were the time for cartoons, and I was introduced to “Spiderman and his Amazing Friends” for the first time. It was probably also my first experience with the superhero genre, mutants, and metahumans.

I wasn’t aware until years later that some of those episodes were narrated by Stan Lee himself, but I was intrigued enough to find out more about these characters.

Discovering Some Hard Truths

One day, while picking up some sweets at my local news agent, I spotted a couple of issues of Amazing Spiderman. I picked them up and dived right into the middle of the “Secret Wars” storyline, with a passion.

This particular plot introduced me to a huge line-up of characters, and spawned so many changes for Spiderman and myself.

Over the years I expanded my comic collection, and even crossed into the works of DC and other studios. But it was the Marvel characters and stories that would teach me that even heroes are capable of errors, and subject to hard choices. Above anything else, they were human, no matter what powers (if any) they had, or the origins of those powers.

I learned that even when times were tough, there were ways through, if you could find them, and had the courage to make the hard choices. As an outsider at school, I also found friends within the pages of books and comics. It was almost always the characters in the comics that showed the most diversity, however, and I would keep returning to the stories of the X-Men, and Avengers because of it.

The Importance Of Diversity In Fiction

I grew up on the outskirts of London in a time when race riots were a semi-regular occurrence and intolerance were high. For years I wondered how such things could happen, and why people couldn’t just accept each other for who they were.

It was fiction that opened my eyes to the motivations of fear, greed, and hatred for those you don’t understand.

Did I approve of such things? Certainly not, but when I looked at the lineup of characters that Stan Lee and others at Marvel were producing, I saw something wonderful. There was such a range of social and economic origins for the characters, and even differences in the sources of their powers.

I might have taken many of my lessons in acceptance from being raised the way I was, but they were very definitely reinforced by reading the characters that were created, or inspired, by Stan Lee and others.

Yes those characters could be intolerant at times, even downright hateful, but so many of them changed over the years, and became more accepting and tolerant. One-time enemies became friends, teachers, and students of those they had battled. And children learned to accept those around them from such stories.

Where Does The Life And Death Of Stan Lee Leave Me?

As an individual, the work, and lessons of Stan Lee have helped make me a better person. They have helped make me a better, and wiser reader. But I have also discovered a passion for stories and character, with all their flaws and failures.

But it his work to expand literacy, education, and the arts that I find myself most grateful for. The Stan Lee Foundation, formed in 2010, supports programs that improve access to literacy resources, promote diversity, national literacy, culture, and the arts.

So it is with thanks and respect that I close this post with well wishes for all, hopes for a bright and tolerant future, and the words…

Excelsior! ‘Nuff Said!

Book Spotlight – “Rebirth” by Aaron Hodges

Book Blurb

For centuries our evolution has stagnated. Surrounded by technology, we ceased to adapt. Until now…

When eighteen year old Chris is accused of treason, his world is changed forever. Abducted in the night, he wakes in a facility hidden deep in the Californian mountains. There he is subjected to the depraved experiments of the Praegressus Project – a government led initiative to enhance the human race. Unfortunately for Chris, the chances of survival are slim. But only the lucky get to die.

Buy Your Copy Now! E-Book, Paperback

From the Author

Aaron Hodges was born in 1989 in the small town of Whakatane, New Zealand. He studied for five years at the University of Auckland, completing a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology and Geography, and a Masters of Environmental Engineering. After working for a couple of years in this field, he turned to the dark arts of fantasy writing, and published his first novel on Amazon in December 2015.

Where To Find Aaron Hodges

Facebook, E-mail, Website (Aaron Hodges), Newsletter (Aaron Hodges Newsletter)