#Blitz #Giveaway: 'Engines of Liberty Series' by Graham Bradley
Graham Bradley is a truck driver by trade, but has been
writing since age eight, thanks to the encouragement of a childhood teacher,
Mrs. Peplowski.
Likewise, his grandmother made him promise to
"do something" with his knack for drawing, so he illustrates as well.
He is fluent in Spanish, and knows the proper
method of ironing a dress shirt. Despite spending less than 6 hours of his
entire life in Indianapolis, the Colts are his team.
He lives in Henderson, Nevada, with his wife and
sons.
Connect with the Author here:
REBEL HEART
In 1776, the American rebels were thwarted by British magic. The leaders were executed, but the surviving soldiers went into hiding and kept the revolution alive. By 1984 they have developed better weapons and machinery to even the odds. Now all these "technomancers" need is an army for their arsenal, and their newest recruit is 15 year-old Calvin Adler of Baltimore. The problem is, he’s got a pretty strong will, and might give the technomancers at bit of trouble in training...
SUICIDE RUNCalvin learns that the technomancers aren't all good guys like he'd thought, and soon runs afoul of the worst of them. Now, with a bomb in his chest and a lot of ground to cover, he has a little over a week to save his life, or else become another casualty in the revolution. Meanwhile, an old enemy comes back stronger than ever, with ambition to spare...
PATRIOT'S GAME
Calvin is on the brink of death. The army is scattered, the commodore is dead, and the British mages know about the technomancers' secret weapon. Just as all hope seems lost, Calvin and his friends find out the mages have a weakness, one that could end the war overnight and liberate the colonials.
But it will take a miracle to reach it...
Books that had a big impact on me over the
years. (This isn’t necessarily a “top” ten, but a list of ten books going all
the way back to my childhood.) In no particular order:
BRIAN’S WINTER by Gary Paulsen. Of all the Brian Robeson books that
Paulsen wrote (aka the Hatchet series)
this one swept me away the most. I read it half a dozen times in the span of a
few months back in 1998, and every time I read it afterward, it was less of a
book and more of an experience. Paulsen knows how to sweep you into a world of
wild solitude and show you the ways of survival without making it a tale of
conquest. Love it.
THE SUPERNATURALIST by Eoin Colfer. One of his least-known titles, but
probably his boldest. It’s only ten chapters long, but Colfer does more in
those ten chapters—in terms of injecting ideas, details, motives, settings,
characters, and scenarios—than a lot of writers can do in three books. This was
the first book I gifted to my wife back when we were dating. We’re married now
and have two kids. You do the math.
THE MAZE RUNNER by James Dashner. Watching James go from a
practically-unknown dude with two books in the Jimmy Fincher series with a
small publisher, to the megastar that he’s become now, really grounded my own
dreams and visions for me. I’ve read plenty of books that were hugely
successful and got turned into movies and so forth, but this was the first time
that I saw it happen in real-time. James explained his idea for the book at a writer’s
conference I attended in 2006, and three years later I was reading the ARC
courtesy of the publisher. While it’s not my favorite book, it’s definitely
important in my lexicon of encouraging publications, a testament that dreams
really can and do come true, to real people, people I’ve interacted with and
watched over the years. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that.
THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW by Washington Irving. Imagine that, a classic that’s actually
worth reading centuries later! Irving’s style and prose capture so much in such
a short span, it’s hard not to get swept up in a book like this when you start
reading the first few lines. I read this one regularly and I love it more every
time. One day I will write a book that ties into it, but I’m almost scared to,
because I know it won’t really be on par with Irving’s craft. (That won’t stop
me, though.)
THE FALSE PRINCE by Jennifer Nielsen. If Larry Correia taught me to kick every
component of my story up to Level Ten on the Fantastic Awesome Magic Firepower
Scale, Jennifer Nielsen taught me that you can still punch people in the
stomach with a fantasy book using nothing but the characters and the story. Seriously,
for a “fantasy book” (set in a fictional kingdom), there is no magic, no
non-human races, no monsters, none of that, and yet it blows most of its
competition sky-high. I was floored by the roster of intriguing, ruthless,
amusing characters, led by an incurable smart-mouth named Sage, who proves over
and over again that you have no idea what he’s going to do next. This book is a
true testament to wit.
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