Tag Archives | mind reading

FREE SOULS cover reveal! It’s here!

Free Souls by Susan Kaye Quinn

(Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Now Available!
When your mind is a weapon, freedom comes at a price.

Four months have passed since Kira left home to join Julian’s Jacker Freedom Alliance, but the hole in her heart still whistles empty where her boyfriend Raf used to be. She fills it with weapons training, JFA patrols, and an obsessive hunt for FBI agent Kestrel, ignoring Julian’s worries about her safety and repeated attempts to recruit her for his revolutionary chat-casts. When anti-jacker politician Vellus surrounds Jackertown with the National Guard, Kira discovers there’s more to Julian’s concerns than she knew, but she’s forced to take on a mission that neither want and that might be her last: assassinating Senator Vellus before he can snuff out Julian’s revolution and the jackers she’s come to love.
All Mindjack stories available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and iTunes
(Note Free Souls is not yet available on iTunes)

Early Praise for Free Souls

“Quinn paints a picture of a not-too-distant America where politicians inflame the hatred of one section of the populace for another—all for their own gain—and you worry that her world is not so far off from our own.”
Dianne Salerni, author of We Hear the Dead, The Caged Graves, and the forthcoming The Eighth Day
Free Souls starts with a bang and doesn’t let up. Like a mash-up of all your favorite science-fiction adventures from Star Wars to The Legend of Korra, it blends nonstop action, nail-biting escapes, and great romance. I absolutely loved it! A great series conclusion—a must-read.”
Leigh Talbert Moore, author of Rouge and The Truth About Faking
“Susan did it again. Free Souls was WOW! I expected Kira to step up to her role as heroine but not like this. Surprises kept coming until the very end which tied up more loose ends than I knew existed. Warning: Don’t start reading until you have time to finish. I didn’t want to put Free Souls down for a second. It’s that kind of book.”
Sher A. Hart, Goodreads Review

Interview
Susan’s over at Amy Saunder’s blog today (12.14.12), answering questions about how she came up with the mages’ abilities, what kind of mage she would be, and all about her future works.

Digital Box Set
Since Free Souls is out, there is now a Digital Box Set of the Mindjack Trilogy for those of you who want the whole series!

Available on AmazonBarnes&Noble

Mindjack Origins Collection
Want more Julian? Wondering how Sasha’s ability really works? Looking for EXCLUSIVE DELETED SCENES from Free Souls? This collection of novellas, scenes, and other goodies is for those craving a bit more of the characters and drama of the Mindjack series.

Includes:

Mindjack Novellas
Mind Games (Raf’s story)
The Handler (Julian’s story)
The Scribe (Sasha’s story)

TWO EXCLUSIVE DELETED SCENES from Free Souls (published nowhere else!)

PLUS Mindjack flash fiction, an (imaginary) conversation between Raf and Julian, and other goodies for readers who want just a little bit more of Kira, Julian, Raf, and the Mindjack crew.

Available on AmazonBarnes&Noble
ENTER TO WIN
one of FIVE ecopies of the Mindjack Origins Collection

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Inventing the Future: Mindjacking

Welcome blogger and friend, Susan Kaye Quinn! I can’t wait to read OPEN MINDS. It promises to be an exciting ride!

Inventing the Future: Mindjacking

by Susan Kaye Quinn, author of Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy)

picture credit

When I first had the idea of writing a novel about a mindreading world (Open Minds, Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy), my first concern was whether it was even possible. What about dialogue? How can I write a novel that operates entirely in the minds of the characters?

Part of solving that problem came when I realized: everything operates entirely in our minds.

Without diving off the philosophical ramparts, it is a simple reality that our brains process all the sensory inputs from the world and create something we call a consciousness that allows us to live, love, and occasionally fight like tomcats.

When I realized that my story would involve not only mindreading but mindjacking—with some characters able to control the thoughts of others—I immediately wanted this to be a very sensory experience. After all the mindjacker’s consciousness was interacting directly with the brain function of a mindreader. How could that not have a feeling, a taste, a smell?

During the first draft of Open Minds, I was truly pantsing my way through Kira’s world, discovering along with her what it felt like to be a mindjacker. I was surprised to discover that each mind had its own scent. That emotions could flavor a mind field, and that mind barriers could be soft like Jell-O or as hard as a rock. During subsequent drafts, I developed a hidden history of mindjackers, just like there was an evolution of the mindreading world, where the mindjackers’ abilities allowed them to stay hidden in the world of mindreaders, and also provided the motivation to do so.

What if your neighbor knew you could control their thoughts? What if they only suspected it? Kira knows intuitively know that this is a secret that must be kept.

It was a tricky to puzzle out, at times, how a roomful of mindreaders or mindjackers or a mixture of both would interact. Even if we can read each other’s minds, or control someone’s thoughts and actions, we are still people, with human desires driving us and usually some kind of morality behind what we do.

The most interesting science fiction, I find, is always stories that explore what it means for us to be human—in spite of being surrounded by technology or radically changed environments. One look at Shakespeare’s plays or ancient mythology shows that human beings haven’t changed much over the millennia. The fundamental structure of our brains evolved over a million years, and that evolution certainly didn’t account for mindreading or mindjacking. Even though the characters in Open Minds have new powers, they are still using the same basic mental equipment from the time humans were living in caves. In other words, the people in Kira’s world, are still human.

Exploring that thought continues to make for some interesting writing in Book Two, Closed Hearts.

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See more guest posts about Open Minds at the Virtual Launch Party!


When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) by Susan Kaye Quinn is available for $2.99 in e-book (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords) and $9.99 in print (Amazon, Createspace).

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PRIZES!


Susan Kaye Quinn is giving away an Open Books/Open Minds t-shirt, mug, and some fun wristbands to celebrate the Virtual Launch Party of Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy)! (Check out the prizes here.)

Three ways to enter (you can have multiple entries):

1)     Leave a comment here or at the Virtual Launch Party post

2)     Tweet (with tag #keepingOPENMINDS)

Example: When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep. #keepingOPENMINDS @susankayequinn #SF #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/psX1Hh

Example: Celebrate the launch of OPEN MINDS by @susankayequinn #keepingOPENMINDS #SciFi #paranormal #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

3) Facebook (tag @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn)

Example: Celebrate the launch of paranormal/SF novel OPEN MINDS by @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn for a chance to win Open Books/Open Minds prizes!

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