Blog Tour: The Outlaw: Origins by Alan Janney

The Outlaw: Origins
by Alan Janney
Genre: YA Sci-fi/Superheroes
Release Date: February 26th 2016

Summary from Goodreads:A masked vigilante stalks the streets of downtown Los Angeles, disrupting crime and rescuing movie starlets. After being spotted on security cameras and thrust into the national spotlight, he is pursued by both the media and powerful new enemies. Little does the world know the Outlaw is just High School junior Chase Jackson wearing a mask and wondering why his body is suddenly…extraordinary. 

Prologue of Outlaw, Book One

Los Angeles Times. March 1st. 2018.

“My Night with the Outlaw.” By Teresa Triplett.

The man in the mask is late.

And then he is here without warning and, despite myself, I gasp. I am forbidden to

disclose the location of our rendezvous, but it is dark, it is the middle of the night, and I’m

terrified.

Superheroes are, of course, fake. They do not exist in our reality outside of a movie

screen. I am skeptical and even offended by the growing legend surrounding the Outlaw.

It’s ludicrous. However, even if he is a fraud, it’s still the story of the year, maybe even of

the decade. Although that doesn’t explain why I’m so scared I can barely breathe.

I don’t know why he agreed to meet me, this man the entire world wants to

interview. In fact, I never even asked him and perhaps that is why I was chosen, when ranks

of more celebrated and prestigious reporters have already been rebuffed. The Editor-inChief

of the Times is holding the front page, waiting on this story you’re reading, even

though I’m not a writer for the paper; I am a television reporter, but the Outlaw wanted the

story out immediately. I’m trembling now as we regard each other in silence. I’ve already

decided that I won’t ask him, ‘Why me?’

I can feel him more than I can see him. Witnesses claim he is a big man, and that

doesn’t do him justice. He takes up the whole sky. CNN aired an Outlaw special and their

experts were able to measure him using various photographs, so I know he’s not as immense

as the naked-eye perceives.

“Hello,” I say, timidly, pathetically. He nods in reply, and it is at this moment I

realize how woefully unprepared I am. In my defense, the Outlaw only gave me an hour’s

notice but I cannot think of a single thing to say. As the silence between us lengthens and

the conversational burden on me increases, I relent and betray myself. “So why me?”

He shrugs and he says, “I don’t know that many reporters.”

He knows me? We’ll be pouring over that tidbit for weeks because his identity is

still a mystery. But you know this, and if you’re like the rest of us then you don’t even have

an educated guess.

His voice is deep. Darth Vadar deep, although I can tell he’s masking his voice

somehow. His words are slow and the vowels are elongated, and the mask falsifies it even

further. Oh yes. He’s wearing the infamous mask that covers his mouth and holds his hair

back from his furious eyes. Like every other eye-witness, I’m struck by the eyes. His gaze

is hard to return and I find myself fidgeting.

I make a few more feeble attempts at small talk, trying to gauge his reactions (of

which there are none), and then I wonder how Natalie North has maintained a relationship

with this stoic dark mystery man. Not only has she withstood his unnerving stare and

imposing presence but according to the stories she has fallen for him and vise-versa, making

them the most unlikely couple and hottest gossip column topic…ever. Beauty and the beast.

Of course it could be a publicity stunt, and rumors persist that there’s another girl in his life.

A real girl, and a real relationship beyond the mask. I imagine that topic’s off-limits tonight.

“I have to ask a question which will sound absurd even to my ears. Are you able to

do things physically that I can’t? That no one else can?”

He doesn’t answer, but I can tell he’s turning the question over in his mind.

“Like a super hero?” I press further.

“No,” he scoffs. “There’s no such thing. In fact, I’m sick.”

“You’re sick?”

“Very. Possibly fatal.”

“Fatal?” I repeat stupidly, incredulously. “How…from what?”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he says. He growls his words and he waves my question

away with his hand.

“Then why?” I ask.

“I need you to pass along a message. To everyone.”

“What message?”

The story continues in Book Two of the Outlaw Series. 'Infected'.

Prologue of Book Two, Infected

Los Angeles Times. May 1st. 2018.

“A Night With Natalie North.” By Teresa Triplett

He warned us.

The Outlaw told us that we would see more…creatures like him soon, but we weren’t

receptive. He expressed the danger to Los Angeles, but we laughed him off. The man in the

mask was stepping outside of his innocuous narrative, or so we thought, and the citizenry

didn’t appreciate the intrusion. Wasn’t his fifteen minutes of fame enough?

We were mistaken. Los Angeles is still staggering. We have paid the price for our

folly, for our arrogance. However, even in retrospect, how could we have possibly been

prepared? I’ve watched the videos countless times and I still cannot believe what I’m seeing.

Who are these people? And why can’t we find them?

And speaking of missing persons, what has become of the masked man himself? We

all watched him die, completely incinerated. Didn’t we? Or did we all collectively hallucinate

that awful night?

I first heard the rumors a week ago, and then the grainy photographs began

circulating. Whispers in the dark that our hero hadn’t succumbed to mortality just yet.

Perhaps we are not abandoned after all.

The one person who might know for sure agreed to talk with me but either cannot or

will not comment on the Outlaw. Natalie North has just finished her spring semester and is

packing for Vancouver to shoot a movie. Her agent and manager has purchased her a condo in

New York City, in case Los Angeles is no longer safe when filming wraps in August.

We sit down for coffee and she doesn’t mince words.

“The Outlaw has been incredibly decent to me, and he might be Los Angeles’s best

hope for peace, if he’s alive. Even if I knew anything about his life, his death, or his

whereabouts, why would I betray him to the media?”

She is not mad. She is simply matter-of-fact.

I don’t have an answer for her, other than a selfish one; I would sleep better at night if

I knew he was still alive.

Add to Goodreads

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Author Links:

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Blog Tour Schedule 

June 27^th

Kimber Leigh Writes  Guest Post - Superheroes & Villains

Books and Kats   Excerpt/Playlist

U.S. - Brazil Book Review   Excerpt

June 28^th

Crazy for YA    Review

The Young Folks  Review

3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy,&,Sissy, Too! Promo Post

June 29^th

SolaFide Book Club   Guest Post

Buried Under Books   Review

June 30^th

deal sharing aunt    www.dealsharingaunt.blogspot.com    Promo Post

The Page Unbound    http://thepageunbound.com    Promo Post

Just Us Book Blog    http://justusbookblog.blogspot.com/    Promo Post

July 1^st

A New Look On Books   http://anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com   Promo Post

Worth Reading It?  http://www.worthreadingit.blogspot.com    Review
My Crazy Corner     http://mycrazzycorner.blogspot.com/   Promo Post

The Jolly Wordsmith   http://thejollywordsmith.blogspot.co.uk/   Promo Post
Mythical Books http://mythicalbooks.blogspot.ro/   Promo Post

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Blog Tour Organized by:

YA Bound Book Tours

 

Blog Tour : The Mermaid and the Treasure of the Bay (La Sirena #1) by A. Algeri

YA Bound Book Tours is organizing a Blog Tour for: The Mermaid and the Treasure of the Bay

(La Sirena #1) by A. Algeri. This tour will run from June 27th to July 1st.  

The Mermaid and the Treasure of the Bay
(La Sirena #1)

by A. Algeri 

Release Date: 08/20/15

246 pages

Summary from Goodreads:

"The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay" is the first adventure of Brinn, a young woman who had recently returned to her homeland, Nyar Kaad, after years of being away.

For her mother and sister it’s only supposed to be an episodic stay, because their intention is to return to the capital, Adaria, held by both aristocrats, by then, to be their home. Brinn, however, isn’t interested in living in the golden cage of high society and aspires to a different existence, that will push her to oppose the decisions of her family and to pursue a destiny according to her own wishes.

The accidental discovery of what looks like a map to hidden treasure, buried in Nyar Kaad, according to tradition, by pirates once dwelling in the settlement, will push her to search for the hidden riches- an undertaking that the protagonist will face courageously, at the cost of challenging her fears, the rigid social conventions, and more literal dangers to her person, venturing on a journey into the local legends and the past of her own family, until reaching an unexpected epilogue.

Set to Isara, a fantasy world inspired by the period between the seventeenth and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries, "The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay" is a journey full of mystery in the universe where real and supernatural coexist intersecting in a subtle and insidious way, a world divided between palaces and largely unexplored expanses, an opulent capital and boundless oceans.

Buy now: ebook kindle or paperback

About the Author:

A. Algeri is the author of "The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay", his first published novel. He began writing while he was a teenager, setting most of his stories in the world of Isara, a fantasy universe of his own creation.

Author Links:

  

Excerpts from “The Mermaid and the treasure of the Bay”, a novel by A. Algeri

The summer was ending and with it even my hopes grew progressively paler, as the white froth of the waves dissolves on the shores of the sea. Time passed, day after day, initially slower, then as each day passed the perception of it slipping away became increasingly more evident: inevitably, I found myself thinking of my childhood, when my family still hadn't moved to Adaria, the capital of the Empire.

[...]

I wished that every day was like the ones before, going back to my childhood; outwardly it was as if nothing had changed: in those hopelessly far away years, in the morning after dressing as fast as possible, I ran to my parents to ask my father to take me on a long walk on the beach and then to dive into the weak but deep blue-green warm waters of the bay.

With the passing of time, for my mother it how much I liked living in Nyar Kaad had become intolerable, the place were my family came from, even if we were, at least in part, remotely originally descended from the north of the Empire. I loved the place where I was born so much that I was never able to consider our house in the far away capital where moved in the following years, as my home. I harbored wonderful memories from my childhood of long happy years, as can only exist in memories.

Naturally, the summer couldn't last forever: by the time I was a young girl, my parents had announced our imminent departure from Nyar Kaad to move to the capital. Mom had started talking to me about the important people we would have to meet once we reached Adaria, of the balls and the numerous events that were obligatory for whoever wanted to become part of high society and maybe, if we met the right people, how we might be able to be received at court.

At the time I was too little to fully comprehend the social implications of these events and I associated them only with those evenings in which my parents didn't stay home and my sister Jennifer and I would be left with the nanny, excluding those rare occasions when we

had to go with mom while she and her various friends and acquaintances would talk for hours about predictable and uninteresting topics. I, along with the occasional, and according to me, unfortunate children, was forced to pass entire afternoons sitting on a sofa without practically opening my mouth.

I never wanted to leave Nyar Kaad, but my departure never depended on my consent: one rainy day at the end of the summer, when the social season of the small town had been concluded with the ending of the vacations of the rich settlers of the nearby Narim, our departure for Adaria was decided upon and we abandoned, that at the time I believed was forever, the white beaches of the province of Salaara. For a young girl even a few months can seem like an eternity and our return to our hometown at the time no longer seemed possible.

I remember painfully abandoning the Dawn's Light, our estate, the following trip and when, at the moment of disembarkation going down the gangplank that connected the ship to the dock, I found the cold autumn of the northern regions, waiting with its freezing grip ready to enclose my heart, revealing to me a nature that had become a mirror of how I felt in my soul. A cold that whispered to me about how I had been separated possibly forever from the sun and the green waters of the Nahanshe sea, whose voice, as if far away, still called me. “Brinn”, it repeated, as if it was saying my name.

Each day I waited for the much desired return to the ocean shores, whose call you could

hear, scarcely whispered along the shores of the Nalach: only the seagulls, that I glimpsed sometimes in the hottest days of the brief northern summer, told me of the far away estuary where large river flowed into the sea.

I repeated to myself that I wanted to see again one day the shores of the Nahanshe Sea and when that moment arrived that I wouldn't leave again: I kept waiting for that day in the depths of my heart without letting anything undermine this certainty or suffocate this dream.

My return to the ocean shores was a wish that remained unchanged in me despite the natural succession of the years: I always refused to bury my dreams underneath my immediate needs, believed by other necessary or set them aside after giving up, coming to consider them impossible. I would never have accepted discovering one day that all my aspirations had been extinguished by an existence lost in a myriad of empty mundane gestures after being forced to turn down a path able to deaden forever the light that had illuminated my heart and to be destined to a dusty series of days one identical to the other. At that point I would have only been able to realize how much time had passed and what I had given up; I would have only been aware of an unfulfilled happiness in a past relegated to a far off time.

I wasn't willing to accept a similar future: returning to Nyar Kaad had always been my dream, jealously hidden in me, that I could see every time I closed my eyes- immobile and perfect, a moment frozen in the eternal and inconstant waves of time; the house on the sea,

, the very white sand, the waves that died on the shoreline, the breeze blowing off the sea every morning. And yet, as with every wish no matter how much I wished to go back to the bay and the ocean and hear its voice again with all my heart, this dream seemed to me, or least I believed so, destined to never happen.

[...]

My life was far from perfect, I had an unusual character and my nature wasn't easily adaptable to the life that ought to have been lead by someone of our status that was forced to aspire to court, but for years I had been able to carve out my happiness. Even though I wasn't particularly interested in the girls my age that talked about future boyfriends, parties and dresses, I could always close my eyes and imagine that I was in one of those far away places that I was so fascinated by and that I had read about so often in books.

Despite the many remote places that I had learned about the existence of by reading, the most precious continued always to be Nyar Kaad. My thoughts inevitably went to the aquamarine ocean waves on the shores where I was born.

Blog Tour Schedule:

June 27:

History from a Woman's Perspective - http://www.historywomanperspective.com/ - Review
3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too! - http://3partnersinshopping.blogspot.com – Review
Literary Musings – www.literarymusing.weebly.com - Promo

June 28:

3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too! - http://3partnersinshopping.blogspot.com – Promo

The Recipe Fairy - http://recipe-fairy.weebly.com/ - Review

Zerina Blossom's Books - http://zerinablossom.blogspot.com/ - Promo

June 29:

YA Book Divas - http://www.yabookdivas.com – Review
The Avid Reader - http://the-avidreader.blogspot.com – Promo
Happy Tails and Tales Blog  - http://happytailsandtales.blogspot.com – Review
Just Us Book Blog - http://justusbookblog.blogspot.com/ - Promo
La tartaruga si muove - http://latartarugasimuove.blogspot.it – Review
Reading, Writing and What Not - http://pixiescanread.blogspot.com/ - Review

The Book Adventures of Annelise Lestrange - www.anneliselestrange.wordpress.com – Promo
Reading Addict - http://readingadd.blogspot.com/ - Promo

June 30:

POTL: Books, Writing and Inspiring Others - https://princessofthelight.wordpress.com – Review

I Read Indie - http://twimom101bookblog.blogspot.com/ - Promo
deal sharing aunt - http://www.dealsharingaunt.blogspot.com – Promo
WordishWonderland – www.wordishwonderland.wordpress.com - Promo

July 1:

My Crazy Corner - http://mycrazzycorner.blogspot.com/ - Promo
fundinmental - http://www.fundinmental.com – Review
The Page Unbound - http://thepageunbound.com – Promo
deal sharing aunt - http://www.dealsharingaunt.blogspot.com – Promo
Kovescence of the Mind - http://kovescenceofthemind.blogspot.com/ - Review
A New Look On Books – www.anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com - Promo

Ya Bound Book Tours