Monday, June 23, 2014

Box 'o' books launch: The HOT BOX launch tour

Sizzling Thriller Hot Box Release:

8 SIZZLING THRILLERS FROM 8 BEST-SELLING AUTHORS

Get yours today



What's in the Hot Box:


Steven Bannister – Fade to Black
John Paul Davis – The Cortes Enigma 
C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill 
David Leadbeater – The Razor’s Edge 
Andy Lucas – Race Amazon 
Karen Perkins – Dead Reckoning 
C K Raggio – Heron Park 
Mike Wells – Wild Child



Steven BannisterFade to BlackAllie St Clair is young and brilliant and today she’s been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. But the time for celebration is short. Something is wrong in rain-swept London. Very wrong.
#NewRelease
John Paul Davis—The Cortes Enigma1581: It appeared in the west as the sun was setting, a distant silhouette like a fire on the water. Twelve hours later it appeared again, this time much closer to the mainland . . . Who was on board or where they came from remained a mystery . . . No trace of the vessel was ever found . . .


#NewRelease
C R Hiatt – Sanctioned Kill - Destined for Danger. Sanctioned to Kill.  Hot on the trail of an international weapons ring, covert agent Kyra Ray finds herself caught in the cross-hairs of a ruthless arms dealer in the perilous mountains of war-torn Afghanistan. Closing in, the mission takes an unexpected and near-deadly turn in the high-stakes drama of New York City, where Kyra is mysteriously spared by an assassin sent to kill her. Retrained as an assassin and given strict orders to take him down, Kyra becomes trapped in a game of cat-and-mouse that will put her life on the line and her directive to the test—her sanction to kill.
David Leadbeater—The Razor’s Edge—Trent, Silk and Radford are the Razor’s Edge and the best spy team in the business – until the government they toiled, served and bled for, disavowed them.





Andy LucasRace AmazonJames Pace, ex-RAF helicopter pilot and amateur cameraman, is still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life when a child’s bullet nearly kills him.





Karen PerkinsDead ReckoningA historical adventure of piracy, love and revenge in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century.






C K RaggioHeron ParkA small Long Island town erupts in a panic when a woman and her dog are found savagely murdered on a popular hiking trail.






Mike WellsWild ChildA fast, suspenseful thriller with an ending that you’ll never see coming.


Sunday, June 22, 2014

It's launch day today

Image courtesy SpaceX
Army of Worn Soles, my third book, launches officially today.

It’s exclusively on Amazon, at least for three months, allowing me to take advantage of the marketing and promotional tools available through the Kindle Select program.

Go to Amazon right now for a look inside (or to buy it if you can't wait)
And in celebration of the launch, I’m putting my previous books, The Bones of the Earth and One Shade of Red, on sale for just 99 cents each on all channels, all week long:

What’s it about?

Ukraine, 1941
A Canadian is drafted into the Soviet Red Army, just in time to be thrown against Nazi Germany's invasion. Caught in the vise of the Nazi and Communist forces, Maurice Bury concentrates on keeping his men alive as they retreat across Ukraine from the German juggernaut. Now the question is: will they escape from the hell of the POW camp before they starve to death?

Follow the tour and win a signed paperback

Sixteen awesome bloggers are supporting the launch of Army of Worn Soles by posting excerpts. Coming up:

Monday, June 23: Rebekah Lynn’s Books blog
Tuesday, June 24: Michael Lorde’s M.E. Author blog
Wednesday, June 25: BestSelling Reads’ Win-a-Book Wednesday—two chances to win!
Thursday, June 26: Wodke Hawkinson’s Find a Good Book to Read blog
Friday, June 27: Seb Kirby’s New Words for New Times
Saturday, June 28: Michelle Chiapetta’s Chipper Muse
Sunday, June 29: Gae-Lynn Woods’ The Big Heat
Monday, June 30: Back to Written Words for the wrap-up.

Read each blog on its day and collect the clue. Put all the clues together and unscramble them for a chance to win a signed paperback copy.

And if you enter the clue into the comments field in the respective blog, you’re eligible to win a free e-copy. Don’t delay—enter now!

You still have a chance to go back to the previous blogs. For a list, visit my blog post from the start of the tour.

Why June 22?

June 22 is the anniversary of a key event in the book and the life of its protagonist, Maurice Bury. What is it? Well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out.

Get it from Amazon today!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Army of Worn Soles launches this weekend

Image source: Wikipedia
My third book comes out this Sunday, June 22.

A true story told in novel form, it presents the opening of the eastern front of World War II through the eyes of a man who lived through it: my father-in-law, Maurice Bury, a Canadian citizen drafted into the Red Army just in time to fight against Operation Barbarossa.

It’s an important book to me, and I am so gratified for the advance reviews it’s already received. You can see them in a Goodreads group, Army of Worn Soles Army.

To celebrate the launch, I’m putting my earlier books on sale for the first week of Army of Worn Soles’ publication. You can now get The Bones of the Earth and One Shade of Red for just USD $0.99 each from your choice of e-tailer—Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Diesel or iBooks.

And because the solstice is coming, Initiation Rites, the first part of The Bones of the Earth, is free all weekend.

Don’t forget to follow the blog tour

Collect the clues, solve the puzzle and you could win a signed paperback copy (signed by me, that is; sorry if you were hoping for an autograph from a celebrity) and a $50 gift card for Amazon.

How to win:

Where can you find the clues? Follow the trail below. If you’re checking in after one of the dates shown, that means the post is already up.

The tour dates

Sunday, June 15: Dawn Torrens’ My Books & I… blog
Monday, June 16: Gary Henry’s Honest Indie
Tuesday, June 17: David C. Cassidy’s blog
Wednesday, June 18: Cinta Garcia de la Rosa’s Indie Authors You Want to Read
Thursday, June 19: Frederick Lee Brooke’s Author Unplugged
Friday, June 20: RS Guthrie’s Rob on Writing
Saturday, June 21: Writer CR Hiatt’s site
Sunday, June 22: Back here on Written Words 
Monday, June 23: Rebekah Lynn’s Books blog
Tuesday, June 24: Michael Lorde’s M.E. Author blog
Wednesday, June 25: BestSelling Reads’ Win-a-Book Wednesday—two chances to win!
Thursday, June 26: Wodke Hawkinson’s Find a Good Book to Read blog
Friday, June 27: Seb Kirby’s New Words for New Times
Saturday, June 28: Michelle Chiapetta’s Chipper Muse
Sunday, June 29: Gae-Lynn Woods’ The Big Heat
Monday, June 30: Back to Written Words for the wrap-up.

Enter now!



Monday, June 16, 2014

Not self-publishing—independent publishing

Creative Commons
I am not a self-publisher, because I did not publish my books by myself. I was part of a team of talented, dedicated, professional, skilled and very giving people, to whom I am indebted and grateful.

You know by now that my new book, Army of Worn Soles, will publish in e-book form on June 22, 2014—less than a week from the day this post goes up on the blog.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been busy with all sorts of not just last-minute details on the book itself, but also with advance promotion and publicity. I’ve been answering questions, and learning, from those answers. A question that has come up (however, not as frequently as I expected) was about “self publishing.”

I prefer the term “independent publishing,” simply because I think it’s far more accurate. I don’t publish any books by myself.

Publishing any book calls upon a wide range of skills:
  • writing—creating the story or the information for the reader
  • substantive—“story editing,” a review and critique of the overall worth of the manuscript, whether it’s complete, or there’s too much material, and whether the basic ideas make sense
  • copy-editing—ensuring it’s clear, grammatical, logical?
  • proofreading—looking out for spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes and silly little errors in logic (like setting the opening of a chapter on a spring morning and ending, without indicating any passage of time, with a winter night)
  • design—of the cover as well as the interior
  • layout—setting up the interior according to the design, and making sure that the whole book follows the same design
  • manufacturing—transferring from manuscript to e-book or print format with the highest fidelity to the final manuscript and the highest production quality affordable.
Each of this is a major task requiring specialized knowledge, and no, I don’t attempt it myself. I can do many of them, but not all—not well.

And I have always said, “You can’t edit your own stuff.”

The team

When it comes to publishing my books, I call upon a supportive team. For Army of Worn Soles, that team included:

  • Fred Brooke, Alan McDermott, Russell Blake and Cinta Garcia de la Rosa as pre-readers
  • Rebecca Dickson as my stalwart editor
  • David C. Cassidy as cover designer
  • a large team to help promote the cover and excerpts, whom you are meeting through other posts on this blog.

Army of Worn Soles, like my other books, is a truly collaborative effort.

No, I do not self-publish. Army of Worn Soles, and all books I write, followed a cooperative publishing model, one promoted and supported by Independent Authors International. Like those published by the Big Five commercial publishers, are the result of a team of talented professionals applying developed skills to producing a quality book.

 

Thursday, June 12, 2014

The Army of Worn Soles blog tour begins


The true story of a Canadian conscripted into the Soviet Red Army in 1941, Army of Worn Soles is coming out in e-book and print formats on June 22, 2014, the anniversary of the opening of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s Germany’s invasion of the USSR.

A memoir in novel form, it’s my third full-length book to be published. As you can imagine, I’m very excited about it. And I’m also thrilled to have enlisted the support of a group of prominent bloggers and wonderful people.

They’re supporting the release with a blog tour that begins one week in advance of the tour and ends one week after. Each one will present a short excerpt from the book.

On the trail of the clues

And if you follow the whole tour, pick up the clues and answer the skill-testing question at the end, I’ll send you a free e-copy of Army of Worn Soles, plus enter you in a draw for a free print copy and a $50 Amazon gift card.
Start checking the blog tour, and follow every day.

The tour dates


The contest

At the end of each excerpt on the tour will be a clue word. String them together then unscramble them to make a coherent message, and you’ll qualify for the Grand Prize: A signed paperback copy plus a $50 Amazon gift certificate. Copy the full answer into the Comments section of this blog. I’ll draw one winner from the correct answers.

Early bird prizes: Enter a comment on each blog on the tour on the day the excerpt goes live, and I’ll enter your name in the draw for one of five signed paperbacks.

Everyone who correctly unscrambles the sentence at the end of the tour will win a free e-copy of Army of Worn Soles, PLUS an e-copy of my first book, The Bones of the Earth.

Save the date in your calendar: visit Dawn’s My Books & I … early on June 15, and keep following the tour!

Monday, June 09, 2014

Book launch: Inferno

Book 2 in The Drone Wars
by Frederick Lee Brooke



When 19-year-old Matt Carney saved his girlfriend, Raine, from the crossfire between the government’s increasingly ruthless Homeland Security and March22, a terrorist group taking steps to strike a new, legitimate path, he thought his work was done.

Was he ever wrong.

Kidnapped by the brutal Dark Fiber militia, Matt is shocked to discover he’s been betrayed by those he trusted most. Stranded in an isolated location in the middle of Michigan, far away from the girl he fought so hard to regain, Matt is made March22’s point man in a plot to get control over a cache of thousands of stolen ground-to-air missiles. As time runs out, he’s their last—and best—hope of sparing the country of a heinous attack on commercial aviation that could quickly turn the United States into a permanent war zone.

In this action-packed, explosive follow-up to Saving Raine, the first book in Frederick Lee Brooke’s The Drone Wars, Matt Carney finds himself at the center of a firestorm of stolen missiles, stolen drones, and stolen dirty nukes, tormented by stinging betrayals, clinging to a last hope for love. Sure, he was able to save Raine—but as the inferno rages around him, can he find a way to save the country from further violent chaos…and a way to save himself?


Inferno is available on Amazon now.


About the author

Frederick Lee Brooke launched the Annie Ogden Mystery Series in 2011 with Doing Max Vinyl and followed with Zombie Candy in 2012, a book that is neither about zombies nor sweets. The third mystery in the series, Collateral Damage, appeared in 2013. Saving Raine, the first book in Fred’s entirely new series, The Drone Wars, appeared in December, 2013.

A resident of Switzerland, Fred has worked as a teacher, language school manager and school owner. He has three boys and two cats and recently had to learn how to operate both washing machine and dryer. He makes frequent trips back to his native Chicago.

When not writing or doing the washing, Fred can be found walking along the banks of the Rhine River, sitting in a local cafe, or visiting all the local pubs in search of his lost umbrella.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Army of Worn Soles: The cover reveal blog tour

Army of Worn Soles launches June 22 and it's time to reveal the beautiful cover designed by David C. Cassidy.

David is creating a well-deserved reputation as a designer of wonderful book covers. Check out his website to see his excellent work.

Thanks, David!
I'm thrilled with David's design, and I've asked a number of prominent bloggers to share it with the world. You'll be able to see it on a different blog each day this week. 

Start with David's blog on June 5. 

And thank you, too, Cinta.
Today, June 6, visit Cinta's Corner and Indie Authors You Want to Read by Cinta Garcia de la Rosa.

Tomorrow, June 7, Rebekah Lyn will show off the cover on her Books blog.


Raine Thomas
And on June 8, it will be on Raine Thomas's blogWrite as Raine.

Through the next several days, I'll be updating this blog with links to other places where you can see the cover in its full glory. Keep checking in!
Rebekah Lyn

Monday, June 02, 2014

Operation Book Launch looms

Image by Clément Bucco-Lechat. Licenced under Wikimedia Commons
Army of Worn Soles, my third book, will launches June 22, the anniversary of the start of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR in 1941.
Army of Worn Soles is the true story of my father-in-law, Maurice Bury, who was drafted by the Soviet Red Army in 1941 just in time to be thrown into that struggle.
“But I am a Canadian citizen,” he told the conscripting officer.

“You live here now, tovarisch,” the officer said. “You must help defend the motherland.”
Listening to my father-in-law tell stories like that inspired this book. Army of Worn Soles is his view of the war, a perspective rarely seen in the West. The popular image of the war in movies and books mostly focuses on events in western Europe or the Pacific. The only movie I can think of about the eastern front is the excellent Enemy at the Gates.


The details will shock some readers—Maurice’s accounts certainly shocked me the first time I heard them. One example? The way the Germans deliberately starved their eastern front prisoners of war. It was an explicit policy, the “Hunger Plan.”
I only wish I had buckled down and written it years ago, and he were still alive to read it.

Surprises in store
There are a lot of other little facts that surprised me and I hope will inform the readers. You’ll have to wait to find out, but not necessarily until June 22.

David C. Cassidy
Your first chance comes on Thursday, June 5, when the David C. Cassidy reveals his fantastic cover design on his website. The cover reveal continues to the blogs of my good friend Cinta Garcia de la Rosa, and then Raine Thomas, Onisha Ellis, Gae-lynn Woods, Frederick Lee Brooke, Dana Griffin and the BestSelling Reads site.

The Army of Worn Soles blog tour kicks off on June 15, when D.G. Torrens, author of the bestselling Amelia’s Story, hosts the first excerpt. That will be followed by excerpts appearing on the blogs and websites of Literary Gary Henry, Scholarly Fred Brooke, Cultivated CR Hiatt, Scintillating Cinta Garcia, Dazzling David Cassidy, Raffish Rob Guthrie, Ozzie Onisha Ellis, learned Michael Lorde and Stupendous Seb Kirby.
Thank you all very much for your support. I’ll send each of you a free e-book.

Win a paper copy
And for all you readers who follow the tour, something special: I’m borrowing a page from Fabulous Fred and making a contest out of it. Collect the clues on each stop on the tour, email me the solution and I’ll send you a free, autographed paperback copy.


Come back to this blog often for updates and links to every stop on the tour. 

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Internet dependence


I'm writing this post on vacation, and I realize that I need more than an hour of Internet access per day.

If I want to get anything concrete done, that is. 

And it's not my fault. The things I want to do on the Internet each day, if I could just do them quickly, would probably take me about 20 minutes.

Except for writing blog posts, of course. 

My situation
I'm on the Mayan Riviera for a 10-day all-inclusive vacation with my lovely wife, Roxanne (I know, boo-hoo), where I get to access the free WiFi network for at most an hour a day. I could have 24/7 access, but that costs more money. (My grandparents were Scottish.) So, I've been working with an hour's daily  access.

It's been very relaxing and refreshing. I've been mostly disconnected from the real world down here, and I'm only sporadically informed about the Montreal-New York series, the Ukrainian election, Russian invasions, celebrity deaths, mass shootings (blind guess about that, but I'm probably right), and other depressing news.

"You're supposed to be on a beach vacation, not spending all your time looking at the Internet" my lovely wife says when I grumble. So I have another (price included) drink and splash into the Caribbean, or talk to the iguanas. They never complain about limited WiFi, so I guess I shouldn't, either.

And I've learned something valuable: the Internet tortures me whenever I use it, but I do it so much I haven't noticed until I've disconnected.

How the Internet tortures me:
1. Making me wait. Has anyone ever added up all the time we waste waiting for the computer or the network or whatever to stop spinning the ball or the hourglass and update the work we've just done? To make that connection, already, to save the file? When your access is limited to an hour in total—working and uploading as well as waiting for the app to launch and the various servers to shake hands—you really notice all those delays.

2. Limited apps. I love my iPad, but when it's all I have for blogging, email, web surfing and social media, I really notice the differences, the limitations of the mobile apps compared to the full desktop versions. 

Take Facebook, for example. I cannot select a portion of a Facebook post, copy it and paste it into Twitter on the iPad. I don't know if it's because of the touch-screen interface or some combination of settings, but that's completely intuitive on the desktop version.

Hootsuite's iPad app doesn't have bulk tweet scheduling, which is the main reason I use the service in the first place.

In the desktop version of Pages, my clumsy fingers find it almost impossible to change the indents on paragraphs.

The iPad version of Blogger, which I am using to write this very post, doesn't allow me to indent whole paragraphs, or have bulleted and numbered paragraph formats. It also does not appear to have a Schedule feature, like in the full version.

I know, first world problems. But they slow down what I try to do, so I cannot accomplish in an hour what should take twenty minutes: 
- check the email and delete all the junk. On the iPad, I tend to delete news releases and social media updates, leaving them to the desktop when I have more time to devote to them. The iPad only has so much memory, and I try to restrict it to stuff I need immediately.
- check Twitter for mentions
- check the blog status for number of pageviews yesterday and comments, and publish the real ones (as opposed to spam)
- check Google+ and Facebook for important updates and announcements
- upload a new daily spreadsheet to Hootsuite.

If everything went quickly, if apps and networks responded without delay, I am sure that I could accomplish all that in 20 minutes. Okay, maybe half an hour.

Granted, it will take me 15 to 20 minutes to create a .csv file for uploading to Hootsuite. I need more time to respond to the important emails, write some of my own, and of course write blog posts like this.

But being restricted to an hour a day? It's just frustrating.

All that to say, I'll be back in full form, rested, recharged and full of new ideas in a matter of days. Till then, faithful readers, keep on questioning.