Rio Youers's Blog, page 3

We had an epic day yesterday, with two rockin’ stops—a killer review and an excerpt—before hitting the virtual highway again. We laid down some miles and crashed for the night at the Binary Hotel. Things turned sour when one of our virtual roadies got drunk and threw a TV out the window, and our virtual production manager ate too many hash cakes and drowned in the swimming pool. Rather than involve the authorities, we hooked him out and put him back on the bus. He’s currently propped up on the backseat, bloated and a little bit gross.

The Halcyon blog tour must go on, though, and our first stop today (Happy Halloween, people!) takes us to one of the best genre sites on the Internet, Sci-Fi Bulletin, where you can read my guest post about escaping distractions. Punch your ticket HERE.

Then we lay down some virtual rubber and head over to the brilliantly named Madwoman in the Attic, where you can read another excellent review of Halcyon. “This is a fast, heart-pounding dark thriller,” Lisa says. Read the full review HERE.

Check back tomorrow for more antics from the road.

The Halcyon tour bus continues to roll across the virtual landscape. Last night, the virtual bus driver fell asleep at the wheel and we almost hit a tree, but he snapped awake at the last moment and tragedy was averted. We all took medication and laughed about it this morning, the driver loudest of all. He has a disconcerting glint in his eye.

The first stop today is the excellent Bibliophile Book Club, where you can read a brief excerpt from chapter one of Halcyon. Simply click THIS LINK.

Then we rumble through a wild landscape of ones and zeros and park the bus at Book Bum. Here, you can read Zuky’s excellent four-star review of the book, in which she says, “This one is wacky, unique and exciting, not to be missed by any violent thriller lover!” (I think she means lovers of violent thrillers, not thriller lovers who are violent—watch out for those dangling modifiers, Zuky!) You can check the review out RIGHT HERE.

Day Three of the blog tour will bring more excitement, no doubt. So check back tomorrow.

11 Days, 22 online venues. The massive Halcyon blog tour begins today.

There’ll be giveaways, reviews, interviews, guest posts, and more. And it all begins right now.

*Swigs whiskey from the bottle and jumps on the virtual tour bus*

To kick off, head on over to Made-Up Group for an excerpt from Halcyon. HERE’S THE LINK.

Then swing by Roachie’s Reviews for a top review of the novel (thanks, Roachie). Also—drum roll—a chance for one lucky duck to win a copy of Halcyon. So scoot on over and get your name down. THE LINK.

Check back tomorrow to see where the virtual tour bus is heading for Day Two.

Happy days! My latest novel, Halcyon, is now available in paperback in the UK.

This book means a lot to me (mainly because I worked my ass off on it), and I’m so delighted to share it with readers and fans across the pond. I’d like to thank my UK editor, Cat Camacho, for making this possible. Thanks also to publicist extraordinaire Lydia Gittins, Phillipa Ward, Julia Lloyd (who created an amazing cover—I mean, just look at it), and the entire crew at Titan Books.

Halcyon has been scoring top reviews across the board, and has earned praise from top authors like Paul Tremblay, Sarah Pinborough, Michael Marshall, and Benjamin Percy.

The paperback is priced at just £7.99, and is available everywhere books are sold. It is also available in ebook.

 

I’m currently in the wilds of Iceland, on the last leg of a year-long European adventure, with sporadic, unreliable internet access. I wanted to drop in quickly, though, to tell you that my new novel, Halcyon, is now available at all booksellers and retailers across the US and Canada.

This was a tough novel to write. I poured just about everything into it, and the early reviews suggest that the hard work has paid off. I’m so grateful to everybody who has read and reviewed the book so far, and for all the support I’ve received.

Need a refresher on what Halcyon is about? Here’s the cover copy:

Halcyon is the perfect haven for all Americans who want to escape the dismal state of the U.S., but paradise isn’t what it seems…

A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario—a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon seems like a dream come true. The utopia is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure.

On the heels of tragedy, Martin Lovegrove moves his family to Halcyon. They can’t take any more pain or fear. Especially sensitive Edith, whose nightmares have an eerie way of becoming reality. A couple of months, he tells himself, to retreat from the chaos and grind. No smart phones. No TV. No internet. No TV. Back to a simpler way of life. But something doesn’t feel right. Martin begins to suspect deception beneath Halcyon’s perfect veneer. And when something feels too good to be true… it usually is. Martin wants to know the truth—however terrible—behind the island and its mysterious founder, Mother Moon.

Halcyon is Rio Youers’ page-turning race against the clock in a world that eschews the limits of time.

And you can read the first chapter right HERE.

Hopefully, that’s enough to whet your appetite.

Of course, I’ll always prefer that you visit your local indie bookstore and buy your copy of Halcyon there, but if online shopping is your jam, you can find a list of retailers (including a couple of good indies) on the Halcyon page on this website, or over at Macmillan’s page.

And if you read Halcyon and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review somewhere. Word of mouth is so very important.

One last thing: the UK ebook of Halcyon (Titan Books) will be available in one week, on July 17th, with the paperback hitting UK stores in October.

Thank you all so much.

There’s a new interview with me over at Criminal Element. The man asking the questions is the very great Owen King, author of Double Feature (two thumbs way up), Alien Invasion (amazing—read it), and co-author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Sleeping Beauties (I love this book). Here’s how the interview came about.

Earlier this year, Owen ran two advance copies of Halcyon through his Rambling Galley Book Club, which works like this: the reader adds his or her name to the Book Club post on Owen’s Facebook page, then Owen (through the magic of the Random Number Generator) selects two lucky readers to receive an advance copy of Halcyon, along with some delightful Owen King swag. In return, the reader must read Halcyon, leave a review somewhere online, then sign and send the book back. Then the Random Number Generator selects another reader, and the book goes out again. And so on, and so forth. In all, I think Halcyon earned ten or eleven reviews—all of them good, I hasten to add. Of the reviews added to Goodreads so far, most of them come by way of Owen’s Rambling Galley Book Club.

Between them, the galleys covered somewhere in the region of 10,000 miles. (These are a couple of well-traveled, well-read books.) Needless to say, I’m extremely grateful to Owen for putting this together. As well as being an amazing author, he’s also a wonderful man, and a dear friend.

So, to the interview: my part in this (aside from writing Halcyon to begin with) was to agree, at the end of the galleys’ wild ramble, to be grilled by Owen. Well, he didn’t grill me; he asked several thoughtful, brilliant questions that were a pleasure to answer. Criminal Element liked the interview so much that they wanted to publish it on their site. You can read it HERE.

Furthermore, if you leave a message in the comments section before July 10th, you’ll be entered into a sweepstakes to win a hardback copy of Halcyon and the UK paperback of Sleeping Beauties (donated very kindly by Owen). I think there are two copies up for grabs, so get your name down quick.

There’ll be more Halcyon goodness leading up to the book’s release on July 10th, so check back soon.

Following on from Geek World Wide’s 10/10 review for Halcyon, the good people at Publishers Weekly have dropped their appraisal, and I’m delighted to report that they have given my novel a coveted starred review.

They write: “[An] exceptional paranormal thriller … Youers humanizes all his characters and makes readers feel the pain of the events he describes.”

Halcyon is knocking it out of the park with the reviews (so far), but seeing that little red star from PW always gives me a wicked case of the feelgoods.

The whole review, brief but wonderful, can be found HERE.

Halcyon will be published in hardcover, e-book, and audio on July 10th. Visit the novel’s page on this website, or over at Macmillan, to find the pre-order links.

Great news for UK e-book readers: The Forgotten Girl is now available on Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, and wherever else you get your digital fix.

A little refresher: The Forgotten Girl earned starred reviews at both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Joe Hill called it, “An absolute rocket,” while Sarah Pinborough said that it “… leaves you breathless.” And let’s not forget that The Forgotten Girl was also a finalist for the 2018 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel.

Priced at around £4—that’s less than a pint of beer in Britain; trust me, I know—it’s safe to say that you’re getting bang for your buck. Or, rather, your pound.

A couple of links, just for ease (I’m good like that). You can purchase it for your Kindle right here.  And your can make your Kobo happy by clicking right here.

The Forgotten Girl is published in the UK by Titan Books. The paperback version will hit bookstores in spring 2019.

Only two months until Halcyon is released in North America. The early response, on Goodreads, has been excellent, while Geeks World Wide awarded the book a 10/10. More reviews are expected in the weeks to come, so watch this space.

A number of authors—whose work and opinion I hold in the highest regard—have read Halcyon, and have joined the chorus of approval. I thought I’d bring their blurbs together in one post. So why not take a look … see if Halcyon sounds like a trip you’d enjoy.

“A prescient exploration of domestic terrorism and the fears that currently grip ordinary people worldwide, Halcyon is a slick, page-turning thriller that establishes Rio Youers as an author with something to say. Ominous and yet somehow full of hope, Halcyon shows that Youers is a Koontz or King for a new generation.” —Sarah Pinborough, New York Times bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes and Cross Her Heart.

“Rio Youers deftly mixes family drama, ESP, politics, and the collective insanity of cults into a heady cultural critique that also functions as a page-turning, white-knuckle thriller. Halcyon is a tornado of a novel.” —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

“Rich, multilayered and compulsively readable, Halcyon is a ferocious yet thoughtful and very timely take on our need to believe in a better place.” —Michael Marshall, New York Times bestselling author of The Straw Men.

“I’m warning you: stay away from Halcyon if you have a pressing deadline, children that must be fed, dogs that need to be walked. Because it will own you completely and gobble up all your time and focus with its spellbinding sentences, vividly realized characters, furious pacing, and skin-crawling chills. Rio Youers is a master.” — Benjamin Percy, author of The Dark Net, Thrill Me, and Red Moon

C’mon … if that doesn’t that whet your appetite, I don’t know what will.

Halcyon hits North American stores in hardcover on July 10th. You can pre-order a copy at Amazon, of course—or you might consider a terrific independent store like Powell’s or IndieBound. And hey … don’t forget about your local bookstore.

The audio- and e-book versions also land in July (US and UK). The UK trade paperback (Titan Books) will be available a little later in the year.

More on Halcyon soon.

Whoa! Some delightful and surprising news: THE FORGOTTEN GIRL has been nominated for Best Crime Novel in the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. Needless to say, I’m absolutely thrilled.

The Arthur Ellis Award was established in 1984 and named after the nom de travail of Canada’s official hangman. It recognizes the best in all facets of crime writing, including detective, mystery, suspense, and thriller writing. Here’s the complete list of finalists in the Best Crime Novel category:

The Winners’ Circle, by Gail Bowen (McClelland & Stewart)

The Party, by Robyn Harding (Gallery/Scout Press)

The White Angel, by John MacLachlan (Gray Douglas and McIntyre)

Sleeping in the Ground, by Peter Robinson (McClelland & Stewart)

The Forgotten Girl, by Rio Youers (St. Martin’s Press)

What a terrific selection of books and authors. I’m honoured to stand alongside them.

A complete list of finalists, in all categories, can be found on the Crime Writers of Canada website.

The winners will be announced at a The Arts and Letter Club, Toronto, on May 24th, 2018. Sadly, I won’t be able to attend (I’ll still be in Vienna), but I’d like to congratulate the finalists in all categories, and wish them the very best of luck.