Here’s the set-up for James E. Lalonde’s Holotar: Last Queen of The White Shamans, just 99 Cents on Kindle :
Walter Winkler is a Seattle street kid who can Google Minds. Not that he can help it. Who wants to know what people are really thinking?
His shelter shrink dismisses Mind Googling as mere schizophrenia and worse, intends to ‘cure him” if he keeps having “delusions” of getting sucked into other people’s heads.
Nicknamed ‘Pinball,’ Walter has a gift for seeing inside games, too. He doesn’t play by the rules. He plays with the code. Avoids the monsters. Always beats the game.
Then Walter is lured into testing “Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans,” a new kind of holographic fantasy game designed by a mad Russian. Walter is beguiled into promising the ‘Last Queen’ that he will rescue her child being held captive in Siberia. He also discovers that the game has been hacked by a very real monster, an ancient psychopath unleashed into the new world of massively multiplayer online games and social networks, who is preying on young gamers – like him.
Walter sets out on a journey from Seattle to Siberia and back to fulfill his promise to the Queen and to help the gamers find their monster before it finds him. The odyssey propels him Googling through the minds of a cast of eccentric characters, including Paolo, a Brazilian game executive with a past; Leggs, a rehabbed homeless teen prostitute; and unfortunately, into the mind of a twisted monster named Gvlek.
Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans is an urban fantasy, psychological thriller. There are consequences for creating and unleashing real and imagined monsters. Because sometimes, once they get in your head, monsters just won’t die.
From the reviewers:
Weird, wacky and wonderful. Lalonde’s debut novel is a fascinating ride into the inner world of a street kid whose talent for “googling minds” takes the reader on a thrilling trip in and out of a next-generation game where there are only two ways out of the labyrinth – winning or dying. – Jane Adams
Original, wild and insightful … wild and fast-paced fantasy thriller that’s as hard to put down as it is well-written. Lalonde’s narrator is orginal, smart and vulnerable, offering insights into the nature of reality, sanity and what it means to be human. Highly recommended. – JoAnne
A guilty pleasure. Holotar hurls the reader deep into a richly-imagined world of a troubled gamer prodigy who makes a fateful promise to a dying queen in a next-generation game-gone-bad. Gut-wrenching (literally!) monsters, Russian oligarchs and mobsters introduce wicked chaos at every turn. Not for the dainty or faint-hearted. – Nancy
As a kid in Montana, Lalonde learned to love words reading the dictionary. He was a science nerd who placed Third in Applied Physics at the International Science Fair. He started off writing fiction out of college, but soon fell off the literary wagon to become a journalist. After attending university for a year abroad in Italy, he maintained a passion for the country and some of his writing is set there. He was a Gelato maker for several years. More recently, he has worked with the homeless and mentally ill as a counselor, researching Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans.
Lalonde received the William T. Costello Poetry Award while at Gonzaga University, and he was a finalist in the 2011 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest for Poetry. Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans, was a finalist in the 2010 Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest for Urban Fantasy Sci-Fi.
“I believe that every voice has a story that deserves to be heard and that often it is the unheard voice that is most profound,” says Lalonde. “As these voices speak to me, I try to remember what Plato said: ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle…'”
James lives in Seattle and is the father of three daughters. His wife is a fellow journalist. He is currently working on the next book in his ‘Mind Googling’ series.
And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample of James E. Lalonde’s HOLOTAR: LAST QUEEN OF THE WHITE SHAMANS:
As a kid in Montana, James E. Lalonde learned to love words reading the dictionary. He was a science nerd who placed Third in Applied Physics at the International Science Fair.
James received the William T. Costello Poetry Award while at Gonzaga University, and he is a finalist in the 2011 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest for Poetry. James is a photographer who uses photography as a form of note taking. He is working on two new novels set in Seattle and Italy, which are favorite settings for his photography as well. Holotar: Last Queen of the White Shamans, also was a finalist in the 2010 Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest for Urban Fantasy Sci-Fi and it is his first published novel.
James lives in Seattle and is the father of three daughters and the husband of a 'wondrous woman,' a fellow journalist, who incidentally supports his writing habit.
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