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The Gates of Hell” by Caroline Addenbrooke

Africa. Just the word instills a feeling of adventure and danger. To Rui Perreira, Africa means the fullfillment for a dream of gold and glory and the chance for a life with the beautiful Catalina, his childhood sweetheart. For Dela Eden, it means home and a way of life. A chance meeting between these two very different people sets in motion a chain of events that are both wonderful and horrifying at the same time. These events change everything for Dela Eden and Rui, making them both realize that sometimes one must give up the things believed most precious to gain something more.

At first glance, this book looks to be a historial adventure full of strange and exotic places with danger lurking in every page. However, once the reader begins their journey, they will start to see incredible details into a lost world. This story has elements of intrigue into old world politics and social standards with a dash of romance. I very much enjoyed this story and feel that I will continue to find some new detail with additional readings.

Review by: Brenda

Talk Dirty to Topaz

Author: Amber Skyze
Artist: Tuesday Dube
ISBN: 978-1-60168-230-7
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Aspen Mountain Press
Publication Date: 07/31/09
Sexual Content: Erotic

Twice bitten by people she trusted, Teagan Topaz has shelfed both the friendship and love life to focus on her interior design business. Although her best friend tried to warn her that the man she was about to marry was no good, the way it was proven left something to be desired. Then one day, she starts receiving mysterious phone calls from a deep-voiced stranger who fills her head with visions of secret desires and naughty sex.

Frank Black sees a picture of Teagan and is taken with her beauty. He decides that he’ll meet her no matter the cost and schedules an appointment for a room design. When Teagan meets Frank on a stormy winter afternoon, there’s an immediate attraction. As Teagan slowly begans to lose her resolve to the possibilities of a hot encounter with Frank, sizzling sex keeps them both hot as the snow flies outside.

This was a fun and sexy story. The fantasy of meeting someone that just pushes all the right buttons is something all women think about at one point in their life. While reading this story, it was fun to put myself in Teagan’s place and wonder what it would be like to lose one’s inhibitions to a total stranger and to genuinely enjoy oneself with no thought of what might happen afterwards. Definitely worth the thought!

Review by Brenda

Book Title: Frozen Death
Author: G.L. Didaleusky
Genre: Mystery
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
Purchase Link: http://www.roguephoenixpress.com/
ISBN: 978-0-9824833-3-6
Price: 2.99
Page Count: 133
Release Date: 8/1/09
Heat Level: 0

Reviewer: Laura

Blurb:

Something is causing people to freeze to death in Florida during
ninety-degree weather. Ancient Indian lore holds the answer to these
mysterious medical aberrations. A newly constructed Florida male prison sits
on ancient hallowed grounds called Forbidden Hill. Soon after the prison
opens, two male inmates freeze to death without exposure to frigid
temperatures. John Randall, a widowed prison doctor, meets Lena Windmaker, a
single, off-duty sheriff detective at a local library. Their initial
plutonic relationship soon kindles into a more amorous one. They hide a
personal secret that could bring them together or destroy them. They uncover
articles in local, post-Civil war newspapers describing residence succumbing
to Frozen Death. John and Lena race to discover a cause before it chooses
other victims

Review:

Frozen Death takes place in and around the Timucua State Correctional Institute. The first few chapters grab you and keep you guessing as to the reason why prisoners are dying suddenly. As the story goes on, it follows Dr. John Randall from being the prison physician, to being an investigator to an archeologist of sorts. He wears many different hats in this book and may cause the reader to wonder as to the reasoning. Throw in a beautiful Native American law enforcement officer, and the plot thickens. Overall, the story was intriguing but not riveting. The central theme held such promise but I felt a little let down that there weren’t more twists and turns throughout. The ending was unexpected, but I felt like the author rushed to include so much information in the last chapter that it made the reveal lose some of its punch.

Reviewed by: Brenda

Short. Sweet. Simple. Three tiny words in this complicated world that humans love to hear or read. These three tiny words are also what I use to describe www.795marketingplan.com’s ebook on how to create a memorable domain name for less than $10.

The ebook is quite easy to read and follow and being only 40 pages long helped. The pizza example on how to create a marketing plan was fun and the every day common language used to write this plan was great. It wouldn’t matter if you were young or old, an experienced entrepreneur or just a beginner, this ebook was very easy to read and follow. The use of internet links to show examples of already established domains and easy to follow exercises were a plus! The links worked even when the book was downloaded to the PC.

I would honestly recommend this ebook to anyone even considering starting their own business or just trying to get the word out about an existing one.

Book Title: Killerbyte
Author: Cat Connor
Genre: Mystery/Crime
Publisher: Rebel e Publishers
Link: http://www.rebelepublishers.com/?Task=system&CategoryID=28211&HeadingText=Killerbyte
ISBN: 978-0-9814256-2-7
Price: $7.99 (Amazon) $9.99 (Mobipocket)
Page Count: 303
Release Date: 2009
Reviewer: Laura

Ellie Conway works during the day as an FBI agent who works on serial crime cases. At night as a hobby she runs an internet poetry chat room. Someone breaks into her home and tries to kill her and she soon realizes that it has something to do with the chat room. Things take a turn for the worse when the killer is found dead in the trunk of her car.

Ellie runs to her friend Mac who she met through the chat room. The killer almost gets her at Mac’s house so they go on the run to evade the killer while at the same time figure out who it is and catch him. The FBI is called in and as the killer starts picking off the chat room’s members one by one they realize they need to find the killer and stop him fast. Even though there are numerous crime scenes they do not have enough evidence to catch the killer much less figure out why Ellie is being targeted. The killer is clever and manages to mess with them while managing to escape right under their noses several times.

Once there are victims that were not part of the chat room the FBI, Ellie, and Mac realize something more sinister is going on. Eventually a chance remark from twelve years ago give them a clue to help them start to piece together who it is and how to stop him.

This was a great book! I really enjoyed this one and couldn’t wait to read what was happening next. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading it and I didn’t want to put it down. Which unfortunately at points I had to since I was traveling and they make you turn off all electronic devices during take off and landing (I sincerely doubt leaving my Kindle on was going to make the plane crash but I was a good girl and followed the pilot’s instructions and turned it off. Darn it!) This killed me since I was dying to keep reading so I could find out who the killer was. Luckily for me taking off and landing doesn’t take that long and I was able to get back to the book and finish it. And it was worth the wait. I highly recommend this book and am going to read anything else this author has written immediately. Buy this book! You WON’T be disappointed.

Book Title: Meghan’s Legacy
Author: K.J. Legacy
Genre: Mystery/Crime
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
Purchase Link: http://www.roguephoenixpress.com/
ISBN: 978-0-9824833-5-0
Price: 2.99
Page Count: 114
Release Date: 9/1/2009
Heat Level: 0

Reviewer: Val

Meghan had just inherited her family home and is back to claim it. Appearances can be deceiving, especially in this big mansion. There are people who don’t want her there or are they ghosts? Now that I cannot tell you as it would give away much of the story but let me just say that you will be gasping in horror at some of the scenes throughout the book but I will make this promise, it is totally worth every minute spent reading this book.

I picked up Meghan’s Legacy for the mystery/ suspense aspect alone and found it to be one of the best books that I have read. K.J. Dahlen most definitely knows how to write a chapter with one heck of a cliffhanger. I love how K.J. Dahlen’s mind works. Just when I thought I knew what happened, boom, another surprise! This book does contain a sensual romance and characters who sizzle together, but the main focus is on the mystery as, for this book, it absolutely should be. It’s what made the book a compelling and well crafted read. I found this book to be fast moving with a lot of sitting on the edge of your seat suspense. The villian is always lurking just one step behind Meghan and Quinn. I consider this book to be an instant pick me up book and I know that I will be reading it for a long time to come. I will definitely be looking for more work by K.J. Dahlen and this author has just become a mandatory add to my automatic to be read list.

#5 Remember Tomorrow Never Comes

OK, here’s the deal, tomorrow will never come. That sounds like a very philosophical statement coming from me and I’m not normally a philosophical writer, but hear me out. To prove my point check out my waistline. I know, what does that have to do with writing!? EVERYTHING! I keep telling myself that I will diet, and I will exercise, but I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow because I’m too tired, or that roast beast (beef) looks too good to only have one helping. I can’t diet today because that Almond Joy cake Momma made for dessert can’t possibly be left for her to eat! She’s a diabetic for crying out loud. I’m saving her from herself. I must save her and I must do it twice TODAY! So TOMORROW I will diet. But for some strange reason it is always today. Today is the only day that we have to think about, so let’s make the most of it.

You need to make yourself write sometimes. At first it will come easily. You are going to be so stoked by a great story. You are going to do nothing but write, write, write. They ideas are going to flow from your fingers. The sparks will fly, and your significant other will be standing nearby with a fire extinguisher to make sure that no fires are started. Then your darling child comes up to you and says, “I’m hungry!” or my personal favorite, “I’m bored!” So you get up quickly and run to the kitchen to make a quick PB&J and then you are headed back to write. You then see the mail on the table that has to be put away. Dang is that the credit card bill that was due last week? Why didn’t that get paid? Now you are making a mad dash for the check book to pay it before too many late fees get added. Hold up, the check book’s not balanced? It’s always balanced, do you have enough to pay the bill? By this time, you have forgotten that you were writing in the first place.

It’s especially hard on a nice sunny day. But you need to set a goal, even if it’s small.

* My goal for today is 400 words, in other words, you can set a word count goal!

So if you decide that you are going to write that 400 words act like the Nike commercial and Just Do It! Sit down and write 400 words. It needs to be something. It doesn’t have to be the most wonderful thing you have ever written and if you are stuck on the story that you are writing, start on something else. Don’t force the words to come that will only frustrate you and drive a very painful and potentially LONG writers block into your near future. (I hate writers block! In the infamous words of my children, “It sooooo sucks!”)

* My goal is 5 pages, I’m sure you get where this is going, a page goal right!?

It’s time to be selfish. Have your spouse watch the kids. Go somewhere quiet, or semi-quiet if you live in my house and close the door. Put several full laundry baskets in front of the door and sit down to write. You have to take the time to do this.If you don’t take the time to be selfish with your writing, no one else is going to do this for you. If you don’t take care of this child, (Yes, your writing is your baby too! Don’t believe me? Wait till your first not so good review when you want to beat the heck out of some reviewer for having an opinion. And do remember folks, it’s just an opinion. OK?) no one is going to do it for you. So you need to get off your duff and take time for it. You can not blame anyone but yourself if you don’t get it done.

* My goal is to write for 30 minutes and last but not least…a timed goal!

I know you’ve heard it before but use a timer. The advice is sound, tried and true guys. If you don’t have an egg timer, a timer on your microwave, your stove, your phone, or an alarm clock, I do have solutions. I absolutely love this site: http://www.nakedalarmclock.com/ because you can set it and have it go off whenever your goal time is complete. Besides, the name is fun. (I bet over half of you have already clicked on the link thinking you would find something naked on there, HA fooled you.) Make sure if you set a timer for yourself, that you are not punishing yourself. Try not to make this a time out like you would give your child. So, don’t do it for 3 straight hours in a row. When I tutored college Accounting, I always told students never to study for more than an hour at a time, take a 10-15 minute break and then go back to studying. That way your brain doesn’t go into overload. If you force your brain to work non-stop for 3-4 hours then you may end up resenting the time that you are sitting there, and won’t enjoy what you are doing. Another fun thing that I can tell you about is http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html. You can go to that site and put in your word goal, a time limit, and if you would prefer the program it to go easy on you, be strict or just be plain evil. It’s a little difficult to explain, so you may want to go there and play with it just for fun! If nothing else, it kicks you in the butt and gets your mind working and breaks the monotony of a brain fart or writers block.

Make sure to come back next week when we talk about organizational skills! It’s a great thing baby!

Book Title: The Darkness Within
Author: K. J. Dahlen
Genre: Mystery
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
Purchase Link: http://www.roguephoenixpress.com/
ISBN: 978-0-9824833-9-2

This story is fraught with twists and turns that make for interesting reading. One critique I do have is there are too many people comprising Sable’s team. The characters get a little lost in the plot while the reader attempts to keep up with who is who. I think paring down the numbers would have kept the story intact without sacrificing the integrity of the plot. Also, the killer in the story did not do very much in the way of killing. He beat up a lot of people and left them for dead. However, the idea of his killing people is what put the fear in most of the people in the story. To have him not make absolutely sure his victims were dead did not make a lot of sense to me. All in all, the story was compelling, intriguing and captivating. I read the story in one sitting because I could not stop turning pages. I loved the unexpected ways that the story came together in the end. I plan to recommend this book to several friends because writing this good should not be overlooked.

Laura Moreno
Reviewer

Most of the authors reading this blog have their book published in ebook format prior to getting into print and don’t even consider getting out there into the real world to promo. It is very important to get some face time with your readers and/or potential readers. So you need to get up, get out and talk, talk, talk.

You must get out there face to face and hand to hand to meet people. It is the real life person that is going to buy your book. Just like you aren’t the boogie man behind the computer that wrote that book, they are not the nameless face behind the credit card that brings you your royalty checks. I’m not sure about you, but I would be more likely to buy a book from someone I have met than from someone I have not.

Imagine this….You are a writer from Georgia, your book isn’t due out for several months, but there is a book fair or conference coming up in about 83 days. All you have to do is email a chairperson on some committee and you can have fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen whole minutes to read a piece from your book. Guess what? Hundreds of people, who are now fans, have just heard your book and want more. Do you have business cards? Maybe some post cards with information about your old books on them? You web address? Anything? Come on, now’s the time!

Stop by your local library, let them know that you are a local writer and you would be interested in donating a copy of your book to their local authors collection. And while you’re there, would they mind if you did a book signing in the near future? You can do the same thing with local book stores. They enjoy having local authors in and showing that even people from your home town can make it. Now let’s say that your book has a scene in it that is set in a hair salon, would your local salon be interested in holding a book signing for you? Use the resources that are at hand. You never know what possible networking contacts you may come up with while you are at one of these face to face events. Until you are out there and are ready to catch the bug (possibly in the literal fashion, sniff sniff, can you pass me a tissue?) you may never know the extent to what you have passed by.

Local radio and TV stations love to do pieces on local artists. You could contact stations and see if they have a community section that would be interested in spotlighting a local writer. BUT BE PREPARED, most of these spots are taped EARLY in the morning. Trust me I have tried. And be prepared with every answer you could possibly think of to answer, because they will ask one that you are not prepared for. If possible, ask them for a list of questions ahead of time to prepare yourself mentally for the interview. The interview I did was over the phone and I was a wreck. I stuttered and stammered and couldn’t get the answer right to save my life, but it was a very early segment and I am sure only several thousand people heard me anyway. Nothing like listening to a blubbering idiot on your commute to work.

Remember the most important piece of information that I can possibly give you. The worse thing that someone can say to you is, “No.” You will not be out anything if they do, but you will have gained more confidence by getting out there and exposed yourself to one more line of questioning. You will have one more no behind your back and are one more no closer to a yes. When you receive your nos they may actually be accompanied by a “but”….and a compromise. So don’t give up, and keep plugging. Your writing deserves to be put out there and given just as much work that you put into the writing! Now Remember, Tomorrow Never Comes! So come back next week and see what you can do about it.

PS…..have to leave you with a few that my friend Kissa told me about as she was reading this for me before posting. When she is traveling, she leaves business cards with her tips. She leaves them in book stores on the shelves. (I think I personally would put them at the register, but that’s just me!) When she sends promo items to her readers she sends extras and asks them to pass them along to their friends. Thanks so much Kissa for sending those ideas along to share with my great readers!

#7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

OK, you’ve finally got some people following you around. (Relax it’s just me and about 1000 of your closest fans!) It may be that manly body spray or the pheromones that you put on this morning, but whatever; it’s working for you. We’re here and we want to know where you are going to be. You need to make sure that you are SPECIFIC when you tell us where you are hanging out.

* Instead of, “Hey, I’m going to be over at AJ’s blog tomorrow, why don’t you stop on by!” Consider the following. “Hey guys, I’m going to be over at AJ’s blog tomorrow (www.ajbestwrites.com) The blog post is going up sometime around 8am and I will be answering questions on and off throughout the day. So stop by and see me! I need all the support I can get!”

When you give all the pertinent information make sure to include everyone in there. There may be people who honestly don’t know who I am. (I know, I know, I can’t imagine it either, but seriously they don’t!) And there are people where you do your promo work who have never been by AJ Best’s website (shock of all shocks since I haven’t gotten it up yet!) and don’t know when the blog normally posts. So tell them these things. Maybe AJ is a night owl and likes to have her posts run at night, so your friends and followers may end up confused and lost in a time warp. (You may stop dancing now, we are not at a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show! Attention here people, attention!)

* Signatures lines baby, signature (sig) lines! Now don’t get over zealous here. I have seen some sig lines that are actually longer than the email message that the author sent me. That is a little bit much. If your audience gets bored after two lines then you have just over two lines too many! So keep it to the point. Where do you REALLY want to have them come see you? Where do you spend the vast majority of your time working the crowds? Start with the most important thing first your website. They have to know where to find your important information. Then list things in order of importance from there — blogs, and then social networks. Now let’s say you have a MySpace page, and a Facebook, but spend 85% of your time at MySpace, well for goodness sake, put that one in your sig tag and leave out Facebook. No need to clutter it with everything else. And if you have 12 lines of text about all of your books that you have out, do you really think that a flashing neon sign flashing the book covers, your name AND your website will get them to pay more attention to you? All things in moderation.

* OK, so you have the readers hooked on you, and they are on your website. They are searching frantically for your contact information so they can tell you just how wonderful you really are. Hold on, they can’t find it? It’s not there? WHAT!? Make sure that if you want readers to contact you, that you are available. Even something as simple as a contact form enables them to get in contact with you without giving out your email address if you are afraid of getting too many emails or getting spammed. Remember, you can’t gather your friends around if they don’t know where to find you!

* Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a great way to get in touch with people quickly to let them know what is going on in your life. You have 140 characters to get in there, and leave a message letting them know where you are. You can shrink the URL down by using a number of different methods (http://bit.ly/) which is a website you can go to that will enable you to shorten the URL, but I happen to have a favorite way to shorten mine. It’s called Glue (www.getglue.com). Not only does it shrink URLs so you can get them on Twitter (and with bit.ly also) easily, it connects you to friends and the things that they are looking at. I can go on and on about that, but this is an article about gathering all of your friends around you. (Hold on, isn’t that what Glue does?)

* Calendars! They are the easiest way in the world to keep in touch with your readers. I have created calendars for friends and they have added them to their page so their readers can keep up with where they are blogging, chatting, and guesting. It’s very easy to do with Google (www.google.com/calendar) and you are able to give access to all of your friends, family and relatives. It’s a great way to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on in your life.

So you need to make sure that people can see where you are, when you are, and who you are hanging out with. Make sure to keep the lines of communications open, because we all want to be around you, — Don’t You Know That You Are A Shooting Star? Don’t believe me? Just ask Bad Company. Catch you next week when I have to tell you to Be Prepared to Catch the Bug!