Winner of The Sand Dragon!

Thanks everyone for entering The Sand Dragon giveaway.  There were 187 entries. Winner was chosen using random.org

 

#95 Winner: Teresa/Isi and Jas' mom

please email me - parajunkee at gmail.com within 48 hours with your address.

And in the results of our polling - it seems we are scared of each other. 
Evil Humans scare the pants off of us a lot more than demons, aliens, dragons and werewolves.  I'm not a psychotherapist but I'm going to say that it is probably because evil humans are real and we see it on the news everyday...whereas aliens and dragons, well they're still speculation on those. :)

Tune in on the 20th For the Start of

We will be giving away a copy of Assassin's Honor by Monica Burns

A sexy new adventure-packed romance with a paranormal twist-from the award-winning author.

Archeologist Emma Zale sees the past when she touches relics. It's how she uncovered evidence of an ancient order of assassins-the Sicari. When a sinfully dark stranger shows up on her Chicago doorstep demanding an artifact she doesn't have, he drags her into a world where telekinesis and empaths-someone who can sense the emotions of others- are the norm. Now someone wants her dead, and her only hope of survival is an assassin who's every bit as dangerous to her body as he is to her heart.  

Have you seen this cover?! Yum!

The Sand Dragon by Michael F. Stewart

HBIC review by Parajunkee.

The Sand Dragon by Micheal F. Stewart

You can win a copy of this novel! Click here.


PJV's QUICKIE POV: Slow to start but worth the wait, this creepy thrill ride had me glued.  Stewart has a unique writing style that was like trying a new foreign dish. It took me a few bits, but once I acclimated myself to the taste...I was hooked.  The author also showed a deep understanding of the subjects talked about, each character had their own personalities and thumb-prints. You might not like those characters, but each were well-formed and an three dimensional, instead of the usual supporting characters in novels, who are usually just their for placers.

 REVIEW: Center stage is the discovery of what is believed to be a fossil in a very odd little trailer town that is centered around the tar sands and the company that mines them for oil.

You get the feeling that fossils are found a lot in the region, given that they are tar sands and dinosaurs had a habit of falling into them and becoming, well fossils, so of course the managers want to speed up this fossil extraction. They go over local girl, Kim Axon's, paleontologist, head and bring in a creepy cryptozoologist, Dr. Sebastien Bythell.  Quickly Kim begins to suspect that Dr. Bythell is up to no good, and is rather odd, when the fossil gets extracted over night.  As more and more characters are introduced and come into play, you begin to realize that something is strange about this town and because it is a horror story - something serious creepy.

When really screwy events begin happening, murders, a mysterious illness and more odd appearances by Dr. Bythell this town is plunged into utter chaos and mass hysteria is reached.  Now enters the survivors and their desperate fight to save their lives. You don't want to miss their story.

Like I said before, Stewart has a unique writing style and character depiction I very much enjoyed.  His character creation was by far the best part of The Sand Dragon. Each character had their own flavor and world building that was exemplary. Their bleak lives were thrust at you with nothing hidden, open for you to relate to, sympathize, or hate. I almost believed that this was a non-fiction, the characters were so very poignant. Not only that, his story telling was gritty and in-your-face that will leave you shivering and begging for more, that is if you like a bit of adrenaline...

RECOMMENDATIONS: This is an adult novel.  I recommend this for horror fans, if you've read liked, Koontz, King, etc., you'll enjoy this one.

BWB: 3/4

The Sand Dragon by Michael F. Stewart/ HBIC Review

The Sand Dragon by Michael F. Stewart

Posted by Tina at Tinasbookreviews

Review Copy (Pdf)

Read Book Synopsis Here!!

Memorable Quote:

"Faith must be earned, I always respect an atheist who prefers proof over blind faith. A scientist’s role is to question.”     
Pg. 12


Review

Ohhhh- nothing says horror like a little mass hysteria, men laying eggs and a town full of crazies.

Starting The Sand Dragon was a bit rough for me, I thought the prologue was a bit choppy and immersing myself into the novel didn’t quit happen until around chapter eight. At that point, digging deeper with a messed up Patrick I became completely sucked in and thought Mr. Stewart found his rhythm with articulating the story. I found myself shaking in my socks…due to the fact I wasn’t wearing boots...

After the discovery of an old dinosaur skeleton, bizarre events begin taking place within the small gloomy town. Murder, sickness and hysteria soon collide in a town full of secrets and strange rituals. At the start of the weird happenings, the reader is left guessing is this a freaky reaction to the exposed skeleton perhaps giving off some weird toxin, is this really the work of some dark evil or is this just a town full of people who need a good 72 hour lock down with a Thorazine drip?

Out of the well thought cast of characters I wound up connecting to Kim’s story the most. Even though she was facing some of the same circumstances the rest of the characters go through, her inner struggle’s and strength for me as a reader helped me connect to the book emotionally and begin to care about the outcome and survival of the remaining characters.

My favorite aspect of Stewart’s novel was the “mass-hysteria” or just the whole townsfolk’s creepiness. When you can’t figure out if its hysteria or seriously freaky ritual stuff it makes for a crazy read, you never know which way the story will go. Surprisingly Stewart’s creatures (including vampires) were positively evil, none of this creature of the night I wanna be your boyfriend garbage going on… basically it was just plain ol’ good guys faces the bad guys. The mysterious plot had me guessing till the end, which was shiver-worthy awesome!

The Sand Dragon defiantly delivers a scary, weird, action packed story to make your hair stand up and second guess meaty burgers…….

Rating

The Sand Dragon is laced with violence, blood, gore, language, freighting elements, religious themes, sexuality and creatures of the night. Adult recommended.

BWB Score- 3/4- Horror
A Big thanks to Mr. Stewart for review copy!

HBIC Review of The Sand Dragon

Title: The Sand Dragon
Author: Michael F. Stewart
Page Count: 256 pages (pdf format)
Publisher: Double Dragon Publishing
Copy for review provided by the author in exchange for an honest review

50 words or less: Shake up one mysterious skeleton, a creepy town full of creepy people, skeletons in the closet, a horrible disease, and a fight for your life, and what do you get? AAHHHHHHH RUN THEY'RE AFTER ME!!!!

Holy guacamole, people. I read The Sand Dragon last night before bed, and I think I just managed to shut my eyes about five minutes ago. This story is Scary with a capital S- it takes a little while to get going but once it does, it takes off in a big way and is riveting up until the end.

This creepy, gruesome story starts broiling away right from page one- the setting is a bleak, isolated, frigid town where all of the residents would rather be somewhere else or are slowly working themselves into early graves. There's Sandy, who works for the oil company and is a reluctant pseuo-parent to Patrick, her adult, deranged nephew. There's Alice and Jamie, an engaged couple who keep meaning to leave town and get married and do something else but never manage; all that keeps them going are Alice's faith and Jamie's hope that someday Alice will decide she wants to have sex with him. There's animosity between groups of townspeople along racial lines; there's a tension over past allegations of abuse that simmers away and is ready to boil over. There are other townsfolk who are just as creepy, and since so many of the people in the area are transient, there's no real sense of community among these people at the beginning of the story.

Thrown into the mix is Kim Axon, a paleontologist who gets called in when the oil company accidentally digs up what appears to be a fossilized skeleton. Kim's efforts to process what appears to be the biggest find of her career are sabotaged at every turn, especially when another scientist is at the scene first. Kim puts two and two together and figures out that Sebastien Bythell, the other scientist, is up to no good and has a secret agenda. That conclusion turns out to be the understatement of the millennium, but we'll get to that in a minute.

After the skeleton is exposed and the area around it is more fully explored, a bunch of mysterious events that appear to be unrelated all happen pretty much at once- there's a killing spree at the local meatpacking plant, a bunch of townspeople fall sick with a mysterious illness, and Alice and Jamie go to visit their new neighbors, whose leader happens to be the mysterious Dr. Bythell. From there, literally, all hell breaks loose, as we find out that this mysterious disease that everyone is getting is way more dangerous than anyone anticipated, and that the strangers in town are out for far more than a good time.

The creatures in this book are horrific all on their own. This story is constantly evolving, and just when I thought I had things figured out, the plot took off in a direction that I fully acknowledge I never saw coming. Several familiar threads were woven together- the band of survivors trying to outlast a nightmarish ordeal where they get picked off, one by one; the creature feature with lots of roaring and screeching and bloodthirsty violence; the crime drama, where horrific events of the past are uncovered and their implications revealed at really, really inconvenient times. Each added a layer of nuance to the story that made the overall reading experience more skin-crawlingly intense.

What impressed me most, though, were the more subtle, but still horrific elements that were infused into the story. The bullying that Patrick was subjected to at the meatpacking plant made my skin crawl; the side plot regarding Kim and the diagnosis of skin cancer that she received was bleak, since she could survive the horrors of this ordeal only to die in six months from something else. I could go on and on and on listing all the different things that worked for me about this story, but I'll leave it up to you to read the book and enjoy the creepiness for yourself.

Overall Grade: A
Blog With Bite Rating: 4/4

The Sand Dragon - BWB Feature & Giveaway!

And so begins Blog with Bite's Macabre May Feature!

Visit tomorrow for a guest post with author Michael Stewart and a few other surprise horror authors who have a lot to say about this particular genre.

The Sand Dragon by Michael F. Stewart

Synopsis from Amazon.com
 

The discovery of an immense pterosaur skeleton lures paleontologist Kim Axon to the tar sands near her childhood home of Fort Mic. But Kim's not the only one drawn to the find's siren call, and the others are coming for a very different reason.

Fort Mic, where Kim's father was murdered long ago, is both blessed and cursed by the shadow population who gravitate to the area for cheap trailers while they mine the sands for oil. Townsfolk begin to fall sick. Fearing the spread of the strange disease, the new doctor quarantines the town.

Now alone, the broken community must rise above its past to battle outsiders who do not fear the return of an ancient evil, but worship it. 

 

About Michael: 

Michael F. Stewart spent his formative years as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley North, Ottawa, Canada to which he credits his interest in writing fiction. He holds a B.A. from Queen's University and a Masters in Business Administration from McMaster University.
Michael has authored four young adult graphic novels for a Texty Award winning series released through Oxford University Press Canada, 24 Bones a supernatural thriller, published by Drollerie Press, The Sand Dragon, published by Double Dragon, and another supernatural thriller, Color of the Crow, coming soon from Drollerie Press.

Michael tries very hard to keep life an adventure both on and off the page.

 Win 1 Copy of 'THE SAND DRAGON' by Michael F. Stewart - Just Fill Out the Form Below!
One winner will be chosen with the use of random.org. Winner will be notified by post, and has 48 hours to respond.

Rules & Regulations:

• Must be 18 or older
• Must be US or Canadian resident (Mailing address)
• Please no PO Boxes
• You must be a follower of Blog with Bite
• Contest Ends May 10th Midnight CST
  

Earn extra extra entries!
+1 Tweet this!
+1 You reviewed Hex Hall for the BWB
+1 Comment on this post

+5 Post about this on your blog
+2 Sidebar
+1 For each HBIC you follow

Fill out the form below.  Please do not leave your email in the comments section. Entries will not be counted unless you fill out the form. This is to protect you from spammers! Hint to keep track that you entered this contest - leave a comment!