SSP Proudly Reveals Cover Art and Release Information for Selah Janel's Olde School!

Seventh Star Press is proud to reveal the cover art by Jason C. Conley for Selah Janel's Olde School, Book One of the cross-genre series The Kingdom City Chronicles!

Olde School introduces you to Kingdom City, which has moved into the modern era. Run by a lord mayor and city council (though still under the influence of the High King of The Land), it proudly embraces a blend of progress and tradition. Trolls, ogres, and other Folk walk the streets with humans, but are more likely to be entrepreneurs than cause trouble. Princesses still want to be rescued, but they now frequent online dating services to encourage lords, royals, and politicians to win their favor. The old stories are around, but everyone knows they’re just fodder for the next movie franchise. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as magic. It's all old superstition and harmless tradition.

Illustration by Jason C. Conley for
Selah Janel's Olde School

Bookish, timid, and more likely to carry a laptop than a weapon, Paddlelump Stonemonger is quickly coming to wish he'd never put a toll bridge over Crescent Ravine. While his success has brought him lots of gold, it's also brought him unwanted attention from the Lord Mayor. Adding to his frustration, Padd’s oldest friends give him a hard time when his new maid seems inept at best and conniving at worst. When a shepherd warns Paddlelump of strange noises coming from Thadd Forest, he doesn't think much of it. Unfortunately for him, the history of his land goes back further than anyone can imagine. Before long he'll realize that he should have paid attention to the old tales and carried a club.

Darkness threatens to overwhelm not only Paddlelump, but the entire realm. With a little luck, a strange bird, a feisty waitress, and some sturdy friends, maybe, just maybe, Padd will survive to eat another meal at Trip Trap's diner. It's enough to make the troll want to crawl under his bridge, if he can manage to keep it out of the clutches of greedy politicians.

Illustration by Jason C. Conley for
Selah Janel's Olde School

Olde School will be released in eBook formats, including for the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBookstore tomorrow, with trade paperback to be available next week!

For further information on Selah Janel, Olde School, or the Kingdom City Chronicles, please visit her site at www.selahjanel.wordpress.com or Seventh Star Press at www.seventhstarpress.com

About Selah: Selah Janel has been blessed with a giant imagination and a love of story since she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. Learning to read and being encouraged by those around her only made things worse. Her work ranges from e-books to traditional print, and she prefers to write every genre at once rather than choose just one. The stories Holly and Ivy, The Other Man, and Mooner are available online through Mocha Memoirs Press. Her work has also been included in The MacGuffin, The Realm Beyond, Stories for Children Magazine, The Big Bad: an Anthology of Evil, Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery, The Grotesquerie, and the short story collection Lost in the Shadows, co-written with S.H. Roddey. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play mind games, and her princesses to have adventures and hold their own.

Catch up with her thoughts and projects at www.selahjanel.wordpress.com

The Star Chamber Podcast Announced! James R. Tuck to be First Guest!

The Star Chamber Show Goes Live November 27!

Next Wednesday, November 27th, at 9pm EST, the Star Chamber Show makes its debut.  The weekly podcast will feature an array of topics and segments primarily focusing on the world of creative writing, publishing, and authors.  It will also be covering the convention circuit, especially the new Imaginarium Convention set to take place in Louisville Kentucky next fall.

The show will be hosted by a team of five authors, S.H. Roddey, Michael West, Selah Janel, Stephen Zimmer, and Alexander S. Brown, in a format that will feature all sorts of guests, from authors to publishers, editors, screenwriters, and even musicians!  There will be plenty of opportunities for call-ins from the listening audience.  With The Star Chamber Show, expect the unexpected!

For the debut episode, the first featured guest is none other than James R. Tuck, author of the popular urban fantasy Deacon Chalk Novels, and editor of the double-volume Thunder on the Battlefield anthologies.  James will be stopping by to have an extended chat with the hosts about all of his latest happenings, next year's Imaginarium 2014, and who knows what else?

Also being featured is the show's first guest from the world of book blogging, Babs Hightower of Babs Book Bistro, who is also an author who writes Historical Romance under the name of Morgan Kincaid.

The Star Chamber Show is a project of Seventh Star Press, Imaginarium, and Tomorrow Comes Media.

To keep up with the show and guest announcements, be sure to "Like" The Star Chamber Show on Facebook and Follow The Star Chamber Show on Twitter, in addition to bookmarking the main page for the show.

Selah Janel Interview Posted

New Selah Janel Interview Posted!

Selah Janel's troll-infested, genre-shattering book Olde School is right around the corner, but you can get a chance to meet Selah and the wild worlds she inhabits in this brand new interview hosted by G.L. Giles!

http://gialee3.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/interview-with-selah-janel/

Full List of Authors for Both Thunder on the Battlefield Volumes!

In the build-up to Thursday's eBook release of Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword and Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery, edited by James R. Tuck, we wanted to share the full list of story titles and authors for the two volumes. The authors and titles are presented in the order in which they appear on the books:

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword

Featuring

G. Jerome Henson: “THE HORDE”

Jay Requard: “PAPER DEMONS”

D.T. Neal: “THE WOLF & THE CROW” 

John F. Allen: “FOREST OF SHADOWS” 

Marcella Burnard “EMISSARY” 

David J. West: “THE DOGS OF WAR”

Alexis A. Hunter: “THE RED HAND”

James R. Tuck “WHERE THE RED BLOSSOMS WEEP”

Loriane Parker: “THIEF OF SOULS”

W. E. Wertenberger: “THE GNAWED BONE” 

Stephen Zimmer “ALL THE LANDS, NOWHERE A HOME”

J.S. Veter “THE WITCH OF RYMAL PASS”

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery

Featuring

Jeffe Kennedy: “NEGOTIATION” 

Alex Hughes: “THE FOURTH RULE”  

Selah Janel: “THE RUINS OF ST. LOUIS”

Steve Grassie: “MARK OF THE WARRIOR”  

James R. Tuck: “ANGELS OF SCRAWL”  

M.B Weston: “THE CHERUBIAN, THE LINDWORM, AND THE PORTAL”  

Brady Allen: “GRINDING THE GEARS”  

S.H. Roddey “BLACK ICE”  

Steven S. Long: “THE TWO FIRES”  

D.A. Adams: “ACROSS THE WILDS” 

Mark Taverna “DARK GENESIS” 

Steven L. Shrewsbury “WHORE OF JERICHO”

Seventh Star Press Proudly Announces Selah Janel as Newest Member of Its Author Family

For Immediate Release
February 4, 2013

Seventh Star Press Proudly Announces Selah Janel as Newest Member of Its Author Family

Seventh Star Press is proud to announce the addition of Selah Janel to its author family with an exciting four book, cross-genre series called The Kingdom City Chronicles.  With its unique blend of humor, urban fantasy, horror, fantasy, and iconic figures from folk tales and legends, The Kingdom City Chronicles will appeal to a wide range of speculative fiction readers.

The first novel of The Kingdom City Chronicles, Olde School, is projected for a Fall 2013 release window.  Subsequent titles will follow at a pace of one per year.

In The Kingdom City Chronicles, readers can look forward to a lot of familiar fantasy creatures and ideas, although those latter two elements will be turned completely on their heads!  Kingdom City is a fantasy world caught between tradition and modernization.  All the characters are trapped between past history and progression.

Readers will encounter trolls and princesses, dwarves and magical creatures, but they will be seen in a whole new light. Some renowned fairy-tale and folk story characters will make appearances, but readers will see the real story behind the legends. If fantasy characters can be caught in their own version of urban fantasy, where their world is the “real” and “urban” world, then Kingdom City and the surrounding areas is where it happens!

"I’ve wanted to work with Seventh Star Press first, because they produce amazing series that feature new variations on the fantasy, horror, and sci-fi genres," Selah commented.  "Seventh Star Press genuinely loves the genres they publish. Then also because of the huge sense of community they have. Every Seventh Star author I’ve met always has great things to say about everyone else, and it’s wonderful to be part of a group that thinks like that."

Joshua H. Leet will be working with Selah as the editor for The Kingdom City Chronicles .  Interior illustrations and cover art from SSP's award-winning artists will be featured in all versions of Olde School and subsequent titles, from a special limited hardcover edition to the trade paperback and eBook editions.

A Midwest girl at heart and in residence, Selah Janel is fueled by a love of ideas, stories, and the potential of magic hiding in the mundane. She mostly writes fantasy and horror, but is known to stray into other genres if the idea beckons. She is the author of several short e-books with Mocha Memoirs Press and No Boundaries Press. Her first novel, the urban fantasy story In the Red, blends dark fantasy with fairy tale themes and rock n’ roll. Her work has also been included in The MacGuffin, The Realm Beyond, Stories for Children Magazine, and several upcoming anthologies.  She’s also worked as a performer, puppeteer, and in costume design and construction.

"Selah's got more energy than a high-end nuclear reactor running at full capacity," fellow SSP author Stephen Zimmer remarked.  "As a writer, she's got a wonderful range, in that she could thrive in any sub genre of speculative fiction.  Add to that an iron work ethic, generous nature towards authors and readers alike, and a rock star flair, and you've got a real literary force to be reckoned with!"

For further information on Selah Janel releases or Seventh Star Press, please visit www.seventhstarpress.com or the author's site at: www.selahjanel.wordpress.com





Contact: C.C. James
Public Relations, Seventh Star Press
ccjames (at) seventhstarpress.com

Seventh Star Press is a small press publisher of speculative fiction located in Lexington Kentucky

12 Day’s of Christmas: Holly and Ivy Blog Tour

It is with great pleasure that I bring you Selah Janel today, a really talented author who is in the midst of her 12 Days of Christmas Blog Tour (brought to you by our friends at Jitterbug PR!).  We have an excerpt, synopsis, and a bio of Selah for you to check out today.  We highly recommend you connect with Selah on her social media links and that you give her books a try!  Don't forget to enter the big giveaway too! 
-Stephen

About Holly and Ivy by Selah Janel

After losing her job and her boyfriend, Holly returns to her parents’ farm. Embarrassed and hopeless, she doesn’t expect to bump into a forgotten childhood friend that wasn’t supposed to exist. Ivy is not only a dryad, but she lives in the pine trees Holly’s family grows to sell at Christmas. As the old friends reconnect, Ivy not only shares her strong opinions, but gives Holly a charm that will change both their lives. As days melt into weeks and the seasons change, Holly’s life magically turns around. Christmas not only brings surprises, but a choice for the human woman. What’s more important: stability, success, and love, or keeping a promise to an old friend?

Book Excerpt

“What do I do with it?” I asked. I told myself I was just playing along, suspending reality to make Ivy feel better. Although if that was the case then perhaps I should have really examined the fact that Ivy was real and not me suspending reality to make myself feel better.

“You hold it now until it gets to know you. You keep it safe in your possession and it shall bring you ease and grace,” the tree sprite giggled.

“And that really works?” No matter how I tried I couldn’t hide my skepticism.

She turned up her pointed nose. “How else would I have survived so well with murderers on the loose? It’s worked for a good long while.” I raised an eyebrow as a sly grin spread just a little too far across her face to make the smile look human. “Do you remember when I snuck to school with that sapling you took for show and tell?”

The next smile didn’t hurt quite as much as I traced the delicate edge of the tiny plant with the pad of a finger. The petaled head shivered and softly brushed against my calluses.  “I thought everyone was going to have a heart attack when you burst out of the thing and started singing to everyone! Mrs. Robinson finally played it off as the whole class playing a trick on her. We had to go without milk time for a week.” I’d gotten in so much trouble with my parents for lying in school and saying that I had a magic plant. Given that I was adamant that I’d been telling the truth, it was a hell of an ordeal for a six-year-old.

“’Twas so much fun!” Ivy paused mid-pirouette. It was downright disgusting that she could hold the arabesque for so long and not even wobble or suffer a leg cramp. “Though I would not want to live in such cold halls all the time.” She paused and took a long breath, much longer than I or any other human could possibly inhale. Before my eyes her skin became greener, infused by the crisp clean air. “You need to be in the trees, Holly. Mortals refuse to understand that they must live where things grow. Now that you’re home, let’s play!” She leapt over my head and landed effortlessly beside her home tree, staring at me expectantly.

Maybe it was being back home or maybe it was just being back in the good fresh air, but her suggestion made me giddy. It suddenly sounded like the exact prescription I needed, the one thing I’d been missing through all those frustrating years. My fragile mind and heart demanded an escape. They couldn’t take any more disappointment, any more expectations or responsibility, and they especially couldn’t take any more reality. I nodded and tucked the strange clover deep in my pocket. The breeze had dried my tears and the heavenly scent of grass and pine put the sudden urge to run in my feet. Suddenly the heavy air and the blazing sun didn’t matter so much and my anxieties were willing to take a momentary backseat to the chance to goof off for an afternoon.  “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I hesitated, hand still at my pocket.

Ivy flashed a bold grin and stretched up on her toes; her fingers wiggled over her head, making her resemble an odd, scrawny plant. “With you here? Of course! Just remember to come look after my tree when the murderers come around the winter harvest time. You can even help me choose which tree will be my final home so you’ll know where I’ll be.” The words were no sooner out of her mouth when she tore off, dodging branches and bark as quick and swift as a deer. I groaned as I pulled myself to my feet and tumbled after her, muscles screaming at the sudden exercise. Still, I found myself laughing the entire time.

 

Author Bio

Selah Janel has been blessed with a giant imagination since she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. Her appreciation for a good story was enhanced by a love of reading, the many talented storytellers that surrounded her, and a healthy curiosity for everything. A talent for warping everything she learned didn’t hurt, either. She gravitates to writing fantasy and horror, but can be convinced to pursue any genre if the idea is good enough. Often her stories feature the unknown creeping into the “real” world and she loves to find the magical in the mundane.

 She has four e-books with No Boundaries Press, including the historical vampire story ‘Mooner’ and the contemporary short ‘The Other Man’. Her work has also been included in ‘The MacGuffin’, ‘The Realm Beyond’, ‘Stories for Children Magazine’, and the upcoming Wicked East Press anthology ‘Bedtime Stories for Girls’. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play mind games, and her princesses to hold their own.

Author Links

Blog – http://www.selahjanel.wordpress.com

Fandom Scene Column – http://www.fandomfestblog.com/blogs/selah-janel

Facebook Author Page – http://www.facebook.com/authorSJ

Facebook Book Page – http://www.facebook.com/intherednovel

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5622096.Selah_Janel

Amazon Author Page - http://www.amazon.com/Selah-Janel/e/B0074DKC9K/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1346815995&sr=1-2-ent

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/SelahJanel

a Rafflecopter giveaway

In the Red Blog Blog Tour: Guest Post by Selah Janel

Today we are very excited to have Selah Janel joining us during her blog tour for In the Red. Big thanks to Jitterbug PR for the hard work on the tour and for bringing us such a cool author! Selah's guest post on character inspiration is below, and definitely pick up a copy of In the Red!

About Selah Janel

Selah Janel has been blessed with a giant imagination since she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. Her appreciation for a good story was enhanced by a love of reading, the many talented storytellers that surrounded her, and a healthy curiosity for everything. A talent for warping everything she learned didn’t hurt, either. She gravitates to writing fantasy and horror, but can be convinced to pursue any genre if the idea is good enough. Often her stories feature the unknown creeping into the “real” world and she loves to find the magical in the mundane.

 She has four e-books with No Boundaries Press, including the historical vampire story ‘Mooner’ and the contemporary short ‘The Other Man’. Her work has also been included in ‘The MacGuffin’, ‘The Realm Beyond’, ‘Stories for Children Magazine’, and the upcoming Wicked East Press anthology ‘Bedtime Stories for Girls’. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play mind games, and her princesses to hold their own.

About In the Red

Live like a rock star. Dance ‘til you die. Are you in?

What kind of a rock star lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere and plays at weddings and funerals? That’s what Jeremiah Kensington is thinking after an unsuccessful bar gig one night. Then Jack Scratch comes into his life, ready to represent him and launch him to stardom. Jack can give him everything: a new band, a new name, a new life, a new look, and new boots…although they aren’t exactly new. They once belonged to The One, a rocker so legendary and so mysterious that it’s urban legend that he used black magic to gain success. But what does Jeremiah care about urban legend? And it’s probably just coincidence that the shoes make him dance better than anyone, even if it doesn’t always feel like he’s controlling his movements. It’s no big deal that he plunges into a world of excess and decadence as soon as he puts the shoes on his feet, right?

But what happens when they refuse to come off?

Character Inspiration

by Selah Janel

When I write, I may have somewhat of an idea as to where I’m going with the plot, but until I click with the characters, it doesn’t matter. Thankfully, with In the Red, there were a lot of strong characters for me to get attached to and learn about. Some of them had to grow on me, some were a lot of fun to write, and some I didn’t even see coming when I first planned to extend a short story into the book.

I knew from the start that there were going to be rock stars and everything that went with them. My main character, Jeremiah Kensington, is stuck as a small-town musician and longs to be a rock star. More than that, though, he wants to be noticed, he wants fame, he wants the control that he doesn’t have in his daily life. I could definitely identify with his anxieties and his small-town upbringing, but his selfishness astounded me to the point that I nearly ended his story before it really began. I had to put my expectations aside and realize that his reasons were very human, that that could be me caught in his problems if I let myself get bogged down by what I hadn’t done. So I took a deep breath and plunged into the world of rock n’ roll as Jeremiah took the plunge and allowed himself to be transformed into J.K. Asmodeus. As J.K. he’s in the moment and lives for his chance to strut on stage. What comes out of his mouth is sometimes offensive, other times outrageous, but that’s what it takes to be number one, right? If Jeremiah is selfish in a human, childlike way, I was a little shocked at J.K.’s outright cruelty at times. And yet, I could see why he appeals to his fans. He has the image that everyone wants to believe in. He’s the bad boy that others love to hate. And he definitely makes the most of both.

Along the way I met up with characters I never expected. His band mates were originally just referred to, and suddenly blazed to center stage. Baal, Mammon, Leviathan, and Belphegor became sources of entertainment, my answer to some of the over-the-top rock urban legends out there. They have secrets and issues of their own, and in some ways they’ve compromised themselves far more than their lead singer. These are the guys who are all too willing to teach Jeremiah how to be a proper down-and-dirty rocker, the guys who are all too eager to try everything and break hearts because they can. Admittedly I started fleshing them out beyond the stage sequences because I was curious if I could even write characters like this without it getting too out of control. I was curious if I could balance out their behavior with their real motivations and true natures. It was a fun, if exhausting, game and I’m glad I took a chance and listened to their own seedy brand of advice.

And of course a rocker has to have a manager. Jack Scratch was originally supposed to be the equivalent of the stranger/soldier in ‘The Red Shoes’ fairy tale, but he quickly outgrew the role and took on a life of his own. I knew I wanted a sort of devilish figure, but I didn’t necessarily want to make it the same ol’ same ol’. Thankfully, rock urban legend is chock full of evil imagery, so I was able to combine traits of a shady manager type figure, ultimate evil, and a strange being that might be waiting for the right person at the crossroads of folklore. He’s outrageous, though almost always in control. I like Jack and I didn’t expect to. There’s a restrained hunger in him that I admire, and he really believes that he has all the answers. He plays a mighty good game and is someone that could be found likeable and unnerving. For my first crack at a devil character, I find myself quite pleased with Mr. Jack Scratch.

The red boots, themselves, started to become more of a character and not just a plot device. The moment I decided to give them their own place in my rock folklore, the moment I crafted an urban legend around them, the story broke wide open. They’re the key to the whole thing. Whether you want to take them as a metaphor or a cursed object, I don’t mind. They’re temptation incarnate, that one thing that could give you everything you’d ever want. Everyone in the story that’s directly around Jeremiah (or J.K. as he likes to be called), is influenced by the boots. They’re hard to ignore, and even harder to deal with. They’ve had many owners in the past, including a mysterious rocker called The One, a musician so good that his music has been hidden for fear that it’s too powerful. The One was based around a few actual rock stories I’ve heard, though the more I thought about him, the more I put my own spin on things. There are shades of Hendrix, of Vince Taylor, of Ziggy Stardust, of Robert Johnson that find their way into the vague legend of The One. At the end of the day, nothing is concrete about him, and I think he’d want it that way. Or would he?

Along with these characters are others that fit into the rock n’ roll landscape: hangers-on, groupies, fans, an obsessive wife, fans, the band’s resident “pharmacist”…they all have their role to play in influencing Jeremiah’s dreams and paranoia. And yet, as I went along, I realized that I needed other characters to balance things out, especially as the story moved to the second half of the book. It wasn’t enough to have a bunch of people willing to drag Jeremiah down to his lowest point. Surely there were people who could lend him a helping hand, too. Call it my desire to see the good in people, call it the want to give everyone, even my characters, a fair shot, but there it was. And that was how I discovered that Jeremiah had a sister with her own iron will, her own past, and her own quiet secrets. She’s probably the character I like the most in terms of her personality (like everyone else, our life experiences are drastically different). In fact, I was utterly shocked by figuring out some of her backstory- she was the character that showed up out of nowhere and surprised me by telling me more and more that I was unprepared to hear. Daniella would become the one person that would be willing to see Jeremiah through his journey when no one else would. And believe me, by that he needs all the help he can get.

A lot of these characters came about because of necessity, or maybe they were always lurking there in the story, waiting to be discovered. At the end of the day, though, Jeremiah/J.K. Asmodeus is the driving force. I’ve never had a character perplex me so much and yet bring out my own feelings of author empathy. I never expected to want a character that I started out disliking to succeed. Maybe it’s because he’s humbled so badly at one point, maybe because he has his own special charisma as a rock star, or maybe I’m finally able to see that he’s got his own potential for good and bad, just like anyone else.

Whatever the case, I hope you read In the Red and grow as fond of this group as I am. I hope you cheer for Sons of Pandemonium, wonder about Jack, smile with Daniella, and pull for Jeremiah. As for the boots…I’ll let you make up your own mind about them.

Connect with Selah at the following links:

Blog – http://www.selahjanel.wordpress.com

Fandom Scene Column – http://www.fandomfestblog.com/blogs/selah-janel

Facebook Author Page – http://www.facebook.com/authorSJ

Facebook Book Page – http://www.facebook.com/intherednovel

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5622096.Selah_Janel

Amazon Author Page - http://www.amazon.com/Selah-Janel/e/B0074DKC9K/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1346815995&sr=1-2-ent

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/SelahJanel