Contest winner: Primer lugar

El siguiente microrelato fue elegido ganador del primer lugar en un concurso organizado por la universidad Ceutec/Unitec sede La Ceiba. 

ALIENTO DE DRAGÓN
Por José H. Bográn

Era el momento decisivo para Juan Pablo. Había practicado escupir fuego cual dragón para sorprender a los conductores mientras esperaban el cambio a verde del semáforo en su esquina favorita.
En su inocencia de adolescente, prefería pedir dinero en la calle antes que robar o entrar a una mara.
Posicionó el palo a la altura de su frente, la punta con la llama encendida ligeramente arriba. Aspiró por la nariz y expelió el gas. Al principio pareció que todo iba bien, el gas encendió al contacto con el fuego formándose una aparatosa llamarada.
Ahora Juan Pablo se mueve entre los vehículos sin siquiera limpiar vidrios, la cara parcialmente cubierta con una venda deja entrever los restos de carne quemada. Los gestos de los conductores son una mezcla entre asombro, repulsión y lástima…pero se mantiene ecuánime, estoicamente sin caer en la tentación del mal.

FIN

RELEASE DAY: DarkSoul, a Dark Days Novel

Honduras, along the rest of Central America, celebrates today the bicentennial of independence. It is no coincidence that my new novel, coauthored with Steven Savile, is released today. Not only am I Honduran, but a large part of the novel is set there. 

 

 

 

In DARKSOUL: Sophie Keane’s loyalty to the crime organization The Hidden is tested when they give her an impossible mission: supply children to be used as test subject for a new bio weapon.

 

It's available as an ebook, and part of the Kindle Unlimited at: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B6754MZ/

 

 

 

The September edition of The Big Thrill

 

For the September issue I got the interview two authors whom I met, even shared drinks with, during the last in person ThrillerFest back in 2019. 

After I started working on the assignment, I was pleasantly surprised to discover it would be a cover story. 

Excited to read a book before its release, thrilled to read the start of a new series, and wowed by the the actual story.

 

Here's the interview with Brian Andrews and Jeff Wilson:

https://www.thebigthrill.org/2021/08/between-the-lines-andrews-wilson/

New Book Release

Available for pre-order 

DARKSOUL, book #2 in the Dark Days Series 

Sophie Keane survives because she is useful to some very powerful people who live in the shadows, manipulating the wealth of the world.

She is their fixer. A problem solver. An assassin.

She is capable of any task they demand from her, no matter how distasteful, even if it comes at the cost of her own soul.

But even for a woman like her there is a line that cannot be crossed.

Her Hidden paymasters have negotiated billion dollar contracts for the Patient Zero Serum -codename ZERUM- a new generation of antidotes for pathogens behind projected worst-case pandemics on the W.H.O.'s Deadly Contagion Watch List. These are the diseases capable of wiping out vast populations within weeks and bringing nations to their knees. With Russia pitted in a bidding war against China where the winner gets the cure and the loser faces infection to prove the efficacy of the cure death on a biblical scale is inevitable. 

Sophie can rationalize all of that death. This is who she is and has been for a very long time. 

But then they demand new test subjects - innocent children - and that changes everything.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B6754MZ/

My review of RAZORBLADE TEARS

Fresh off the success of last year’s Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Cosby delivers another powerful thriller with Razorblade Tears. Ike Randolph is a Black man with a past, but he left prison over a decade ago, reformed his life, and started a successful business. Still, he hasn’t come to grips with his son Isiah’s homosexuality.

You can read the full review of RAZORBLADE TEARS BY S.A. Cosby at the Washington Independent Review of Books.