Virtual Tourist 12/31/21

 Table of Contents

News/Musings	StoryOrigin Swap 1
Virtual Tourist – Call of the Sea	Cozy Up with a Mystery Giveaway

Greetings!

I hope you and yours had a Merry Christmas or at least a fun set of holidays. Ours was different than usual, as we celebrated at home and didn’t visit relatives. My daughter is a Petrie dish sponge so we figured better safe than sorry! Hubby had some back issues the day of (he thought it was a new kidney stone for a while), so we mellowed out all day watching season 1 of Kill Monkey (nothing says Christmas like assassins?) and the last three Harry Potter films.

Our tradition of stocking stuffers went well and we worked hard not to go into sugar comas. (Seemingly, as we get older, that’s a major no-no. Bah humbug!) 😁

 

News/Musings

Hubby’s kidney stone is GONE! 🎊 He has an appointment next week to check its composition (and therefore hopefully stay away from what makes them) and to be sure it’s all out. 😍 Yay!

In the never-ending quest to find something that will actually help with marketing and not make me go broke, I started digging into some of the other options available at StoryOrigin. I felt pretty stupid when I realized they have GIVEAWAY Promos and I’d totally missed it. So you will get news on a couple I joined for 2022 so you can get free stuff. Basically, unlike the other promo groups which were books in exchange for reviews, these will just add you to the author’s newsletter to get the book. I figure that’s a better and easier deal for readers overall. 🤞

Another thing StoryOrigin has recently set up is a Beta Copies option. So I’ve decided to experiment with that and have uploaded the first few chapters of The Secret Humankind there. This is supposed to allow people to see and comment on uploaded chapters. You can help shape the book! I like that any participants have to comment on a chapter before they can move on to the next. It even has star ratings you can select for each chapter. The stuff I have up there has already had a first pass with the Future Classics Writers Group so you’re not getting a totally raw story. This novel will be book 1 of the Discoveries of Julia Xero – an urban fantasy series.

If you’re interested in participating, or just want to take a look at what this is about—Click Here: https://storyoriginapp.com/bet…

Extra content today:

1) StoryOring Swap

2) It’s January—Cozy Up with a Mystery Book Giveaway!

Scroll on down to get all the deets. 😉

Coffee, Angels, and Murder

StoryOrigin Swap

You try solving a murder with a novice angel getting in your way!

Wren King has just had the worst date of her life. Her father is a gambler. Her life is directionless and lonely. Then a bossy angel appears to sort Wren’s life out. Fiona is an angel who won’t take no for an answer.

All is going well until the local coffee shop owner is murdered and Wren’s father is accused of the foul deed. Can Wren and her angel partner sort through the clues and the suspects (including a drag queen gangster, a cheating wife, and a son with a terrible secret) and discover the real murderer?

A cozy mystery with plenty of red herrings, twists, cats, and drag queens, perfect for fans of Joanne Fluke, Laura Childs, Richard Osman, and Steve Higgs!

 

Call of the Sea

Call of the Sea is an indie game by Raw Fury Games.

The game has great background music, easy-to-hard puzzles (walkthroughs are awesome!), great voice acting, and a captivating story. It’s a 6+ hour game, depending on your puzzle-solving skills and what achievements you try to get.

I loved 95% of it. Then we hit the throne room where Norah makes a HUGE mental leap (No hints on this whatsoever beforehand, so not sure how she reached this conclusion about Harry), and then a final decision is to be made by the player. I chose what I felt had to be the Choice. That circumstances really left Norah no other true action. You get to see more that way, though they then tacked a final scene I felt was heavy-handed to make you regret taking that route. (Again, after all that’s happened, and all the sacrifices made, I felt it was the ONLY choice IMHO. Not a happy choice, but the best one under the circumstances.) I looked online for a video of the second choice, which is short and doesn’t show the reunion—however short-lived and pain-filled that would have been—and throws away all that was done and those who died as if their sacrifices meant nothing. Others may see things differently than I, though. 😋

I uploaded all the pics I took in the game at once, so you can find those below and all the rest here.

Our protagonist—Norah. The game is from her POV. Wracked with a weird illness, she’s left home to chase after her husband, who went on a quest to find a cure for her.

​The Island where the majority of the storyline takes place. Beautiful watercolor images are used between the chapters and loading.

 

 

Norah wakes from a bizarre dream in her ship’s cabin hours before reaching the island.

Norah’s first close-up view of the island. The ship’s captain will row her to shore and the ship come back to get her in three days time.

 

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Objects found on the South Pacific island resemble Polynesian culture but others, like this one, resemble nothing she’s seen before.

 

​It’s easy to dismiss the rock face on the left, but looking at it closely shows a weird tendency of having six or more sides and look like individual columns.

 

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Huts for those who originally lived here can be seen on the right. Toward the top of the picture, you can see giant statues.

 

Contraption inside the well. Harry and the others in the research team were finally able to get inside, but not without casualties. Dum dum DUM!

 

 

It’s January – Cozy Up with a Mystery Giveaway!

​Click the banner to see all the books available!

​Have a great New Year!

Jumping ahead by a day, but so I don’t forget, let me wish you a wonderful Happy New Year for 2022!

 

Gloria

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