At fourteen, Naomi Pace knows she loves her best friend, Tiffany.
Welcome to the July 15th stop on the blog tour for Prophet’s Debt by Robert Creekmore with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts & interviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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Author Guest Post
Brain Food for Writers: 5 Healthy Snacks to Eliminate Writers Block (List five healthy snacks, describe their benefits, why you chose them, etc. – also, feel free to change the # of snacks). Feel free to just write tips on how to stay healthy as a writer. How do you take care of your body?
What advice do I have concerning food and health? Aside from my university credentials, I also happen to be a certified personal trainer. Why? I don’t really know. I’m not social enough to have ever trained anyone other than myself.
The human body evolved to move. We all have our own levels of physical ableness. I was fortunate enough to have been gifted a healthy body. So, I can only speak from my perspective.
If you sit behind a desk all day trying to write, you’re only thinking about the execution. Art is about the experience of the artist distilled into potent allotments. No one wants to read about someone who stares at a computer screen all day. It’s the same reason we rarely see people on television watch television: it’s terribly boring.
Of course, you can’t live a twenty-four-hour adventure. But, you need to be fit enough when one arises. Typically, I run roughly fifteen miles a week, split up between three or four days, often on outdoor trails. I come up with loads of ideas out there. Two to three days a week, I lift weights for about two to two and a half hours. I don’t bother with splitting up legs, arms, and chest. I just go for it.
Remember, food is the energy that fuels your brain. If you put shit in it, you won’t feel well, nor will your brain work optimally. I drink about two liters of water a day and I never, ever eat fast food or drink soda. If it has a drive-through, you probably should avoid it.
In the mornings, I have a cup of coffee and oatmeal. For lunch, it’s generally a wrap made with chicken or turkey. Often, there’s a sweet potato of some kind on the side, then loads of fruit: usually blueberries.
Dinners are typically substantial and consist of lean meats like chicken, fish, or wild venison. Cruciferous veggies, asparagus, and sweet potatoes often make an appearance. Afterward, I load up on grapes, blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries: sometimes more than one type a night. Once I’ve done my best fruit bat impression, I drink two glasses of red wine, usually Cabernet Sauvignon, and eat dark chocolate. On an average day, I consume about three thousand calories.
Does any of this make me a better writer? Perhaps. The purpose of your body is to act as a life-support system for your brain. And that lump of neurons is a hungry beast, consuming upwards of twenty percent of all your energy. Putting drive-through garbage in your stomach and sitting around all day, is like fuelling up a Ferrari with watery, dirty gasoline and never doing maintenance. Would you expect that car to perform on the race track? Simply put, it won’t. The same goes for you as a writer.
About the Book
Prophet’s Debt
by Robert Creekmore
Published 5 July 2022
Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC
Genre: Dark Contemporary Fiction
Page Count: 284
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
At fourteen, Naomi Pace knows she loves her best friend, Tiffany. During the Perseid meteor shower of summer 1993, she finds out Tiffany feels the same, just as they’re outed.
Naomi is sent away to a conversion program in the remote Appalachians of North Carolina, knowing nothing of the horrors that await or the strength they will catalyze.
Escaping into the frigid wilderness, she forges her own destiny. Trapped in hiding, Naomi fights to conquer fear and find her way back to Tiffany.
Taking bloody vengeance to end a cult that tortures and murders children seems impossible, but so is having the guidance of a mythic creature of strength and violence.
Those who hurt Naomi as a girl will come to fear the woman she has become and the path she will tread to find revenge, safety, and Tiffany.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Smashwords | B&N
Excerpt
Moving away, Lesley says in verbal self-defense, “Wait until your father finds out.”
That lands like a tranquilizer dart on a bear. I shift from rage to fear. I’ve done something wholly unforgivable, broken another girl’s arm because she called out my sin. That’s how it will be seen regardless of how I feel about what they call “sin.” Until just now, I was having the most exciting night of my young life. I didn’t feel sin, I felt bonding. I felt the comfort of having someone I love more than anyone else physically close. For those few hours, I thought my life could be like this, but as I watch Lesley stumble away sobbing, it becomes apparent that I was wrong.
Lesley’s car makes a buzzing noise as she zooms away. Tiffany’s eyes are wide when we meet gazes.
“I’ll get the bag,” I say.
I stuff the blankets, canteen, chips, and flashlight back in, leaving the star map behind on the same spot where we had just laid.
“You broke her arm. I can’t believe you actually broke her arm,” Tiffany says, stuttering from fear.
“She was hurting you.”
“But you didn’t have to break her arm.”
“No, I didn’t. I wanted to.”
Tiffany doesn’t seem as offput by this as I expected.
“I love you,” she says.
“Same,” I reply.
I throw the backpack on and reach down to give Tiffany a hand up.
“We have to go somewhere else,” I say, as she rises to her feet.
“Where?”
“Just not here is all I know.”
About the Author
Robert Creekmore is from a rural farming community in Eastern North Carolina.
He attended North Carolina State where he studied psychology. While at university, he was active at the student radio station. There, he fell in love with punk rock and its ethos.
Robert acquired several teaching licenses in special education. He was an autism specialist in Raleigh for eight years. He then taught for four years in a small mountain community in western North Carolina.
During his time in the mountains, he lived with his wife Juliana in a remote primitive cabin built in 1875. While there, he grew most of his own food, raised chickens, worked on a cattle farm, as well as participated in subsistence hunting and fishing.
Eventually, the couple moved back to the small farming community where Robert was raised.
Robert’s first novel Afiri, is a science fiction love letter to his childhood hero Carl Sagan. It was nominated for a Manly Wade Wellman award in 2016.
Robert’s second novel is the first in a trilogy of books. Annoyed with the stereotype of the southeastern United States as a monolith of ignorance and hatred, he wanted to bring forth characters from the region who are queer and autistic. They now hold up a disinfecting light to the hatred of the region’s past and to those who still yearn for a return to ways and ideas that should have long ago perished.
Website | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads
Giveaway Alert!
Robert Creekmore will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway| June 27 | All the Ups and Downs | June 28 | Fabulous and Brunette |
| June 29 | Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews | June 29 | Long and Short Reviews |
| June 30 | Gina Rae Mitchell | July 1 | Archaeolibrarian – I Dig Good Books! |
| July 11 | Viviana MacKade | July 12 | Andi’s Book Reviews |
| July 12 | Gimme The Scoop Reviews | July 13 | It’s Raining Books |
| July 14 | The Avid Reader | July 15 | Westveil Publishing |
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Thanks for hosting!
Great excerpt, thank you.
Thank you.
I like the excerpt and this sounds like a really great story.
Thank you.
Thank you.