Savage Winds by R.J. Merle - Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops in the tour.



Author R.J. Merle’s Fascination with Technology

In the Children of the Elements Series due to Top Secret technological advances, a cluster of children within the East Tennessee Mountains develop psychic powers.

Imagine a world a world without cell phones, one in which typing speed out raced existing computer software, and there were a few channels on television, and no home internet access…

All of those tech features have manifested in the last few decades.

To think we’ve advanced so far that in a waiting room people communicate via texts with people hundreds, even thousands, of miles away…

Thus, how could one not be fascinated with the advances of technology?

Taking this fascination with technology and weaving it into a Science Fiction Adventure and depicting potential negative consequences of the use of such supposed technological advances turned out to be a fun and rewarding experience.

Children of the Elements, A Secret City Science Fiction Adventure Series features such fictional—or are they?—advances.

Five full novels, one huge story.

When nature refuses to be controlled, can mankind endure? Brainwaves altered by a covert government project based out of the Secret City of Oak Ridge, the Children of the Elements are brought together and tested as weapons of mass destruction. Their struggle to free themselves and survive in the hostile East Tennessee Mountains creates massive chaos and threatens to bring about an apocalypse.

Savage Winds, the first book in the series, shares the story of a little girl able to direct the wind with her wind play, and features the technique of presenting extraordinary features in a normal, every-day world. The children live in the East Tennessee Mountains and their psychic gifts are a part of their daily lives. Also, techno-geek Stedford Thackett, an eighteen-year-old whose story spans all five books, with his awkwardness and clumsiness tends to ground the story more deeply in reality.

Even in fiction where the worlds are fantastical, there tends to be normal aspects of the characters that are endearing and relatable to the reader, so that the fantasy characteristics of the story tend to be accepted as real and plausible.

Basically, blending the implausible, as seamlessly as possible, within the plausible assists in presenting more believable story aspects and presents the story happenings as plausible when crafting Fantasy fiction.

Savage Winds (Children of the Elements, A Secret City Science Fiction Adventure Series, Book 1)

A dangerous conspiracy unfolds...

In Author R.J. Merle’s whirlwind start of the Children of the Elements series, a clumsy teenage techno-geek struggles to protect kidnapped children from a covert government organization responsible for creating their abilities to control the five elements. A mighty wind…

Eighteen-year-old Stedford Thackett’s conspiracy theorist brother ensnares him in a real life children-as-weapons plot, while a determined scientist grooms happy-go-lucky five-year-old Darcie Lynn Carpenter to use the wind as a deadly weapon.

Out of control...

Despite the firm hand of Scientist Nora Hicks, Stedford struggles to rescue the kids and escape, even as Darcie Lynn fights to gain control of the surging power of the savage winds.

A Word-o-Gram for the series would include descriptions to include Psychic Powers, Telekinesis, Apocalypse, Electro-Magnetic Pulse, Zombies, and Mutants.

Enjoy an excerpt:

Dead men don’t tell tales, yet the late project head’s records held revelations kept from Scientist Nora Hicks for far too long.

In an office deep inside an East Tennessee mountain, Nora snapped a black leather-bound book closed.

Except for the carved stone ceiling, the office mimicked a non-descript working office in Anywhere, USA. Bulky military-issue metal and wood furniture stood as a harsh legacy to the covert Secret City project and to the starkness of her life.

Sitting at the borrowed hulk of a desk in a dank underground office, she asked, “Why was this kept from me?”

Across the desk in a guest chair, General Gardner, with thin hair sprouts sprayed into place, said, “Ever since Oak Ridge existed but did not even appear on a map, the city continues to hold and foster more than its share of secrets. As a trusted senior scientist and manager of the project, Dickenson claimed you and your son were the only ones involved.”

“How long have you known there were more of us?” Her grip on the desk’s metal edge forced her gloved hands to stop shaking. The usual underground chill pressed into the heat of her temples and an off-putting tartness oozed over her tongue.

Were Scientist Daniel Dickenson not already dead, she would kill him with her bare hands.

Slowly.

About the Author:

Author R.J. Merle stepped out of the realm of Top-Secret documents (shh, don’t tell…) to write sci-fi and paranormal fiction.

R.J. survived and escaped both the entertainment field and the government-contracting environment, craves the Walking Dead, and entertains what-if tidbits about “supposed” technological and biological advances.

No stranger to the goings on in the city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, R.J. Merle blends a down-home flavor with a former in-the-know—hypothetically, of course—technical background to craft the twists and intrigue of Secret City Adventures.

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/R.J.-Merle/e/B00P8E0X5A
BN Author Page: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/r.j.-merle
Website: http://www.rjmerle.com/COTE.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RJ-Merle-Author/1409155235976147
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10944948.R_J_Merle
Blog: http://rjmerle.blogspot.com/

NOTE: Savage Winds is on sale for $0.99!

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