Thursday, April 2, 2015

Tears for a World Blog Tour! (+$30 Amazon GC Giveaway!)

Title: Tears for a World
Author: Alexander Fernandez
Series: The Lonely World #1
Pages: 329
Date Published: November 7th 2014
Publisher: N/A
Format: Kindle
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours
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Synopsis:
The holy artifact bonded around Marisylia Malludar's neck gives her incredible physical and magical powers—at a price. The bloody piece of vein is consuming Marisylia's body inch by inch, her skeletal hands and feet only the beginning of a slow death. A cruel sorceress and her assassins are on the hunt for Marisylia to steal the artifact. Religious fanatics, volatile and unstable in their blind faith, also seek her to exploit the vein’s most dangerous purpose—liberating the erratic Creator of the World, Lysielle, from her 1,000 year incarceration. With the vein the key to Lysielle’s freedom, Marisylia must use her abilities to survive long enough to find Lysielle first. Then her most grim challenge awaits—deciding if the Creator has truly repented for attempting to destroy all life. To achieve global peace, Marisylia must discover faith in the unpredictable Lysielle or rely on her own instincts to set the world’s fate.
~Guest Post!~
Hello fellow readers! Thank you very much to Unabridged Andra for hosting and to Goddess Fish Promotions. There are many challenges when writing, but for me, finding time has been the worst. My fantasy novel Tears for a World took 12 years to complete. Being active duty military made it difficult to find time to put pen on paper (or fingers on keyboard). Constant deployments and unforgiving work schedules contributed to the challenge of creating the story.

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I remember getting off of 12-hour night shifts and trying to stay awake just to scribble down a few paragraphs with pencil and paper before crashing. Over the years whether I was at home, deployed, or in-between base transfers, my writing stints consisted of quick jots on loose, random notebook pages inside a folder. Later (sometimes several months later), I would finally get back to those pages and have to sift through them and organize the scenes while trying to remember the moment and emotion I had been trying to capture.

As years passed I seriously thought I would never complete Tears for a World. Real life was too complicated and busy. But when I did have time to write, the thrill and passion of creating characters and letting my imagination fly would reignite the motivation and desire to see this thing through. I owed it to my characters. Marisylia Malludar’s story had to be told. I couldn’t just let her sit there, sandwiched between loose notebook pages and shoved inside a folder.

I know many other writers feel the same way. As readers, we hope our favorite authors find that precious time and motivation to keep going. Whether you read, write, or both, we all understand the special art of creating stories and how it affects our lives.
~Try an Excerpt!~
Marisylia blinked and rubbed milk out of her eyes, but the mob wasn’t finished. A stiff hand shoved her from behind and she stumbled against the table. Unfinished slices of pie and rolls of bread pelted her.

With nowhere to hide, she dove into the horde and tried to shove her way out. Most of the people only yelled insults as they let her pass. Others bumped her roughly with their shoulders, tried to trip her, or pushed her around so she bounced back and forth between pairs of hands.

One woman caught Marisylia and carefully steadied her. She peered into the woman’s eyes, one friendly person amid the riled swarm. The lady smiled softly, then suddenly spit into Marisylia’s face.

When the saliva splattered her cheek, Marisylia stopped caring why the citizens acted like this. Whether due to fear of the religious power, worry that it would infest Three Fingers, or simply senseless anger, none of it mattered anymore since the time to quit had arrived.


All of her determination to succeed had been ripped to shreds by the crowd. Each hand that shoved, every object that struck, drained her enthusiasm. Her devotion to the religion had drowned in the woman’s spit. It was all too much. Marisylia didn’t have Milick’s iron skin or Shri Lilyn’s boldness. She had nothing, only the desire to run away and forget everything.
~Meet Alexander!~ 
Alexander Fernandez was born in Santa Monica, CA and grew up in Rancho Cucamonga. Currently serving over 20 years in the United States Air Force, he lives with his wife Helem in Rocklin, CA.


Alex has been writing fantasy stories since early childhood for both school and for pleasure. He hopes to make a lasting emotional impact in his readers. He thrives in the exhilaration of creating memorable characters and adventures that become a part of the reader’s life.
Alexander Fernandez will be awarding a $30 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn host.

10 comments:

  1. The beautiful cover is my favorite part of the post today.

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  2. thank you for the excerpt, i enjoyed reading it

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  3. Interesting character names. Do they have meanings?

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    1. Hi Mary. The names are all made up after extensive trial and error. I always try to pick something original, and will actually Google the names to see if they are associated with a business, a product, someone else's name, etc. So unfortunately they don't mean anything specific. Thank you for the question.

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  4. The cover immediately sucked me in - both the illustration and the words.

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  5. What a fascinating excerpt. I really enjoyed it.

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  6. I enjoyed reading the guest post.

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  7. Thank you to Andra for hosting today; writing the guest post was quite entertaining. I appreciate everyone's comments and hope you all have a great weekend :)

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  8. I love the cover of the book and it sounds interesting.

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