The right hand of the dominant mob family, Raine Morgan is tasked with hunting down two miscreants messing with the bottom line. He finds them on the docks, but, in the confusion of the fight, accidentally kills their victim and lets them escape. Horrified at what he's done, Raine seeks redemption as well as revenge. 
Description:
Published: July 21st, 2015
A mobster learns he's becoming a god, only to discover they die too.
The right hand of the dominant mob family, Raine Morgan is tasked with hunting down two miscreants messing with the bottom line. He finds them on the docks, but, in the confusion of the fight, accidentally kills their victim and lets them escape. Horrified at what he's done, Raine seeks redemption as well as revenge.
Things spiral out of control when a greedy middleman overthrows Raine's mob organization. It's only with the help of a friend inside the crumbling mob as well as a streetwise artist that Raine remains undetected as he searches for the men who started this all. Raine doesn’t realize, however, he has caught the attention of a disparate conclave of gods in the process.
As the pantheon returns to the city they'd abandoned, old conflicts re-emerge, causing divine civil war. Both sides try to pull Raine to their side, expecting to find a naive god for them to manipulate. Instead, they find a man stripped of everything, intent on playing both sides as they learn an awful reality - even gods can die.
GUEST POST
How Do You Keep Your Writing Different
When it comes down to it, I have some particular hang ups in writing that most writers do. So, I think that it’s mostly that I avoid these as best I can and try to rewrite my scenes so that they don’t become a problem. Now, obviously, not everybody has an issue with these practices, but that’s the beauty of fiction: there’s something out there for everyone.
First of all, I hate question scenes. These are usually scenes between two characters that are used to further the plot through conversation rather than info-dumping all this back story. I’ve also heard these referred to as “As you know, Bob . . .” scenes. The issue that usually crops up is that one character has all the information and the other is there to parrot back the last few words of the informed character’s last sentence, all as an excuse to give the in-the-know character a chance to continue to speak. So what ends up happening is one character says ton of stuff and the other just goes, “Really?” or “Who?” What I try to do is cut out the question-answer sequences and just give the character less interruptions. Also, I tend to restructure the conversation so that it actually affects the uninformed character and gives them a reason to pay attention.
As an extension of this, I also avoid internal monologue. A lot of the time, it is used to show insecurities or have the character think about the person they’ve met, but not really say anything interesting. I’ve seen stories where two people are supposed to be talking, but one is really monologuing and the other is thinking responses, but the two characters continue as if the thinking character had actually responded. Instead, I make sure the dialogue is pertinent and reveals how the characters feel about each other, rather than resorting to, essentially, text-bubbles to tell the story.
The last thing that makes my writing stand out is that I firmly believe that the characters should be steeped in their world. It doesn’t make sense for the characters to be thinking about or explaining everything to the reader, especially if they have lived in the area all their lives. Now, there are obvious character archetypes you can use to explain a new place to someone, though those are done to death. This can lead to trouble when there are systems in place that none of the characters that are interacting with them know exactly how they work. For example, in Of Gods and Madness: The Faithful, the gods find they can die. None of them know how, but one person manages to take advantage of the weakness (quite by accident) and now all the characters are trying to figure out how. The trouble comes with showing it to the audience, rather than just explaining something that no one in the story would know. In the end, it makes the writing that much more interesting and diverse.
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About the author:
Justin D. Herd is a Fantasy Noir author who has been writing novels for ten years. He absolutely loves dark, twisted stories that take readers into unexpected places. Horror movies are his passion and he often takes stories to task for not logically thinking out their concepts. His home has been invaded by two eccentric children as well as a cat which is obsessed with all things digital.
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9 comments:
The mobster aspect Love me some bad boys!
I like that it's about mobs
The caption catches the attention and it looks like a great read.
I'm intrigued by the mystery of this mobster
I love reading about the "mob" Maybe it's because I grew up knowing I had a male relative, that I was told was in the mob, in one of the Chicago suburbs. Definitely put this on my list to read :)
I like the surrealness of it.
I like the cover and description of the book. It sounds like a good mob story with some mythology mixed in.
A mobster becoming a God is what intrigues me the most.
I like the mob aspect.
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