Writerly Wednesday Presents Flightliner

 Writerly Wednesday Welcomes Colleen Drippe and Karina Fabian.

This week’s post is a little bit different, two writers are sharing the spotlight.  Many of you who are published by Damnation Books or Eternal Press are familier with Karina Fabian but we haven’t heard much from Colleen.

 

I welcome both authors and am honored to get to know more about Colleen.  Settle in and enjoy the following presentation.

Frightliner: And Other Tales of the Undead

By Colleen Drippe and Karina Fabian

Tag
line:  Evil sits behind the wheel.

 

Blurb:

A truck-driving vampire terrorizes Interstate 10 in New Mexico and Texas. When he
targets trucker Jay Carlson, Jay finds himself unwillingly teaming up with an
illegal alien and a tough-talking custodian–both of whom claim to be vampire
hunters.  However, they are injured in
the fight, and Jay will have to conquer his disbelief and destroy the vampire
himself before it kills them all.

All Jay Carlson wants is to get his load delivered on-time, and the
mysterious murder on a lone stretch of I-10 is just a slow-down.  Things get freaky as a stranger suggests the
murderer is a truck driver—and Jay has seen the truck.  Thus starts a game of cat and mouse as the
mysterious truck stalks him on his route.
No one else seems to see his phantom pursuer except for two unlikely
allies:  a custodian claiming to be a
vampire hunter, and an illegal alien who trusts his faith to defeat the
monster.  When the truck-driving vampire
traps them in an abandoned church and his only defenders are injured in the
fight, Jay must swallow his own disbelief and destroy the vampire himself
before he kills them all.

 

Bios:

* Karina Fabian:  Karina Fabian writes fantasy and science
fiction, with the occasional foray into the world of horror.  Her first novel, Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, the 2010 INDIE Award for best
fantasy.   Her latest book, the comedic
horror, Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator,
was a top ten in the Preditor and Editor reader’s polls and winner of the
Global E-Book Award for best horror.
Learn more about her works at http://fabianspace.com.

* Colleen Drippe:  Colleen Drippe has been writing since age 6
and has had a lot of science fiction, a moderate amount of horror and fantasy,
and assorted nonfiction scattered throughout the small press and online.
She also writes for children and has had three children’s books published so
far (The Little Blue House, Christmas at
the Little Blue House, and Mystery at Miners’
Creek) and another one (Growing with
the Little Blue House) due out any day.  She has had one sf book
published (Godcountry) and another (Gelen!) coming out this year.  She
is the former editor of Hereditas (of
happy memory but dried up funding) and is currently working on another sf book
along with various other projects.

Excerpt:

Of
course that was why he had not come out to check on her, she thought with a surge
of relief. He probably thought it was an abandoned car. But now–she stepped
out onto the gravel, hearing for the first time how loud the crickets sang. She
smelled the strong scent of the cooling air. Too early for snow. Too warm,
still anyway, though she cursed herself for not thinking to put on jeans before
making her big exit. She peered at the cab, but nothing moved.

“Hello!”
she called, moving closer. She could not make out a logo on the truck. It was
dark, dark paint. She had an impression that the shape was–not wrong exactly,
but not usual. It was an older model, she decided. An old truck.

She
had reached the door.

“Anyone
there?” she called, hesitating to step up and look inside. What if something
had happened to the driver? What if he were dead? What if she opened the door
and a body spilled out onto the road?

But
that was silly. He had just pulled up. Probably he was rummaging around in his
berth for some tools.

But
what if he was dead? What if she took hold of the door and–and what if
he was right there, watching her?

She
had almost decided to go back to her own car. But the thought of the semi
parked behind her, silently cutting its chunk from the sky, was in some strange
way even more frightening than opening the door. She reached up for the handle
and pulled herself up level with the window.

The
handle turned in her hand.

It
was then she knew she had done the wrong thing. If only someone else had
come–she prayed for someone else. A cop. Even a car full of good old boys. Anyone.

The
crickets fairly screamed their shrill and mindless song, the scent of the
Russian knapweed was overpowering. But it wasn’t strong enough to hide another
smell, a dark earthy smell. A smell of death mellowed by long usage.

The
door opened.

Reba
froze, clutching the handle, balancing there with the driver’s seat in front of
her. She tried to speak, to call, but nothing would come out. She hung there,
thinking of death, while the night passed and the stars moved and the moon
looked in over her shoulder. Finally, she climbed into the truck.

“Daniel,”
she whimpered. She was ready to forgive the new pickup, but it was too late.
Something moved in the back and she turned in the driver’s seat and saw a pale
face, caught in the moonlight, eyes gleaming. She had an impression of lank
hair, grizzled beard. And then two hands reached up to take her shoulders and
she saw the mouth open.

 

Video trailer link

<iframe width=”560″ height=”345″ src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/pEi6y0IuOlI frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Amazon link

Website

Tour Schedule:

01-Oct		http://inkspotter.com		about collaboration
01-Oct		http://susannedrazic.blogspot.com/		info
03-Oct		www.fabianspace.com		info
05-Oct		http://sallyfranklinchristie.com/wp/		Colleen Drippe’ interview
10-Oct		www.fabianspace.com		inspiration and song
11-Oct		http://chergreen.blogspot.com/		back to basics
14-Oct		http://rosalieskinner.blogspot.com/		information
15-Oct		www.fabianspace.com		reviews
16-Oct		www.snoringscholar.com		review
17-Oct		http://jaletaclegg.blogspot.com		Interview for FRIGHTLINER & Neeta Lyffe
29-Oct		http://timothycward.com/		podcast

 

 

Colleen’s Bio:  As a lifelong fan of sf and fantasy, it was
inevitable that I would write mostly in those genres.  I also have a life
— husband, grown children, grandchildren and cats.  And a garden.
Yesterday we threw a large family birthday party for one of the children.
We all dressed up like pirates and had beer and birthday cake and waved swords
around.

Current writing projects include editing the sequel to a novel coming out this
winter and a fantasy project with Karina.  I’ve got a few children’s books
published and may do another of those when I get time.  I also read a lot
— and I mean a LOT — of all sorts of stuff, usually several books at a
time.

No working website at the moment.  I’m not good at computers and just
don’t have time.

Interview with Colleen

1. In three days, all electricity is going to be shut off
for a very long time. What items are you going to gather in preparation for
this event?

1.  I already have the stuff for when the power goes off.  It
does.  If it was going to be for a really long time, then I would also
want to get a pedal powered word processor.  My handwriting is awful.

 

2. Where did the idea for the work
you are promoting arise?

2.  The truckdriver story came first, if I remember rightly, from the
demented brain of my friend Karina Fabian.  But it was a natural for me
since my husband was a truckdriver and because I have spent a lot of my life in
the south.  Writing those scenes was pretty easy.  And then vampires
are always fun —

 

3. What do you like to read?

3.  I have my favorite authors, some changing, some permanent.  Some
whose work I read and reread are:  Jane Austen (all time favorite), Gene
Wolfe, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Leguin, Octavia Butler, Sigrid Undset, Connie
Willis — the list goes on and on.  Currently I’m rereading Peter Straub’s
MYSTERY and the Ratisbonne biography of St. Bernard.  I read a lot of
biographies and plenty of the good old classics.  And brainless stuff too,
come to think of it.  I’m a real fan of Nancy Drew —

 

4. Tell us about the most exciting
place you have ever visited?

4.  The most exciting place I’ve ever visited?  Hmm.  Not quite
visiting, exactly, but the most exciting place I’ve been was somewhere above
the north Atlantic where I could look down and see the Greenland icecap and
basalt cliffs and all.  We were flying to France and that was cool as
well, but golly — to fly over Labrador and see the trees like little marks
between the hills and then Greenland — wow!  It really felt like we were
on a planet.

5. What is the most mundane, day
to day, thing you can share about yourself?

5.  I’m pretty mundane generally.  Would like me
to tell you about my cats?  They were all castaways and they all made it
here and just had to be adopted and are always taking over chairs or sleeping
on the table.  Or maybe you would want to know that I like pizza for
breakfast when I can get it — and tea with almond milk?  I dunno —

 

6. What scares you the most?

6.  What scares me?  Not getting all the stuff done I want to and
maybe finding out down the road that I’ve hurt someone or messed something up
and can’t fix it.  I’m also not terribly fond of being chased by mummies,
but that mostly doesn’t happen.

 

7. Tell us anything but keep it G
rated.

7.  Ooh.  Tell you anything?  Well why don’t y’all read my books
and stories?  That’s what writers do — tell you stuff.  Okay, here’s
something — my husband and I go for a couple miles’ walk every morning as
close to or before dawn as we can.  We live near a river and there is a
dirt road with nothing on it usually but a snake or maybe a deer.  We say
the Rosary and look around and generally admire whatever there is to
admire.  This year it’s corn fields on both sides and then cottonwoods.
Sometimes I get story ideas when the road takes a detour to strange places and
I think about what if we had a double star or maybe six moons in the sky, or
maybe we’ll see footprints of creatures not from around here.  Or what if
something came down the river, turning and turning about in the current — a
drowned dragon maybe, or a boat from faerie?

The world is a mighty interesting place and the line between the mundane and
the fantastic is pretty thin sometimes, like a borderland.  Dawn is a good
time to find it.

As usual the formatting is wonkey, please forgive me.  Thank you Colleen and Karina.  Buy a copy of Flightliner, today.

 

Next week’s guest will be Susan Fleet.