Audiobook for Playing With Fire about to be released
Guess what! The audiobook version of Playing With Fire is about to be released! The talented Angela Rysk (that’s her on the right) narrated for me, and her audio version of the book really does a great job bringing it to life. Here’s a sample of the book (it’s Chapter 12) to get a sense […]
Sweet! Narrator Chosen for Playing With Fire
I’m happy to announce that I’ve got a great narrator for Playing With Fire. Her name is Angela Rysk (that’s her on the right), and she’s a voiceover artist, comedy writer, and actress living in LA. I think she’ll make a great Jenna. Thought you might like to hear her audition — it’s chapter 16 […]
Audio book updates: Portal and Girl
The good news? My male narrator (for The Portal and the Panther) and my female narrator (for The Girl Between Worlds) are both really, really good. Listening to the chapters they’re sending back to me has been so much fun — probably the closest I will ever come to hearing my books turned into something […]
Slam by Tash McAdam – Book Excerpt and Author Interview
Excerpt of SLAM, a young adult science fiction novella Scroll down to read an interview with the author All the water and lack of visual information is so disorientating that Serena’s taken completely by surprise when a Watch patrol almost runs into them at the crossroads. Her throat freezes, mouth dropping open. Nuke, we’ve got […]
Four YA Apocalypse / Post-Apocalypse Novels + Honorable Mentions
Sometimes I get on a apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic reading kick. I don’t know what it is about imagining the “what if” of the end of civilization that’s so interesting to me. Maybe it’s imagining myself in the characters’ shoes and wondering if I’d do any better than they did. At any rate, here are short […]
Start the Adventure Today.
Get the first two books of the Guardians of the Portal Trilogy for free. Reader Praise for The Portal & the Panther: “Great fantasy story with engaging characters! …the suspense between the characters made it hard to put the book down.” – Alexandra Reader Praise for The Girl Between Worlds: “Second books in a series aren’t […]
What Do You Get When You Blend JRR Tolkien with Clint Eastwood?
What would you get, my friends, if you took JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga, threw in a dash of Clint Eastwood, added a healthy helping of the tales of King Arthur, sprinkled some TS Eliot on top, and mixed the whole concoction together with a light saber? There’s only one result of such […]
Exciting Announcement: Audiobook Version of Portal in Production
It took me a while to find the right narrator for The Portal & the Panther, but I think I finally found him in Andrew Cornelius. Take a listen to his audition for my first book (it’s the prologue — no spoilers are included): And I also had Andrew do a “call-back” audition after I’d […]
How to Add a MOBI File to a Kindle Device
I’ve had a lot of people emailing me wondering how to get my free book, The Girl Between Worlds, onto their Kindle device. After some trial and error, I’ve found a very, very simple way to do it. 1. Download the mobi file from DropBox. Your first step is to save the file with the […]
Mad Libs with The Rook & the King, Chapter 3
Fill in the blanks, Mad Libs-style! Submit your work either through the comments section below or via email to ramarshall [ at ] ninja-writer [ dot ] com. You can either guess the “right” words for each blank or you can try to make it fun and ridiculous. [CHARACTER NAME] Two days earlier – Saturday, March 16 […]
10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Guardians of the Portal
Book 3 is almost here, y’all! I’ve been working hard to finish The Rook & the King by the end of May, since that’s when I said I would have it finished. To tide you over until then, here are ten little pieces of trivia about the Guardians of the Portal series that I thought […]
5 Worst Film Adaptations of YA Novels (with Trailers)
It’s a bit nail-biting, isn’t it, when one of your favorite YA novels is made into a movie? On the one hand, you’re thrilled to see your favorite characters on the big screen. On the other hand, you know that things could go terribly wrong and the novel that you loved could easily be butchered […]
Brad Magnarella Strikes Again with Cry Little Sister
Scooby Doo was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. Maybe one of my favorite aspects of the show was that it always ended up that there was a perfectly normal explanation for the supernatural mysteries in the end. The villain would always be unmasked and revealed for what he or she […]
A Freebie Book Recommendation for X-Men Fans
I loved this series of books! I have some confessions to make before I tell you about the book itself: 1) In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a big geek. 2) I grew up in the 1980s. 3) I’ve always been a sucker for X-Men. If any of those three statements also […]
Read an Excerpt from Jena Baxter’s The Carriage
Note from RA Marshall Recently I’ve been networking with some fellow independent authors, which is how I came across Jena Baxter. Here’s the description for her book, The Carriage, which she published in February. An excerpt follows below. “A teenage girl enters a carriage in Central Park and disembarks in Victorian, England. Cursed by her […]
Book Recommendation: Foreseen / The Rothston Series by Terri-Lynne Smiles
Terri-Lynne Smiles calls her genre “science fantasy,” and I think this is the perfect description for her series of new adult novels. They’re science fiction, yes, but they aren’t aliens and spaceships and dystopian futures. If science fiction had a sub-genre that was the sci-fi equivalent of urban fantasy, that would be where to place […]
Work in Progress Wednesday: Three Sentences from Book Three
Sentence Number One: Lawrence let go of me, doubling over in pain. Oh, that Lawrence. * shakes head * He’s always up to something naughty, isn’t he? Sentence Number Two: I hated that the Code insisted we live this double life. Poor Jon. It’s not easy being a Shifter. Sentence Number Three: I glanced at […]
Work in Progress Wednesday: An Excerpt from Lawrence’s Novella
I’ve been surprised by how much readers have enjoyed the character of Lawrence, who is the primary “bad guy” in book 1 and book 2. (And I don’t want to reveal too much about book 3 yet, but let’s just say he’s in that book, too.) Lawrence has an interesting back story, one that I’ve […]
Book Review: Leopard Moon by Jeannette Battista
While writing The Portal & the Panther, I started to wonder if anyone else was writing YA books about shapeshifters. That’s how I came across Leopard Moon by Jeannette Battista. I went on to read the first three books in the series, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Best news: Leopard Moon is a free […]
Work in Progress Wednesday: An Excerpt from Book 3
Book 3, titled The Rook & the King, will be out in May 2015. In case you’ve been wondering what it might contain, here’s an excerpt from the third chapter of the book. Warning: This chapter might change between now and the time of publication! JON Tuesday morning, March 26 We stood ankle-deep in murky […]