Literary - Indie Book Promo

Book Feature – Junie Moon Rising by June Collins

Posted on May 11, 2013 Written by Indiebookpromo 17 Comments

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome June Collins to the blog! She is here to share some information about her latest book, Junie Moon Rising! If this sound like something that you would be interested in reading, please find some buy links at the bottom of the post and pick up a copy or two.

Blurb

This sequel to Goodbye Junie Moon begins where she left off, in Washington, after testifying in Senate Hearings. She has sacrificed her business, and put herself at risk, by succumbing to her conscience and becoming a whistle-blower.

In Vietnam she saw so much death and so many devastated lives, that her one goal now is to save a life by adopting one of the many pitiful orphans she had seen living on the streets. This seems impossible. After all, she is not the usual PTA candidate.

A divorced, ex-stripper, suffering PTSD from the Vietnam War has little chance of meeting the adoptive parents stringent guidelines. And even in the 1970’s, such overseas adoptions were expensive. Even worse, she would need to be married. She had tried that once – briefly, and vowed she would never marry again. So with no husband, no money, and a lifestyle best suited to the future TV series, Sex and The City, what hope did she have?

Bio.

June Collins, co- author of The Khaki Mafia and author of Goodbye Junie Moon, has lived an almost unbelievable life. She has been a farmer, dancer, rock group booking agent, nightclub owner, whistle blower, author, TV host, commercial King Crab fisherman in Alaska’s Bering Sea and lastly, mother to six adopted children from four countries. She travels slightly less now and writes on a mountain top in Queensland, Australia. When not traveling or writing, she can be found feeding wild parrots, chasing garden-destroying turkeys or taming wallabies. In all her books, she challenges women to step out of their comfort zones and suck every drop of juice from life.

June can be found:

Blog * Blog * Facebook * About Me

Junie Moon Rising can be purchased:

Amazon

Filed Under: bio/blurb feature, Literary

Book Feature with Tomica Scavina, author of Kaleidoscope World

Posted on February 28, 2013 Written by Indiebookpromo 6 Comments

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome Tomica Scavina to the blog. She is the author of Kaleidoscope World and is here to share some information about her book. If this sound like a book that you would be interested in reading, please pick up a copy using the buy links at the bottom of the post.

• • •

Blurb:

A collector of kaleidoscopes and lousy relationships, Dahlia Kasper leaves her possessive alcoholic mother and moves from New York to Barcelona. In search of lost bits of her childhood, she starts living in an apartment where her father was murdered when she was four. As soon as she enters the apartment, strange things begin to happen.

Her favorite kaleidoscope becomes a gateway to another dimension where she encounters a ghost of a famous physicist from the 19th century who tries to persuade her that reality is like a moth-eaten sweater – full of holes. He needs her to help him plug up these holes and save the world from vanishing, while the only thing Dahlia really wants to save is her sanity.

This is just a part of Dahlia’s problems. An elderly cello-playing neighbor turns her emotional world upside down and her longing for lost home takes her further than she ever imagined she could go. To collect all the scattered kaleidoscope-bits of her life together, Dahlia needs to go through an intense inner transformation that takes courage and a sharp sense of humor.

Excerpt:

Copernicus figured out five hundred years ago that we are in orbit around the sun, but Dahlia Kasper’s world was still a flat plate on a tortoise’s back. In her Dahlia-centric solar system, the sun had stopped mattering years ago. When? She couldn’t remember… She’d been told it was when she was four. Early trauma. Screwed from the get-go. Her father was shot under unexplained circumstances. A single bullet. To the heart.

While she dragged her suitcases along Carrer d’en Roca, sweat trickled down her forehead, temples, and back. She stared up at the four-story buildings with their stone façades and little balconies with sinuous, iron railings. Getting ready for this had taken years. Although it took her less than three hours to pack, her psychological preparation had been going on for far longer. A week before, she had announced to her mother that she was leaving for Barcelona and would be staying there for at least three months. Her mother was so shocked that she downed almost an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and sent her six text messages in a row: Luv u kid luv u lots. Plz dontgo 2 Bcrelona, the apt cursd, mattr soaks up negtive enrgy. U + me we gotta b tothegr 2 b safe. Yr dads in heavn, alwys with u, enrgy nver dies, u will pray + feel him near. This is hrad 4 me, crying, u r all I gt, see, stay hr, luv ties us, dont knw how Ill mnage if sthng hppens 2 u. Dontgo if u luv me.

Dahlia’s answer was more concise:

Sober up, Mom. Your baby girl is 28. I’m going. Period.

And off she went.

While disoriented tourists clutching ice cream cones were staring up at where old women were nestled among the hyacinths and freshly washed laundry, Dahlia came to a stop at the front door of the building where she had spent the first years of her life. There was an old-fashioned barbershop on the ground floor, where a swarthy, portly barber with a Dali-esque moustache was shaving a gray-haired gentleman.

“En que et puc ajudar, maca?” the barber asked, catching sight of her in the mirror.

Dahlia spoke a little Catalonian. Maca she understood. In Catalonian for Beginners, she had read that it meant beautiful. Her reflection in the mirror had her thinking that the barber had an odd sense of beauty. Pale and slender, with large dark-blue eyes, she saw herself as a blonde, longhaired grasshopper, the result of some bizarre genetic mutation. She was as beautiful as David Bowie in the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. Though only after he’d shed his artificial skin, contact lenses, and wig and shown himself as he truly was – an alien from the planet Anthea. There were, of course, some guys who liked her looks, who had nicknamed her Pixie. Others found her strange, which led to her other nickname – Eel.

“Estàs perduda?” asked the barber, shaving a gray-haired gentleman whose eyes were shut and mouth slightly ajar, like a whale feeding on plankton.

“Perduda?… No,” she shook her head, forcing a smile, “I’m not lost,” she added quietly and pulled her suitcases toward the doorway. “I was born here.”

The door in front of her, painted a dark red, was peeling in places. Its handle, in the shape of a curving grape leaf, was smooth, polished by the sweat of countless hands that had been touching it for years, decades, even centuries. Picturing herself standing before that door, she had imagined that her memories would come flooding back and that she’d bask in the cozy, cottony warmth of her early childhood. But none of that happened. Her childhood was still a black hole. An abyss, in fact. A blank, staring nothing.

Dahlia turned the door handle and found it was locked. She reached into her purse and drew out a key on a Tinkerbell keychain. One key… Could it possibly open both the street door and the door to the apartment?

“Shit,” she mumbled, trying to turn the key in the lock to no avail. She took a deep breath, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and smoothed the wrinkles on her shirt and denim skirt. She would have to buzz one of the neighbors. But who? Vilar? Guariola? Maura? Ferran? Balda? Horvat? Between the brass plates bearing the names Balda and Maura was an empty place. On that spot twenty-five years before, between two round Catalonian family names, there had been a harsh, German surname: Kasper.

Dahlia shivered. Whenever she thought of her German blood, she’d go all cold inside. Her father German, her mother British. Enough to freeze your soul. Her therapist, Rosalyn, insisted that the chill she carried in her chest had nothing to do with her background, but instead with the early loss of her father and the unhealthy relationship she had with her mother. Dahlia, however, never stopped believing it had to be blood-related. Sometimes before she fell asleep she’d imagine a shimmering frost coursing through her veins. That would put her into a trance-like state, where the coldness turned to light.

“Balda,” she voiced softly and pressed the round brass buzzer.

That name had the warmest feel to it.

Ten seconds later she heard a blast of static, then a man’s voice.

“Qui es?”

“Well, uh… a neighbor. Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” answered the voice. “Which neighbor?”

“Kasper. We moved away years ago, more than twenty.”

“Kasper?…” asked the puzzled stranger at the other end. “Kasper who?”

“My name is Dahlia. Dahlia Kasper. I have a key to the apartment but not to the street door. Would you buzz me in, please?”

“Just a moment,” said the voice and then static again. While she waited at the door, she could hear sounds of a street organ from Las Ramblas. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and Barcelona was moving slowly into its vibrant nightlife. Tourists were cruising along the narrow Carrer d’en Roca like sea horses borne by drowsy currents, while the pressure rose in Dahlia’s head and her ears rang as if she were at the dentist’s. After a minute of waiting, she started chewing her lower lip. Would Mr. Balda, whoever he was, open the door? Or was he old and senile and inclined to forget? No, his voice had sounded youthful. Maybe he was choosing to ignore her. Should she try the Horvat buzzer?

The lock clicked and the massive front door creaked open.

Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac.

Kaleidoscope World can be purchased on Amazon.

Bio:

Tomica Scavina (1975) is a psychologist, who, at some point in her life, felt that her professional life was squelching her creativity. She diagnosed herself as “overly normal” and returned to her forgotten love of writing fiction to unleash her creative streak. This resulted in three novels. Tomica lives in Croatia and for now the only one in English is Kaleidoscope World. It is a psychological thriller with elements of mystery. If you find anything “normal” on its pages, let her know – she’ll find a way to cure it. Find out more about Tomica on her website: www.tomicascavina.com

Tomica can be found

Twitter * Goodreads

Filed Under: bio/blurb feature, Literary

Interview with Ryan Pak, author of Stories in the Key of Read

Posted on January 19, 2013 Written by Indiebookpromo 7 Comments

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome Ryan Pak to the blog. He is the author of Stories in the Key of Read and is here to share some information about his book. If this sounds like something that you would be interested in reading, please find buy links at the bottom of the post and pick up a copy or two.

• • •

IBP: Tell us about your new release?

Ryan: Stories in the Key of Read combines my love of music and stories from my 20s. Every chapter is named after an album that I bought/was released in my 20s and they provide a “jumping off” point for my stories. It’s not necessary to know about the artists/bands in the book, I stay away from being too academic about the music.

IBP: Tell us a little about yourself.

Ryan: I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota but I’ve been living in California for the majority of my life. I’m the youngest of 5 kids and I have 4 older sisters. Growing up in that environment was pretty unique, I think it’s safe to say. I work at an advertising agency during the day, so I guess that makes me a writer at night.

IBP: What started you on your journey to be a writer?

Ryan: In high school, my friend and I started a music blog where we interviewed bands and wrote reviews to pad our college applications. In college, I was a film major and I really enjoyed writing screenplays. A few years after college, my old college roommate coaxed me into starting a blog about my autobiographical adventures, and a lot of those adventures ended up in the book.

IBP: When you made your first sale, how did you celebrate and with whom?

Ryan: I threw a book release party at a small theater when the book first came out. I read some stories, and played some songs with a band. My parents, friends, and co-workers all came out to support me. It was a really fun night. I have co-workers that will regularly ask me when the next show is! (The answer: February 22 in Santa Ana!)

IBP: What’s the hardest part of writing a book?

Ryan: I thought that the re-writes were going to be the most challenging part, but finally letting go and saying “this is finished” was extremely difficult. I didn’t want to let go of the manuscript.

IBP: Did you know the title before you started writing?

Ryan: My blog was originally called Stories in the Key of Read so when I started focusing on stories that intertwined with music, it was a no-brainer. (Stories in the Key of Read is a reference to the Stevie Wonder album, Songs in the Key of Life.)

IBP: What inspired you to write, you took any ideas from other books, movies etc?

Ryan: My sister Ami bought me a copy of Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris when I was in college and that book showed me that autobiographical stories didn’t have to necessarily be about overcoming impossible odds, they could be about normal suburban life. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is a book that lot of my friends associate with my book because the characters in it are so obsessed with their record collections. I loved the book and movie and I understand why my friends say that even if it wasn’t something I was conscious of when I wrote it.

IBP: Are there any particular books and/or authors that inspired you and continue to do so?

Ryan: As I mentioned earlier, I’m a big David Sedaris fan. I also really like Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, and Garrison Keillor.

IBP: Where is your work available?

Ryan: My book can be found via the Createspace Bookstore and Amazon (physical and digital). I hope to have the book in the iBookstore by the end of January.

IBP: If I give you a time machine, what time period and in what place would you travel to?

Ryan: I’d like to have been around Minnesota in the 1980s as an adult. I’d get to see so much great local music (Prince, The Replacements, Husker Dü), I’d get to experience the 1980 Miracle on Ice game (Herb Brooks was the University of Minnesota hockey coach, and many of the players on the team were from the U of M team), and I’d be able to have actual memories of the Minnesota Twins 1987 World Series championship (I was 5 at the time).

IBP: What projects are you currently working on right now? Would you mind sharing them with us?

Ryan: I’m working on writing some songs with the hope of releasing some sort of album in the next year or so. I’m also working on my 2nd book, which will be about my very dysfunctional relationship past and I hope that will be released in early 2014.

Blurb:

Stories in the Key of Read follows Ryan Pak through his music-devoted 20s in a series of transparently-penned nonfiction shorts. Fans of David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, and anyone who has survived young adulthood can appreciate the humor and heartbreak–from the death of record stores to relationships and the perils of living paycheck to paycheck–that come together in this sheet music to the cacophony that is life.

Excerpt:

I first met my friend Phil during our freshmen year of college. I was visiting someone who lived in the same dorm, and I heard someone playing a Beck song on acoustic guitar. I walked over to the room and asked him, “Are you playing Beck?” It wasn’t one of Beck’s more popular songs, and I’m not a die-hard Beck fan, so there was a small bit of doubt in me. Luckily, it was a Beck song, and Phil was excited that I knew that. At that moment, a friendship was born.

Though, strangely enough, what makes our bond so strong is not our appreciation of Beck, but our love of Pavement. Even though Pavement had broken up the year before we met, they were and still are a popular subject in our conversations. We both had older sisters that had filled our heads with a utopian version of college where we would meet people that shared our passions and interests; but that was mostly for naught. Perhaps Berkeley and Oberlin had those people, but Irvine did not. We were both disenchanted with our college on different levels, and Phil was definitely the more disappointed of the two.

Irvine was very much not a college town, and Phil felt like there was very little redeeming value. The only moment that Phil felt any pride in being in Irvine came when we were watching the Pavement video for “Gold Soundz” from the Slow Century DVD that came out in 2002, and we realized that the video had been shot in Irvine. We were still in a time where YouTube didn’t yet exist so this was probably the first time either of us had seen the video since the mid 90s, and it wasn’t until we saw a bonus feature on the video that we could 100 percent verify that they filmed the video just miles from where we went to school. In fact, they shot part of the video at the University Center, right across the street from the college that we were attending.

The University Center of 1994 (the year the video was shot) looked very similar to its incarnation in 2002, so it was easy for Phil and me to recognize the stores that the band was walking by. When we graduated in 2004, the Center—while structurally the same—started to take on a much different look. Many of the stores closed down and were replaced. If we had enrolled in college just a few years later, we might not have been able to pinpoint that the guys in Pavement were walking at a place we frequented during our college years. Between the timing of when we were enrolled in college and the release of the DVD, it was a perfect storm of events.

One of the stores that ended up closing down in the University Center was The Wherehouse—a music and movie store chain that ended up going out of business. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the chain (e.g. anything that wasn’t on sale was overpriced) but it was nice to have a store so close to campus. I would burn time there between classes pretty regularly. When I found out The Wherehouse was closing down, I knew I had to give it one last visit—not for sentimental reasons, but because I could probably get something for cheap.

I didn’t exactly make a list, but I knew that I should walk into a closeout sale with some sort of a plan. I had been listening to some songs by a British “group” (actually just one guy) called The Streets. They were new, so I wasn’t sure if a store like The Wherehouse would carry their album. They had it; but I had to ask for help finding it because I didn’t expect it to be in the ”Rap/Hip Hop” section of the store. I bought it, brought it to work, and started to listen to it immediately. My co-workers asked me what I was listening to, and they all gave me the same puzzled reaction when I tried to explain The Streets as “kind of electronic, kind of hip hop, British music.”

I tried to preach the gospel of The Streets to the masses and my peers in college, but my words fell on deaf ears. Classmates, friends, and church members all rejected what I had to say because “British and rap don’t belong in the same sentence.” I wasn’t blind to the fact that the music of The Streets wasn’t exactly “Top 40” crossover material, but since I was at a place of “higher education,” I was under the false presumption that everyone was a lot more open to different things—like “British rap.”

And I haven’t met a whole lot of people who were fans of The Streets since, but every one of them that I have met, I’ve gotten along with. To say that this particular revelation made me jaded would be far too melodramatic; but I do feel, on the whole, that a lot of my college experience was pretty disappointing. The utopia that Phil and I had heard about from our sisters was definitely not the place we ended up. Maybe it would’ve been different if we had been in a true college town instead of the slice of suburbia that we had. I still talk to Phil, and while we both still share a love of Pavement, we can now also share the disappointment of going to college in a planned community opposed to a town with some character.

Stories in the Key of Read can be purchased on Amazon.

Bio:

Ryan Pak is an Orange County, California based writer who graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2005 with a degree in Film Studies. In the same year, Ryan won the 2005 UC Irvine Screenplay Writing Festival for an original screenplay he wrote, The Silent Treatment. Currently, Ryan writes non-fiction personal short stories and essays on his blog at www.ryanpak.com, and reads many of these stories as part of his theater show, Ryan and the Technicolor Wardrobe—a variety show that also includes live music. He can be reached at ryan@ryanpak.com.

Ryan can be found on:

Blog * Twitter * Facebook

Filed Under: Author Promotion, Book Promotion, Interview, Literary

Book Feature with Guido Mattioni, author of Whispering Tides

Posted on October 20, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 5 Comments

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome Guido Mattioni to the blog. Author of Whispering Tides, Guido is here to share some information about his book. If this sounds like a book you are interested in reading, please use the buy links at the bottom of the post to pick up a copy or two.

Blurb:

An intimately lost Italian in search of a new life. An ancient American city of the Old South, softly “female” and welcoming to all, especially to “Her” beloved ghosts. A New Zealander florist who loves shoes and adores Others. The cult of Friendship and the religion of Remembrance. A cat fisherman who barely speaks and “His” other deeply wise animal friends. A bronze statue that listens. A rich eccentric becomes a taxi driver for boredom, and a psychologist by vocation. A mayor without a City Hall, but beloved and listened to. An old African-American who wonders about the great mysteries of life. Together, with other colorful characters, all intersect in a scenario of poignant and subtropical beauty creating a choral story without boundaries. A touching and funny “adult tale” who will make you cry and smile at the same time.

Bio:

Born in Udine, Northeastern Italy, in 1952, Guido Mattioni has lived and worked in Milan since 1978. Writing has always been his job and his life. During 35 years of journalism, he has worked for daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines while holding almost every professional title possible, from reporter to editor-in-chief, and from deputy editor to special correspondent. He has traveled all over the world, especially in the USA, where he has visited almost every state. Recently retired, he still is an active columnist and freelancing contributor to Italian national dailies and magazines.

When he was younger he wrote two non-fiction works.

Whispering Tides is his first novel, and it is also available in its Italian version - Ascoltavo le maree. Set in Savannah, Georgia, the book was recently nominated for the 2013 Global eBook Awards of Santa Barbara, CA (Popular Literature Fiction category). The book is also a finalist at the 2012 edition of the Californian Awards – where Whispering Tides was the only book by an Italian author out of a thousand participants from 16 countries.

Bringing him to set his debut as a novelist right in Savannah was the mix of an intimate story and his long lasting “love affaire” with the Georgian City. It’s a love story – Guido says – that blossomed in a memorable, early Savannah spring in 1991, amidst gorgeous blooming azaleas. It was his very first visit there and it was to be just the first of an ongoing, never-ending series of yearly visits. More than this: It’s a love story that is nourished by a growing number of solid local friendships that pinnacle in 1998 with honorary Savannah citizenship being granted to him. Quoting Alberto Landi, the novel’s main character, he felt “this place hidden deeply inside, something already familiar…” and “since then the city of Savannah has become something intimate, an inseparable part of me, like a vital organ or my second skin.”

One of the yet few Italian “Indie” writers, utterly convinced about the positive impact of this revolutionary wave that is giving full meaning to the expression “freedom of press,” Mattioni is the author and publisher of his novel, which is downloadable both in English and Italian. Whispering Tides (Ascoltavo le maree) is available from main digital libraries such as Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Diesel, Smashwords, Sony and it is also available in paperback edition from Amazon.com and Lulu.com.

Guido is married to Maria Rosa, an Oncologist who is – as Guido says – someone “much more socially useful” than he is, apart from being definitely a much more beautiful person too. If he could be reincarnated he would like to do it as a chef because cooking is the pastime he is most fond of and is the only sport he practices. More than this, he is an atypical Italian because he suffers an incurable allergy to soccer.

Guido can be found:

Facebook * Twitter * Goodreads * Pinterest

Whispering Tides can be purchased:

US Amazon * iTunes * Barnes & Noble * Smashwords * LuLu

Synopsis

When his beloved wife Nina suddenly dies after 23 years together, Alberto Landi understands he has to leave Milan, Italy, where he has always lived and worked. He leaves his friends, colleagues, a good job and the polluted big city he has never loved, which has now become even more intolerable to him. He is fifty, totally alone and confused, but he definitely knows that he has to escape across the ocean, to the only place he and Nina loved together. He lands in Savannah, Georgia. There, in a natural paradise governed by the breath of the tides and with the help of many dear friends – colorful human characters as well as wise animals – he starts to rebuild his new life. His dream is coming true until the day he wakes up one morning and discovers that…

Excerpt:

Amniotic fluid

The air told me and the azaleas confirmed it: it was the end of March in Savannah.

I was inhaling, breathing, and becoming intoxicated. Yet it was not perfume. It was an antique, ancestral odor, it was the humid scent flowing every six hours from sticky coats of mud left after each tide by the tireless embrace between earth and water. It was the primitive and stagnant essence the lagoon spreads on its banks with the selfless generosity that belongs only to Nature. It is like the thick scent of an excited woman in love, it’s sweet and sour at the same time.

I was breathing in again and I recognized it.

Now I understood the sincere sensation that I had experienced the very first time I had arrived here and immediately felt this place hidden deeply inside something already familiar that belonged to me. It was almost as if that water and that mud, so remote from the places where I was born and had lived, were in reality elements that had always been known to me, so much so that from then on I felt as if I was immersed, secure and at ease in an amniotic liquid.

I’m not crazy. The truth is that I fell madly in love one day with this part of the Georgian coast, with this humid and harsh land of perennially nomadic waters that at certain times disappear, but then always come back. And I was also in love with these sometimes little crazy people as well as with the always profoundly wise animals that live here. Since then the city of Savannah has become something intimate, an inseparable part of me, like a vital organ or my second skin.

After that first time I fell prisoner to that blind confusion that a human being can experience not only for another person, but also for a place, that I would return to as soon as I could. There was something inside of me that I cannot explain, but I would never investigate, something that even now I find hard to describe fully in words, something that kept telling me that I “had” to make that trip, a sort of a sentimental pilgrimage, at least once a year. And I have obeyed and often exceeded those annual orders.

I have done it regularly for years. At least every six months I’ve shouldered the boredom of the hours needed to fly over the Atlantic. But this has been done while passing time awaiting to return – always made even more agonizing by the nostalgic suffering from previous departures – that I have come to the point of no longer even feeling those long hours as they have been devoured by anxiety over each upcoming arrival.

Meanwhile I learned to bear coming back with a smile to the unchanging bureaucracy and predictable questions of U.S. Immigration officers. Those who want to know every time from me – but they should know every detail of me by now, since it’s all there in their computer terminals, from fingerprints to eye scans – whether I bring seeds or missile launchers, both options contained in the scope of an identical box to tick, as if the two things may have the same potential danger.

The consequence of my love affair was, until yesterday – because yesterday my life changed forever – a back and forth experience between Italy and America to the point that I did not know how many times I had landed at Atlanta airport and ran a race in order to not miss my connecting flight at the gate, pacing around and waiting for the amplified voice, “Savannah, Delta flight number…”

Then, another seat belt to buckle, another taxi down the runway, another attempt to fly with that lovely sensation of weightlessness that leaves a gap between the ground and the air and takes away the breath for quick and exciting moments.

So on, again into the heavens, always hoping in my heart that there will not be a lot of clouds. This is not for fear of turbulence, but because when the sky is clear I can follow mile after mile as everything is passing before my eyes, giving me the illusion of shortening time. With eyes glued to the window in an unnatural position that makes for a sore neck, I devour every minute and mile and turn my eyes down, to scroll past houses and bridges, rivers and roads in a Lilliputian world that has come to be quite familiar. Forward and onward, until the long-awaited moment when the plane reduces engine power to create the sensation of wanting to drop down. At that point my anxiety goes up to the limit and the forces within me are restrained only by the safety belt.

All this happened to me again just yesterday.

“Certainly, Mr. Landi, we will do our best to please you… Let’s see… On our deals from Atlanta to Savannah there is still one seat available numbered 11 F, if that is OK with you…”

Of course it was OK and everything went well from then on.

Back in Milan, at the check-in counter, I had asked for my usual, a window seat, but not too far forward. I did not want to find myself with the wing of a Boeing 737 somewhere between me and the landscape below, despite the fact that I was already very familiar with it. It was worth seeing over and over again or even just imagining it, if any part of it were hidden by clouds. I could rebuild it by using my visual memory or simply by engaging in an innocent exercise of reasonable imagination.

I admit that I always have a desire to look downwards when in flight and this could be seen as an almost infantile weakness considering I am more than half a century old and my youthful thick hair has worryingly turned white. Furthermore, I admit that it could be considered a strange obsession after a career in journalism that flew me all over the world. Yet this seemingly neophyte weakness has never disturbed me during flights, nor wrought me any embarrassment.

“Is this your first time here?”, asked the massive man with a big smile sitting next to me shortly after takeoff, Sam Pinker… – …field or fold, or something like that. He presented himself by shaking my hand with his large right hand, just a little oily from the mouthful of peanuts that he had just swallowed. “I work in the field of catheters and my company services hospitals, clinics and universities all over Georgia”, he added proudly without me even giving him the least inclination of wanting to know about his line of work. But I held back my smile while instinctively thinking how he might look while speaking to physicians and praising the quality and size of his most extensive catheter by sliding it between his big fingers, as round as hot dogs.

“No, I think this must be the twenty-third time that I have come to Savannah…”, I threw out there without even thinking.

Sam Pinker… – …field, or fold, or whatever the hell his name was, rubbed his eyes in disbelief. He already knew my name and what part of Italy I came from. My travel documents had been lying on the folding table in front of me just inches from his eyes for more than a few minutes while I had been trying to clean and tidy my pockets. I was amused to think that this large man had read through the transparency of my gin and tonic on the rocks that was splashing around in the plastic cup I had used as a makeshift paperweight. But I considered it to be on par with innocent curiosity and my strange habit of always wanting to look down during flights.

“Twenty-three times in Savannah? An Italian? Excuse me if I ask, mister Landi: but why? Sure, the city is beautiful, but what is an Italian doing in Savannah for twenty three times?”

I responded by making a gesture with my hand asking him to wait for a moment while I rummaged through the side pockets of my old kaki colored cargo pants that I always use for travel. As I had learned from my trips made for work, they help me keep everything under control.

“No, Alberto, in the pocket there”, I almost said aloud. “Ah, yes, here it is…”

The picture I had been looking for was in the pocket of my blue Oxford button-down cotton shirt, another piece that was an indispensable part of my usual traveling outfit.

In the color photo shot, there I was with Nina and the mayor of Savannah, standing behind a lecture podium.

“You see, this is me and this is my wife, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago…”

“My God, I’m so sorry, you must have suffered a lot. And if you allow me, my God, she was really beautiful”, interrupted Sam Pinker… – ..field, or fold, or whatever the hell he was called.

“…That’s life”, I said hanging my head down towards my shoulders, unable to find anything better to say on the thirteenth hour of my journey.

“However, in the photo we are in Savannah at a ceremony where we were awarded honorary citizenship, few years ago. Do you see the key to the city that the mayor is handing to me? That’s why I go back and forth so many times. Because it is a place I love and where I am loved a lot”.

At that point Sam Pinker… – …field or fold, or whatever the hell he was called, certainly wanted to ask many more questions, such as, why all the honors, who did I know in town, or in which hotel would I be staying. I realized that he was ready.

When…

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain would like to announce that we will be landing in Savannah in a few minutes, please fasten your seat belts, place the tray in front of you in an upright position and…”

They were very welcome words and they were sufficient enough to lessen my neighbor’s curiosity. I went back to looking down – avidly – through the window.

Yes, I was seeing what I had waited for thirteen hours to see once more.

Finally, beneath my eyes was the green of the impenetrable foliage from the trees that over time have become my friends, if not brothers, as well as the Savannah River along with its tributaries – the Herb, the Moon, the Vernon and the Skidaway – in whose waters wooden walkways leading to piers stretch out like long legs of locusts, frail and trembling. Further down in altitude is the twisty maze of tidal creeks, the shallower and narrower canals that do not even have the right to have their own name. They are perfectly visible and submitted every six hours to the comings and goings of the tides that make them look from time to time snake-like in the brown mud of shallow water when they are dry and like liquid tinsel squiggles illuminated by reflections of silver hue when the waters have invaded them.

Now, ever faster and closer, I saw coming towards me roofs, steeples, blue eyed waters of swimming pools, cars, and finally – more and more quickly – power and telephone lines along a runway with other aircraft already landed just moments before. Then, underneath me, I felt the soft bounce and great screeching from the tires of the plane on the sun warmed tarmac, the roar of the open flaps down against the air resistance and finally the weight of my body pushed forward while the brakes screamed and velocity decreased until everything came to a halt.

It had all happened to me again like it was just yesterday. The difference being that this time and from here on after, I would not depart again.

Filed Under: Author Promotion, bio/blurb feature, Book Promotion, Literary, Romance

Guest post with Herb Schultz, author of Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and other Stories

Posted on August 25, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 5 Comments

Indie Book Promo would like to welcome Herb Schultz to the blog. He’s the author of several books, but here to day to share a guest post and also to share some information about his book, Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and other Stories. If this book sounds like something that you would be interested in, please use the buy links at the bottom of the post and pick up a copy!

Twins by Herb Schultz

I have a fascination with identical twins, especially conjoined (Siamese) twins – the story opportunities seem boundless. Several years ago I read “The Two,” Irving Wallace’s well-researched biography of Eng and Chang Bunker – the original Siamese Twins. Of all the details of their picaresque lives, the fact I found most compelling was that both men had married sisters and sired 21 children between them. I struggled to comprehend living in the constant presence of another person, enjoying nary a second of privacy, concluding at first that the experience must be intolerable. But like those born blind who don’t consider their sightlessness a disadvantage, I suppose two people attached from birth may consider it a normal condition – at least for themselves. Perhaps if such people were to be separated later in life they may succumb to a kind of anxiety associated with chronic adjustment disorder.

My first novel, “RonnieandLennie” (yes, the words are conjoined) explores the lives of two boys lashed together by a band of flesh who join a world that is unprepared to separate them. Seemingly chained for life in a rural backwater of North Carolina, Ronnie and Lennie unexpectedly break free, but life apart is not all it’s cracked up to be. Serious trouble descends upon the boys, and they find themselves prisoners of another kind. To prepare for the novel I researched the lives of many conjoined twins and found a wealth of material in the sad story of Daisy and Violet Hilton, women joined at the hips who appeared in the famous cult film “Freaks” by Tod Browning. The Hilton sisters also starred in an obscure movie “Chained for Life” in which one is accused of murder. Of course the hand-wringer is whether and how to punish the criminal while treating harmless the innocent bystander. This same situation was postulated in Mark Twain’s “Those Extraordinary Twins” in which the judge concluded, “I cannot convict both, for only one is guilty. I cannot acquit both, for only one is innocent. My verdict is that justice has been defeated by the dispensation of God.” Dig up a rare copy of “Chained for Life” if you want to find out how the Hilton Sisters fared.

In my third novel, a story of deceit, connivance, despair and revenge titled “Double Blind Test” I returned to the deployment of identical twins. This time Tracy Shepard, an expert in the art of negotiation offers to help the owners of a small pharmaceutical lab resolve a difference between them that is holding up progress on a breakthrough drug. She is compelled to help the owners of the lab – identical twins named Fischer and Fletcher Cuttbate – because their drug is meant to cure an insidious eye disease that afflicts tens of thousands of people, including her father. In the course of her mediation efforts Tracy discovers disturbing evidence of fraud, and soon she finds that nothing is as it seems.

The twins of “Double Blind Test” aren’t conjoined. In fact, they might not even be twins. Who knows? You’ll have to read the book.

* * * * *

Herb Schultz is a graduate of Gannon University and Syracuse University, and has spent more Sometimes the sun doesn't shine down there by indie short story author Herb Schultz than 30 years in the technology industry specializing in supercomputing. He lives in New York and is the author of the novels “RonnieandLennie”, “Architect’s Rendition”, and “Double Blind Test,” and the award-winning short story collection, “Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and Other Stories”.

“Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and Other Stories” is a collection of five twisted tales of deceit, despair, decadence, derision and revenge. The anchor story presents Larry, a stooper who picks up discarded tickets at the racetrack hoping to find a winner among the detritus. He is tormented by Vic, a vicious thug who puts him in the hospital where he meets a thoughtful caregiver and closet artist named Maddie. Larry soon discovers he and Maddie have something in common: both are victims of Vic’s evil inclinations. A bizarre turn of events puts Larry in a position to rise up from the racetrack floor and recover his dignity.
The other stories involve a grocery store robbery that exposes a fiend, a screenwriter on a mission who instead meets a minor character from a major motion picture, a bratty bond trader who tries to mend a fractured relationship with his upstairs neighbor, and a pair of scientists who invent a device that scrambles their futures.

“Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and Other Stories” is the winner of the 2012 Indie reader Discovery Award for best short story collection, and was a two-time finalist in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Award and the 2011 USA Best Book Awards.

Herb can be found:

Facebook * Twitter * Website

Sometimes the Sun Does Shine There and Other Stories can be purchased at:

Website * Amazon

Filed Under: Guest Post, Literary

Interview with Eden Baylee, author of Spring into Summer

Posted on August 16, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 23 Comments

Indie Book Promo is delighted to welcome Eden Baylee to the blog! She is the author of Spring into Summer and is here to answer a few questions and share some information about her latest book. If this sounds like something that you would be interested in reading, please use the buy links at the bottom of the post to pick up a copy or two.

IBP – Tell us about your new release.

Eden – Spring into Summer is a collection of four emotionally-charged erotic novellas. Two take place in the spring and two in the summer.

My love of poetry inspired this book, and the first story called “A Season For Everything” is heavily influenced by my affection for poets.

In “Unlocking the Mystery,” I pay respect to the serendipity of life. Though my writing is steeped in reality, this story acknowledges we can’t always explain the magical quality of love.

“Summer Solstice” kicks off the hot season. Everything about this story is hot—the men, the women, the toys. It’s a party with pagans, and they know how to have fun.

The final novella is “The Lottery,” a story that touches on many themes, but at its core, is about the choices we have, the sacrifices we make and the relationships we keep.

IBP – Do you read reviews written about your book?

Eden – Yes, I do. I feel it’s important to know what readers think of my writing —good or bad. Honest reviews help me become a better writer, so I always welcome them.

IBP – If you wouldn’t be a writer, what you would be?

Eden – I would’ve loved to be a carpenter. I’m a fan of power tools and working with wood. I’m dead serious, but even as I write this, I realize how much of a double-entendre that last sentence is for someone who writes erotica.

IBP – How would your friends describe you in 20 words or less?

Eden – I hope they’d consider me loyal, sympathetic, and caring above all else, but most of the time, they think I’m a fearless smart ass.

IBP – Which scenes were the hardest to write?

Eden – The sex scenes are always hard for me to write, which may seem odd for a writer in my genre. The reason is because the sexual act itself is not particularly interesting to write, yet because it is erotica, this connective piece needs to be included. I treat it with a lot of care because there is always the concern it might sound too clinical.

For me, it’s the foreplay and the story that stimulates the imagination prior to the act itself that arouses. By the time, my characters are having sex, I would hope my reader is sufficiently turned on.

IBP – Who is your favorite character in your new release?

Eden – I have a strong affinity for Sierra Zhao in my final story called “The Lottery.” It’s the most auto-biographical of all the stories, so let’s just say … I’ve walked in her shoes.
IBP – How did you come up with the premise for your books?

Eden – I have two books, and they are both anthologies with four stories each – Fall into Winter and Spring into Summer. I figure I had to get all the seasons under my belt.

I know many authors would’ve packaged them differently, perhaps even selling each novella as a separate book. My main reasoning for doing it this way was to give readers a good feel for my writing style. I also wanted print versions of the books, which only made sense to do if there was sufficient material.

IBP – Which genres do you prefer to read?

Eden – I read everything from literary fiction to thrillers to autobiographies to poetry. I don’t have favorites, and it’s important I read different types of books because I get bored easily. Aside from keeping me engaged, reading different genres allows me to experience various writing styles.

As an indie writer, I also read a lot of indie books. It’s important to see the quality of work out there regardless of genre.

I’m open to reading almost anything as long as the writing is good.

IBP – How important do you find the communication between you and your readers? Do you reply to their messages and reviews?

Eden – Yes, I give a “thank you” to reviewers, and I always reply to blog comments and messages.

I’m an author who wants to be read. Without readers, that is not possible, so it’s of utmost importance to correspond with them. It also gives me great satisfaction to hear from readers because writing is ultimately a solitary endeavor. It’s nice to look up from the keyboard once in a while and know your words are connecting to someone.

IBP – Do you ever run into someone who says “You write WHAT?”

Eden – Yes, erotica is a misunderstood genre of literature. Most people consider it only to be sex scenes connected by commas. It’s not.

I’ve read classics all my life and was influenced early on when I read Story of O by Pualine Réage at age eleven.

Like any genre of writing, good erotica incorporates a solid plot, characterization, and all the elements required to tell a good story. The sexual act is an important part of it, but even more so are the words leading up to it. The amount of sex that exists should only be to serve the story.

IBP – Are you working on anything new and if so when can we expect to see it?

Eden – I’m always working on something, and it’s a full-length novel right now. The genre is yet to be determined, but it will definitely have erotic elements to it.

As to when it will be released … I aim for within a year. I’m not one of those authors who can grind out a book every three months, and it’s difficult for me to both promote and write at the same time. It will be challenging, but I’m looking forward to it.

Thanks so much for allowing me to share with your readers. I really appreciate it, eden

About the book –

In Spring into Summer, a collection of emotionally-charged erotic novellas, four women explore their sexual limits, marked by love, lust, and loss.

Life for Claire Pelletier is changed forever when she meets a professor who teaches her a most important lesson in “A Season for Everything.”

Evelyn Sutton goes in search of a man in “Unlocking the Mystery” and discovers the key to her own heart.

With an open mind, Ava Connors attends a party but wonders if reality can ever live up to her hottest fantasies in “Summer Solstice.”

In “The Lottery,” Sierra Zhao sacrifices herself to numerous men to help a friend, fully aware of the consequences.

With locations in London,Dublin, Cape Cod, and Bangkok, these four women will seek pleasure to alter their lives and push their sexual boundaries.

Bio

Eden Baylee writes literary erotica. Her stories are both sensual and sexual, incorporating some of her favorite things such as travel, culture, and a deep curiosity for what turns people on. Spring into Summer is her second collection of erotic novellas.

~~~~~~~~~~

Eden can be found at -

Website * Blog * Twitter * Facebook * Youtube * Pinterest

Digital Books available on -

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

Filed Under: Interview, Literary

Book Feature with Ricki Wilson, author of Maggie’s Fall

Posted on August 15, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 8 Comments

Indie Book Promo would like to welcome Ricki Wilson, author of Maggie’s Fall to the blog. She’s here to share some information about her book. If this book sounds like something that you would be interested in reading, use the buy links at the bottom of this post to pick up a copy or two!

Maggie McClellan lived the best of two worlds: her corporate profession as a PR director for a world renowned boot maker, and her frequent escapes to the serenity of the West Texas ranch where she was raised – until her parents were killed in a car wreck. Selling the ranch seemed the obvious choice, but when Maggie learned that she was pregnant, she could not imagine raising her child anywhere but on the M-Bar Ranch.

Ten years later, Maggie is back on her feet, but someone is threatening to take it all away. Maggie is not just fighting to save a ranch, she is fighting to save a home, a way of life, and not just for herself, but for her son and the makeshift family who has stood beside her through all storms.

Maggie is that literary character whom readers cheer for. Taking little and giving all, Maggie’s story inspires hope and reminds us of the sheer satisfaction of just following through, of fighting a battle to its final outcome, when, win or lose, we can know that we put up the good fight.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Excerpt:

“T.J., what are you going to do with those things once you get them home?”

T.J. turned around and held up the minnow bucket that he had stuffed with crawdads. “I’m putting them in the little creek in the first pasture. That way, they’ll be close enough to the house that I can take some of the summer kids down there and we can catch ‘em again.”

“Well that’s pretty good thinking. It looks like you’ve had a pretty good harvest. We better head back. You get your stuff gathered up and get your boots back on and I’ll get the horses. You be sure to dry your feet off before you put your boots and socks back on or you might get a blister,” Maggie said, pushing herself off the ground and slapping the red dust from her jeans.

One more curve in the trail and T.J. and Maggie would be in sight of the house. It had been a good morning for a ride and Maggie was pleased that she had followed through with her promise. Catching a slight movement in front of her, Maggie realized that someone was riding towards her in a hurry. A few seconds later, she recognized the rider as Jonah.

“Hey, I’m glad I caught ya’ll before you got back,” Jonah said, his voice ringing a little less than true, but not so much that T.J. would notice. “I meant to ride out earlier, but,” Jonah hesitated, “well anyway, here I am now. T.J., would you mind riding back a ways with me and show me where you’re catching those crawdads?”

“Sure thing Jonah. I was gonna catch some more, but we had to head back. Can I Mama?” The excitement was apparent in T.J.’s request.

“Sure honey.”

Maggie knew that something was up. “Why don’t you give Jonah and me a minute to go over a couple of things, and then I’ll head on back to the house and you two can be on your way.” Maggie guided her mare up close to Jonah’s horse, and T.J., knowing his mom was asking for a little privacy, rode Rainbo off a ways. Once T.J. was out of earshot, Jonah, in a low yet earnest voice, told Maggie what to expect back at the house.

“All hell’s broke loose at the house, Maggie. That developer who’s trying to buy that lower meadow sent a survey crew over to look at the land. Martha wouldn’t let them in the gate, and she told them to get off of the property. They left, but it wasn’t no time and they were back, and they brought their boss with them.”

“You mean the guy who’s trying to buy our meadow is at the house?” Maggie asked, somewhat shocked at the news.

“No, not him—his general manager,” Jonah replied, putting emphasis on the title to show his contempt. “He must have one hell of an operation if he employs his own survey crew.”

“I don’t care what kind of an operation he’s got; he’s not getting my meadow,” Maggie replied, her anger evident.

“Maggie, I wasn’t sure what you’d want to do about T.J. That’s why I came up with the crawdad thing. You realize this means that you and Martha will be at the house by yourselves.”

“Where’s Witt? I thought he was coming out to work on the accounts?”

Jonah shook his head. “He called early this morning and said he wouldn’t be out until tonight. Something came up at the bank.”

“Oh well, I’m sure we’ll be all right. I’m going to have to tell T.J. what’s going on, but I’d rather do it under better circumstance. No, you two go on, I can handle this.”

***************

Maggie set her mare off at a long swift trot and didn’t pull up until she reached the backyard of the ranch house. Stopping for a minute to catch her breath, and to let her mare catch hers, Maggie gathered her fortitude and proceeded slowly around the house, intending to come up behind whoever was on the front porch. As Maggie carefully approached the corner of the house, she saw Martha sitting in her rocker on the front porch. Maggie chuckled to herself; Martha was rocking and shelling peas as if her audience were members of the local sewing circle, and Jett was playing right along. He lay at Martha’s feet not moving a muscle, not one tightly bunched, hair raising muscle. Being careful to keep her mare’s nose well behind the huge holly-hock bush that sprawled around the northwest corner of the house, Maggie leaned forward in her saddle and listened intently to the man who was addressing Martha.

“Look lady. What are you, the cook? The maid? – What the hell do you care if we walk across this property? Don’t you know it’s illegal to deny a man access to his property? It’s called an easement, lady.”

Maggie McClellan had two stages of mad. In the first, the one most folks were used to, she would get mad, shout, bang a few doors, and get over it. But in the second, the one few people had ever seen, and those who had never wanted to see again, her anger seemed to envelope her in a vacuum where nothing existed except Maggie and her antagonist. In this version, there was no yelling, no banging of doors—nothing but deathly silence, broken only by a voice—low, dull, and cold. The man in the front yard had pushed her to somewhere in between the two, but before things could go any further, Maggie nudged her mare around the hollyhock and came up behind the man doing all the talking.

“Everything okay?” Maggie spoke only to Martha, refusing to even acknowledge the stranger’s presence. She quickly surveyed the situation. The man running his mouth was obviously a big shot: tailored khaki pants, a polo shirt, tasseled loafers, mirrored sunglasses, he certainly wasn’t dressed for much work. The other three men, now sitting on the tailgate of their pickup, were all dressed in jeans, tee-shirts, and ball caps. Maggie would have wagered, correctly, that they were getting quite a kick out of this little scenario. Martha caught Maggie’s eye, and the look told Maggie that no, everything was not okay. , but, like Maggie, Martha also refused to acknowledge the unwanted visitors.

“I got some okra planted this morning,” Martha replied, continuing her work with the peas. “The garden’s in pretty good shape, but I could use T.J.’s help tomorrow with the tomatoes.”

Unused to being dismissed, and especially by women, the man who had been raising such a ruckus was momentarily taken aback. Upon recovering, he started towards Maggie, meaning to shake her hand. As soon as he reached towards her though, Jett raised up on all fours and let out a low growl.

“Jett!” As soon as she spoke, the dog stopped growling, but he didn’t sit down, and he looked like he was ready to leap across the yard.

“Now look here. My name is—“

“Mister,” Maggie held up her hand, cutting off his speech, “I don’t want to know your name. I don’t want to know who you work for, and I don’t want to know what you want. All I want to know – is that you’ve gone.” Maggie’s matter-of-fact, deadpan remarks were punctuated only by the silence of the late spring day. But not for long.

“Lady, I’m not leaving until I get through that gate with these men and their equipment and they get that land back there surveyed. Now your little charade is costing the company twelve dollars an hour per man for every minute that those three sit on their butts doing nothing. If I have to get the law out here, I will,” he threatened, puffing out his chest, thinking he had won.

“Ya know, Martha, maybe we should let Henry handle this,” Maggie said without even a glance at the man standing below her.

“Lady, if there’s a man here that I can talk to, I certainly do wish you’d get him,” declared the frustrated man.

“Well,” replied Maggie, “Henry usually does most of the talking. Martha, why don’t you go ahead and get Henry.”

Maggie stepped off of her mare and loosened the girth, patted the mare on the neck and led her up to the porch steps where she looped the reins over a corner post. Maggie stepped up on the front porch just about the same time that Martha emerged from the house and handed Maggie the old Henry rifle that always stayed in the broom closet. Martha tapped the side of the magazine as she handed the rifle to Maggie so that she would know it was loaded without having to ask. Maggie slid her hand along the smooth, cool barrel of her mother’s old gun and cocked the rifle before she ever turned back to face the intruders.

The three men on the tailgate had scattered to find shelter behind various trees and vehicles, but the idiot in the front yard was still running his mouth.

“Lady, you’re crazy!” shouted the man, his voice an octave higher than previously.

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Maggie answered, her voice level and controlled. “I’ve got a loaded rifle, that I know I can control, and a dog who I’m not sure I can control, and you’re still standing in my front yard. I’d say you’re the one who’s crazy.”

Suddenly, the sound of a car coming up the long drive brought all activity in the yard to a momentary halt. Maggie hoped it was Witt, or at least someone she knew. The man in the front yard was just happy for the diversion. As the unfamiliar car came around the last curve in the driveway, Maggie’s hopes fell. No one that she knew drove a red Mustang convertible; she was probably about to lose a potential customer. But as the car got closer, she recognized the driver, Bronc Weller.

Maggie intuitively smoothed back her hair and brushed the dust off of her jeans. With all that was playing out before her, Maggie’s first thought upon seeing Bronc coming up the drive was that she needed some lipstick.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Maggie's Fall by Indie author Ricki Wilson I have had the privilege of knowing some very fine animals in my life, and it is they who first inspired Maggie’s Fall. I found myself in a place where I needed something un-taxing and uplifting to read, so I started writing it. Once I met Maggie and her makeshift family, all I had to do was listen and try to do justice to the story that was playing out in my mind.

I could not bring myself to write “The End” on the last page of Maggie’s Fall. I’m not quite ready to let go of these characters. Maggie’s Stand is in the works.

I want to offer my sincere thanks to those of you who have read Maggie’s Fall. I treasure your kind and inspiring words.

Ricki can be found on her website

(She features Indie Authors on her blog, INDIE SPOTLIGHT)

Maggie’s Fall is available for Kindle, Kindle apps, and in paperback from Amazon:

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Maggie’s Fall is also available from:

Barnes and Noble * Smashwords * iTunes

Filed Under: bio/blurb feature, Literary

Book Feature with Kathleen Shoop, author of After the Fog

Posted on July 28, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 7 Comments

Indie Book Promo would like to welcome Kathleen Shoop to the blog! She’s here to share some information about her book, After the Fog. If you think this book sounds like something that you would like to read, please use the buy links at the bottom of the post to pick up a copy.

ebooks, ebook advertising, promotion, Amazon, KDP Select, indie authors, indie writers, social media, book, book promotion, indie book promo author resources A love story wrapped in historical drama…

In the steel town of Donora, Pennsylvania, site of the infamous 1948 “killing smog,” headstrong nurse Rose Pavlesic tends to her family and neighbors. Efficient and precise, she’s created a life that reflects everything she missed growing up as an orphan. She’s even managed to keep her painful secrets hidden from the love of her life, Henry, her dutiful children, and large extended family.

When a stagnant weather pattern traps poisonous mill gasses in the valley, neighbors grow sicker and Rose’s nursing obligations thrust her into conflict she never could have fathomed. Consequences from her past collide with her present life, making her once clear decisions as gray as the suffocating smog. As pressure mounts, Rose finds she’s not the only one harboring lies. When the deadly fog finally clears, the loss of trust and faith leaves the Pavlesic family—and the whole town—splintered and shocked. With her new perspective, can Rose finally forgive herself and let her family’s healing begin? Will love be enough?

For every woman who thinks she left her past behind…

Kathie’s Bio–

After the Fog is the second novel by bestselling Kindle author Kathleen Shoop. Her ebooks, ebook advertising, promotion, Amazon, KDP Select, indie authors, indie writers, social media, book, book promotion, indie book promo author resources debut novel, The Last Letter, garnered multiple awards in 2011 as did After the Fog in 2012. A Language Arts Coach with a Ph.D. in Reading Education, Kathleen lives in Oakmont, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.

Kathleen can be found:

Twitter * Facebook * Website

After the Fog can be purchased at:

Amazon * Barnes & Noble

Filed Under: bio/blurb feature, Literary

Interview with Toni & John Rakestraw, authors of Titanic Deception

Posted on July 5, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 5 Comments

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome Toni & John Rakestraw to the blog today. They have a book out, Titanic Deception that they are here to talk about. Sit back and enjoy!

IBP – Tell us about your new release?

Toni & John – Conspiracy theories have always intrigued us, and who doesn’t feel some affinity for the Titanic? Titanic Deception let us indulge in both topics. The book starts off in 1912, when Michael’s great-grandmother, Alice, boards the ship as a nursemaid for the infant of a family from Canada. On board, she finds love, but the sinking changes her life forever. She writes of her experiences in a journal, which finds its way into her great-grandson’s hands. Michael reads the journal and begins a blog about the Titanic. He finds out why the ship sank, which brings him to the attention of the man running a secret company that was responsible for the sinking, among other historical events. When they kidnap his girlfriend, Michael and Soft Kitty, a conspiracy theorist, must step up and save the day.

IBP – Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world?

Toni – The UK. I’ve always been attracted to that area. The coastlines are beautiful, the culture speaks to me, and several lines of my family tree started out there.

John – I’ve always wanted to see the foggy streets of Victorian England and meet the greatest consulting detective of all time… Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson. Plus, Dr. Who!

IBP – Do you write at a laptop/desktop or do you write freehand?

Toni – I type on my desktop computer. The only thing that would make me happier would be one of those fancy split keyboards, to save wear and tear on my wrists. Well, and if I could just slide my entire desk outside into the shade when I wanted.

John – I use a laptop and pen and paper at times. I like pen and paper, but the laptop is better for corrections! White-out is a bugger to get off the screen…

IBP – Do you have a day job?

Toni – I’m a freelance editor during the day. I’m lucky in that it is something I truly enjoy doing, and it allows me to be home with my children.

IBP – Do you have any advice for unpublished authors?

John: The first chapter has to grab the reader; the last chapter needs to make the reader want to grab for your next story! Use a good professional editor and remember, a blank piece of paper or screen is the writing god’s way of telling us how hard it is to be an author! Now, please fill it with wonder… ;-]

IBP – What is it you love most about writing? What’s the hardest part of writing for you?

Toni – I love to see the story taking shape. Sometimes the characters just fill in the scene perfectly, which makes for easy writing. The hardest part is dealing with all those little in between scenes that set up the good stuff. Since we write historical fiction, I end up having to research some things that I’m just not that interested in, but end up being crucial to the story.

John – To really be good at writing… you have to make that character come to life. It has to have a whole life story, from you, that it lived before you can give it life in front your readership. That magic has a process that you have to live in your mind and soul. Writing comes from a very special place in all of us and sharing that is the hardest part of writing. Remember, to feed the soul of an author, read their books!

IBP – Did you do any research before start or during of the writing of the books?

Toni – I do tons of research. For Titanic Deception, I read all the inquiry testimonies, pored through the passenger lists, the list of recovered bodies, plans for the ship’s design, how to defuse bombs, catering menus, you name it. For our next one, I’ve already joined a couple of forums dedicated to our subject.

IBP – How did you come up with your premise for your books?

John – I’m the idea guy. Titanic Deception started out as a World Bank conspiracy story that was going to rush around the world and end up in England with the heroes stopping a Guy Fawkes bombing from happening under the House of Lords, saving the big economic leaders of the world. That all got too complicated, and we came up with the wonderful story we have now. Wall Street issues, the 99%, the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic all wrapped up in a romantic thriller. All that was something we could go with and we did.

IBP – Are there any particular books and/or authors that inspired you and continue to do so?

Toni – I admire J.K. Rowling… how she could manage to keep everyone and everything straight in the world of Harry Potter is amazing. Another of my favorite authors is Jim Butcher. He manages to balance humor and action extremely well, and I get very attached to his characters.

IBP – What is the one book that you think everyone should read?

John – Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss — The runaway bestseller that has everyone minding their p’s and q’s (and their commas and semicolons).

IBP – How important do you find the communication between you and your readers? Do you reply to their messages or read their reviews?

Toni – I find it extremely important to interact with our readers. I try to make time to respond to any messages they send and read the reviews they post. It is wonderful of them to take the time out of their own busy schedules to write to us or post reviews.

John – Talking to people about what we love to do is something we do every chance we get. So, making marketing more about relationship building… just sitting around talking, having tea, coffee, wine or a beer. No hard sell, just friends enjoying friends. That is how I would love our interaction with our readership to be… so far it been close to that!

IBP – What are your thoughts on ebooks? (i.e. love them, hate them, wave of the future)

Toni – I like ebooks. I still love my print books, but ebooks are definitely gaining ground in my life.

John – I love the ease of eBook. But, still love the smell of a print book!

IBP – What is in the works for you next?

Toni – Our next project is still mostly in the research phase, but writing has started a bit. This one will be darker. It’s based on Jack the Ripper, and will probably cross into the horror genre.

John – Saucy Jack is our next adventure. We get to walk the dark alleys, blind turns and mis-steps of the victims in the famous Whitechapel Murders. Just so you know… I’m truly afraid of the dark!

John Rakestraw
Twitter * Facebook * Website

Radio show: The Platform

Toni Rakestraw:
Twitter * Facebook * Rakestraw Book Design * Rakestraw Reads

Titanic Deception

Facebook * Amazon * Smashwords

Bio: John and Toni Rakestraw have been married for more than 25 years. They have collaborated on a lot of projects over the years, and they’ve finally written a book together, which is something they’ve dreamed of doing for a long time.

John does a show on Blogtalk Radio for writers called The Platform. Along with his co-hosts, A.T. Russell and Liz Borino, he interviews experts who can help writers make their books the best they can be and get those books out there to readers. He’s also working on a series of videos to help writers develop their stories and characters.

Toni is a freelance editor who enjoys helping authors polish their books and get them ready for publication. She also formats books for both print and digital publication.

They’ve got eight wonderful children who fill their little cottage with a lot of love, talent, and energy. Their oldest daughter, Morwenna, designed their book cover.

Filed Under: Interview, Literary

Guest Post with Terri Giuliano Long, author of In Leah’s Wake

Posted on June 13, 2012 Written by Indiebookpromo 14 Comments

Today Indie Book Promo has the honor of welcoming Terry Giuliano Long to the blog! Not only is she a great indie author, but she is a great supporter of other indie authors. She’s here to share a guest post as well as information about her book, In Leah’s Wake. If this book sounds like something that you would like to read, use the buy links at the bottom of the post and pick up a copy.

Writing & Motherhood by Terri Giuliano Long

I grew up in a big traditional Italian family. Being a mom has always been part of my story, an expectation as well as a dream, an essential part of who I am. It’s only natural that being a mother would shape my life as a writer and it has—both practically and philosophically.

My husband and I have four daughters. We were very young when our eldest was born; in that sense, I’ve lived my life backward. We had children, and then I attended college and graduate school. While our children were growing up, I worked part-time. Although all my jobs involved writing, I didn’t have the luxury then of an apprenticeship in creative writing. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. I loved my life – and my jobs. I wrote news and feature articles for the town paper, a column for a regional paper. I edited a newsletter, and wrote copy for marketing, advertising and public relations. This was all great practice.

I attended my first creative writing class in my mid-thirties. Once I did, I was hooked. As a young woman, I’d read mostly spy novels and sweeping sagas like The Thorn Birds. In my thirties, I favored literary fiction, stories about people and families that felt real and pertinent to my own life. Like most authors, I wrote stories similar to the stories I read.

Given the timing, the fact that my life revolved around my family, it’s not surprising that family plays a central role in my body of work. When I wrote In Leah’s Wake our daughters were teenagers. At the time, immersed in their world, I was acutely aware of teen issues and problems. In Leah’s Wake is not our family’s story—not a single event portrayed in the novel happened to us—and I’m not, or at least I hope I’m not, anything like Zoe. But the thoughts and feelings I describe absolutely belong to me and spring from my being a mom.

Like Zoe, I worried constantly. I used to think, if only I knew everything would turn out well; I wouldn’t worry so much. Of course we can’t see into the future, and fear of the unknown kept me on edge.

Addressing Issues Related to Parenting & Parenting Philosophies

The ways in which my philosophy and parenting style were accepted or challenged by others, my fears, my anxieties, the pressure I felt to raise perfect children, inspired and drove In Leah’s Wake. My novel-in-progress, Nowhere to Run, is a psychological thriller, a very different story from In Leah’s Wake, and yet many of these issues and themes repeat.

Parenting is the toughest job in the world, bar none. Unfortunately, children don’t come with instructions. We do the best we can. Really, that’s all we can do. The Tyler family is far from perfect, yet they love one another. Had the community rallied and supported them, Leah might have not have gone down such a terrible path. At heart most teens just want to feel accepted and loved – not for what they accomplish or contribute, but for who they are. When problems arise or when teens go astray, the fallout affects the entire community.

These themes of community and communal responsibility run through both novels. This repetition of themes is, of course, common with novelists. Like anyone else, authors are driven by our internal beliefs, philosophies and assumptions. We all have what my college philosophy professor called “mobiles,” or internal motivators that we may or may not be conscious of. For better or worse, novelists tend to be more introspective than the general populace; we’re always thinking and digging, trying to scratch the itches that most normal people let go. Those itches become storylines or themes in our work. This is certainly true for me – it’s one of the myriad ways that being a mother has influenced me as a writer.

I feel tremendously blessed to be a mother and doubly blessed to be a mother of daughters. My family means everything to me and they come first, before anything or anyone else. If my children need me, I attend to their needs. As with many moms I know, this affects my productivity. I admire writers who can pump out a book every year. I doubt that I’ll ever achieve that goal. This makes me neither a martyr nor a hero. It simply makes me a mom!

Bio

Terri Giuliano Long is a contributing writer for Indie Reader and Her Circle eZine. She’s a frequent guest blogger, and she’s written news and feature articles for numerous print and online publications, including the Boston Globe and the Huffington Post. She lives with her family on the East Coast and teaches at Boston College. In Leah’s Wake is her debut novel. For more information, please visit her website: www.tglong.com

Terri can be found:

Website * Blog * Twitter

Facebook

Google+ * Pinterest

* * * * *

In Leah’s Wake

Recipient of the CTRR Award for excellence

2011 Book Bundlz Book Pick

Book Bundlz Book Club Favorites First Place, (12/11)

Reviewer-nominated for Global eBook Awards, 2012

WINNER, Literary Fiction – IndieReader Discovery Awards (IRDA), 2012

The Tylers have a perfect life–beautiful home, established careers, two sweet and talented daughters. Their eldest daughter, Leah, an exceptional soccer player, is on track for a prestigious scholarship. Their youngest, Justine, more responsible than seems possible for her 12 years, just wants her sister’s approval. With Leah nearing the end of high school and Justine a seemingly together kid, the parents are set to enjoy a peaceful life…until Leah meets Todd, a high school dropout and former roadie for a rock band.

As Leah’s parents fight to save their daughter from a world of drugs, sex, and wild parties, their divided approach drives their daughter out of their home and a wedge into their marriage. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Justine observes her sister’s rebellion from the shadows of their fragmented family-leaving her to question whether anyone loves her and if God even knows she exists. Can this family survive in Leah’s wake? What happens when love just isn’t enough?

Praise for In Leah’s Wake

“In Leah’s Wake is an astounding story of a family in transition.”

–Tracy Riva, Midwest Reviews

“Pulled me right along as I continued to make comparisons to my own life.”

–Jennifer Donovan, 5 Minutes for Books, Top 50 Book Blog

“Multiple ripples of meaning contribute to the overall intensity of this deeply moving psychological drama.”

–Cynthia Harrison, author of Sister Issues

“Sometimes scary, sometimes sad, and always tender.”

– Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist, author of Take One Candle Light A Room

SALES LINKS

Amazon * Barnes & Noble * IndieBound

BOOK TRAILER LINK