Dark Mocha Bite: Hellshift by Tom Olbert

Our continuing celebration of all things horror, Mocha Memoirs Press spotlights our DARK MOCHA BITE series. These stories are dark morsels of delicious horror and horror romance. Just like decadent dark chocolate, some of these titles are bitter, but good for your heart!

Today's Dark Mocha Bite comes from talented and multi-faceted artist, Tom Olbert. His two other MMP titles, Long Haul and Along Came a Spider,demonstrate Tom's various storytelling prowess.

Tom's latest venture, HELLSHIFT, is another tasty bit of fiction.

Blurb: Preston Chandler is a lonely, overworked corporate office drone on the worst assignment of his life. In the dark future world of Preston’s time, low-level clerks like himself must serve a 1-year shift on a corporate mining colony on a hellish alien planet whose indigenous population has been wiped out by nuclear genocide.

He isn’t safe even in his corporate offices, as dismembered human bodies begin turning up. Preston fears he is losing his mind. He desperately wants to return to Earth, but is trapped in an escalating nightmare. Computerized psych-evaluation technology probes his mind with dehumanizing invasiveness.
Preston finally completes his assignment and is looking forward to returning home to Earth at last. But will his Hellshift ever end ?

Grab a copy of HELLSHIFT tonight and find out.

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MOCHA MEMOIRS ESPRESSO SHOTS: If Only & Program Complete

We'd like to share with you two more titles that aren't exactly steamy, but they are from our Espresso Shots line.

These are very much like the Steamy Mocha Shots, but without the steam. In fact, these are bold blasts of a genre—science fiction, horror, or fantasy. These stories have all the hallmarks of those classic genres but add dashes of bold creativity. The other good news—espresso shots are only 6,000 words or less.We like to think of espresso shots as coffee (classic genres) with shots of espresso (bold eye-opening creativity).
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Miriam Ruff's horror/science fiction title, IF ONLY, is an espresso blast of both terror and suspense.

Blurb: A disfigured man develops a friendship over the Internet, but when the two finally meet, events take a surprising turn.

Purchase for less than a $1.00!

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Likewise, Miriam's science fiction titlte, PROGRAM COMPLETE, is a jolt of spine tingling suspense!

Blurb: Stationed on the remote Relay 4 asteroid communications station, Devon Fragoza faces a life and death struggle as a collision with a supply ship destroys his life support system. He has only one and a half hours to work with the computer, an artificial intelligence and Fragoza’s closest friend, to find a way to restore the system while at the same time facing the inevitability of his own mortality.

Purchase for less than a $1.00!Both titles are available through Drive Thru Fiction which is one of our current shopping cart distributor. The titles are also available at Amazon and BN.com.

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Why You Should Read a Mocha Memoirs Press title

by Nicole Givens Kurtz

You know how when you visit an airline, the stewards often remark about how they know you have a choice of airlines and they thank you—sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes with apathy—for selecting them?

This isn’t that type of blog.

That doesn’t mean we don’t know you have a chose of electronic publishers—you do. We are also extremely grateful to you for purchasing our titles, and reading our great stories.

This blog post is for those who may be on the fence, getting terrible wedgies, because they can’t decide whether or not to try one of our titles.

Of course you should!

You, of course, don’t have to take our word for it. I liken trying a new author, book series, or musician to trying new foods. Sure, the meal may look questionable, and granted you may not understand all the ingredients or the name of it, but all of that is window dressing and labeling. What really counts is how it tastes.

So, I'm asking you on this July 4th, our nation's birthday to embrace your spirit of revolution, rebellion, and freedom to do what this country's forefathers did--take a chance. Try one of our titles today.

Without risk there can be no reward.

And there's no reward like discovering a new series, author, or publisher you absolutely enjoy. Happy Fourth!

What is Mocha Memoirs? The Significance of the Name.

by Nicole Givens Kurtz
Owner/Publisher-Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC

As our second anniversary launches, I would like to answer what on the surface appears to be a simple question, but in more complexity, isn’t a simple one at all.

What is Mocha Memoirs?

Are we an erotic romance publishing house? Are we a science fiction, horror, and fantasy publishing house? Do we self publish? Do we make authors pay for publication? What—and who—are we exactly?

Mocha Memoirs Press is an electronic publishing house focused on producing quality commercial fiction in the genres of romance, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Those genres are very broad, and as such, we accept subgenres within those as well. For example, an erotic romance set in the future, or a horror romance story that ends with a Happy Ever After.

To put it plainly, we like—and publish, great stories, regardless of the labeling.

The only absolute rule is we do not publish non-fiction, hate filled works, or erotic romance that includes bestiality, golden showers, rape, or anything we deem degrading.

So, one question I often get when I meet readers at conventions is why Mocha Memoirs, especially when we don’t even publish memoirs?

Again, the answer is pretty simple. I like alliteration. Most importantly, late one night in 1998 when I was looking for a title to call my electronic magazine of short fiction and poetry, I wanted something that spoke to others like me—a creative African American woman. Although the stories aren’t personal memoirs per se, each story an author tells carries hallmarks of the individual who wrote it, and thus memoirs.

No great mystery. Just a woman with a goal to produce quality works and a mad obsession with good stories. Mocha Memoirs is an outlet for authors to connect to readers.

Enough said.

A Sneak Peek at Tom Olbert's LONG HAUL

http://mochamemoirspress.com/long-haul/

In the near future, physicists have stumbled on a way to channel dark energy, making it possible to instantaneously travel anywhere in the world by passing through parallel universes as they intersect with our continuum at given points in time and space. Daredevil truck drivers like the protagonist, Garth Jenkins and his trucking partner Sally Drake, earn hazardous duty pay by trucking cargo through perilous alternate universes often infested with deadly alien predators. Garth and Sally are offered a mysterious and possibly illegal contract to deliver some unknown cargo to unknown buyers in another universe. En route to the transdimensional drop-off point, their truck is hijacked by Keira Takahashi, a beautiful and radical young college student who claims they are carrying a nuclear device and are being used by evil alien forces intent on destroying another universe.

At first, Garth and Sally dismiss the young woman’s story as madness, until hostile aliens in undead human bodies make an attempt on her life. Finding themselves on the run and not knowing whom they can trust, Garth and Sally embark on a crooked road through dangerous alien universes and remote time periods. Finally escaping to Cal Tech University and confirming Keira’s story, Garth and Sally must decide whether to get themselves to safety or risk their lives to save a universe. They choose the latter. Arriving in the alien home universe, a barren landscape under a dim purple sun, Garth and Sally turn the tables on the evil company and their murderous alien clients. After a fierce battle, the alien dimension portal is destroyed and Garth and Sally narrowly escape.

Garth and Sally join up with an underground trucking network and devote themselves to fighting the evil corporation.