A New Thriller, An Unforgettable PI

BETA, by Stephen L. Brayton, is the first novel in the Mallory Petersen series of thrillers. In this new mystery thriller, Mallory Petersen, a fourth-degree black belt with her own taekwondo school gets into bone-chilling scrapes, one after the other, with thieves, police, and especially underworld scum and their vicious guard dogs. These scenes are breathtakingly fast, Mallory’s taekwondo technique, expert and authentic. And just when we think Mallory will succeed in wrapping up the case, there are more exciting twists.

Fast-action scenes are offset by the poignant, searing commentary and scenes involving the plight of a kidnapped eight-year-old girl.

The story begins when a woman hires Mallory to find her kidnapped daughter, Cindy McGee, a child forced into the dark world of pornography, rape, drugs, you name it. The trail soon leads to the Quad Cities, where Mallory partners with a delicious-looking Detective Lawrence Cameron to continue her search for the kidnapped girl, and, along with more action and daring, there is the promise of romance.

Mr. Brayton’s writing has a distinctive voice. His characters are fresh and plentiful (I especially liked three of his minor characters: Mallory’s grandmother, the oily Edward Brougham, and the likable snitch, Willy.) Themes include grief and loss surrounding child pornography.

Make no mistake, the subject of BETA is child pornography—sexual exploitation for profit, slavery at its bleakest level. If you have avoided books dealing with this perverse but pervasive underworld in the past, know that in BETA the author handles the subject with tender sensitivity and poignancy.

And the tale of our children’s exploitation needs to be told. Child pornography is one of the fastest growing industries on the internet.

In the quote below, the author switches from the voice of Mallory Petersen’s first-person narrative told in the past tense of storytelling to third-person omniscient. Because he uses the present tense, we feel like we are there:

The girl sits very still in the cold room. Her mind is fuzzy and her eyes can’t focus very well. She wants to forget the last few hours, the feelings, the pain, the sickness in her stomach. Mercilessly, the memories return again and again, distorted, blurry, but all too real.

‘Mallory’ in Old French means ‘Luckless.’ You’ll have to read the book and decide for yourself whether or not the name suits Mallory Petersen, but if you enjoy non-stop thrillers, the fine writing of an unputdownable story, then you won’t want to miss BETA.

About the Author:  Stephen L. Brayton owns and operates Brayton’s Black Belt Academy in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He is a Fifth Degree Black Belt and certified instructor in The American Taekwondo Association.

During his early twenties, while working for a Kewanee, Illinois radio station, he wrote a fantasy based story and a trilogy for a comic book. He has written numerous short stories, written a paranormal mystery, entitled NIGHT SHADOWS. Sequels to NIGHT SHADOWS and BETA are in rewrite/revision stages.

Synopsis:

At thirty-two, newspaper reporter Molly Hacker vows to never attend another wedding until she has had her own. And that’s a problem because Molly’s younger sister, Hannah, is going to be married in one year. Armed with snark, wit, and fabulous good looks, “Picky Molly” embarks on a quest to find Mr. Right in her hometown, Swansea, an elegant bedroom community of NYC.

Things get complicated fast. In no time at all, Molly has four “men of interest” and the memories of a lost love to send her overanalytic, befuddled mind into serious overdrive. Determined not to let her “helpful” girlfriends help her right out of another relationship, Molly tries to keep mum on the state of her love life. Her BFF male coworker, Randy, becomes her closest confidant as he stumbles over romantic issues with his new Mr. Right, Kyle. Meanwhile, Molly’s BFF gal pals aren’t too happy about being left out of the loop.

Tweaking Molly’s last nerve is the town’s most visible socialite, Naomi Hall-Benchley. For self-serving reasons, Naomi is hell-bent on setting up “Picky Molly Hacker,” and she doesn’t care who she has to manipulate or hurt to do it. Just how far will she go?

“Molly Hacker Is Too Picky!” takes the reader on a yearlong romp through Molly’s mind and a joyride through her life. Her dating life, town secrets, a group of quirky, crazy characters, and Naomi’s machinations collide head-on at a holiday gala that will change the social landscape of Swansea forever. As the New Year rolls in, Molly gets earth-shattering news. Can she go on? Will life ever return to abnormal again?

Review:

I loved this book. I tried to think of another way to start this review, but that is the overwhelming thing that comes to mind. Reading Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! is like getting together with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while and catching up on all that has happened in her life during the past year. You know the experience… two friends sitting down over coffee, refilling cups a few times, but then ultimately gabbing as the coffee turns stone-cold. People nearby are muttering because you’ve held down the best table in the joint for hours and show NO signs of moving on. And when you pull out your phone as the conversation winds down, you’re shocked to find that so much time has passed, I mean, really, you only started talking half an hour ago, right?

Molly Hacker, reporter for the Swansea Herald, is very single when the book opens, attending a wedding with her best-friend Tony whom she has always been in love with, but he happens to be married to his high school sweetheart. She is still trying to get over a broken heart from her last relationship with Leo, but is having a difficult time with it. And friends, family, and enemies are NOT helping. In fact, the helping hand of friends, while not responsible for the end of her last relationship, gave it a good shove in that direction. But with her nemesis, Naomi Hall-Benchley, Molly’s single status is a challenge, and she considers Molly’s say in the matter immaterial. As we romp through this romantic comedy, Molly winds up juggling no less than four men, in the small community of Swansea where everybody knows everybody else’s business and considers it their own. That’s not a feat most women (or men) could pull off. *Whispers* And Molly is no different.

Maybe one of the reasons I connected so well with this book is that like Molly Hacker, I took my time to find the right guy. Before I took the trip down matrimony lane, I wanted someone I fully connected with, someone who wasn’t second-best or settled for. Because I knew that was a recipe for a quick trip through divorce court. I also had the pressure from friends and family (although thankfully none from my mother) about when I’d finally settle down. And like Molly, I didn’t give my heart easily, but when I did, it was completely.

Brodey does a fantastic job with the characters, even down to Molly’s cat, Captain Jack. I expected no less because last year I read, Squalor New Mexico, and thoroughly enjoyed Brodey’s character development in that book. Randy was an instant fave and the banter between him and Molly is priceless. The only one who borders on caricature is Naomi Hall-Benchley, and it works and I believe is deliberate… and haven’t we all had a Naomi in our life in one way or another?

My life has been in hyper-busy mode of late, and there appears to be no end in sight on the to-do list, so I thought I’d read Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! a chapter a night before going to sleep. Yes, it’d take me longer to read, but at least I’d feel like I made progress with it since it is something I have been wanting to read prior to its release. Well, as things go, one chapter turned into two, and two into three, and so on. Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! cost me some precious hours of sleep, but it was well worth the resultant bags under the eyes. And before I conclude and tell you that you’ll be missing out on a great romantic comedy if you skip this one, Molly has been blogging for the past year on her website and the posts are just as charming and engaging as the book, with illustrations created for each post. It is well worth a read and a comment or two. Stop by and check it out. And below is Molly as she raps about her experiences. So??? What are you waiting for? Pick up a copy of Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! or put it on your to-be-read list today.

The first chapter, the last chapter and a couple of chapters in the middle are brilliant. The remainder of the book careens between “Catcher in the Rye” and “Animal House” both in style in a level of sophistication. The contrast between the highs and the lows is so sharp as to be painful.

The book asks, but does not answer, the question whether a young man, or a boy, can have a fulfilling relationship with a woman after having been exposed to Internet sex. The story is a coming of age story involving a college frat boy and contains much of the standard imagery that one would expect of a member of that demographic. The premise that somehow the Internet changes all the rules is touched on, but never fully explored in the depth the title promises. It is not a bad story, but it does not reach its potential.

Plot: three stars

Characters: Four stars

Narrative style: Two stars

Technical execution: Four stars

The protagonist and two of the women in the story are the only ones whose characters are defined enough to consider them more than cardboard cutouts. It is clear, however, that the author has no more understanding of the females in his story than the protagonist. The frat boys and the women (girls mostly) who hang out in the frat house are little more than stereotypes drawn from B movies. Even the “villains” lack enough depth to provide real challenge.

The biggest failing of this book is its uneven storytelling. Sometimes the narrative is clear and easy to follow. Other times it is confused and disjointed. My favorite passage is the book’s opening:

As a diversion, I followed the Can Man around campus—always from a safe distance because he was shy. Was he John the Baptist incarnate? It was too soon to know, though he wore a waist-long, unkempt gray beard with black striations and the bees loved him, buzzing near, hovering for the sugary remnants on histan arthritic fingers and those gooey flecks inside the cans of the clear garbage sack slung over his shoulder.

He listlessly pedaled his forest-green, 1970s ten-speed over sidewalks and jarringly wobbled up a curb with a “shit-SHIT!” bursting as if a lethal sneeze. He rambled, to himself and perhaps unseen past enemies, friends, lovers—of song remnants married to dimming emotions—the dueling nonsense maxims of God and Satan. His desert might have been one of loneliness among tight-skinned twenty-one-year-olds with his crumbly, green flip flops serving as thong sandals and dime-store, twelve-year-old clothes his camel-hair robe.

It’s unclear why I followed the Can Man. I had presumed him alcoholic and schizophrenic. I imagined him pressed flat against the lowest strata, the weight of our riches and comfort pinning him fast as the water in a lightless ocean trench crushes a man from the vertical miles resting above.

Hindsight is 20/20. It seems obvious with the passage of years that I followed the Can Man because I believed him alcoholic and with three men on my father’s side suffering from this I needed to know this Can Man was a different species from what I was, that a twitch of destiny could never shove me in his place.

This exchange via a messaging system between frat brothers on the same floor of the house occurs in the middle of the book. It is virtually impossible to follow:

K-ZORRO

YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK OF YOU GUYS?

YOUR ALL BUNCH A IDIOTS? KNOW WHY?

CAUSE ILL TELL YA. YOU TALK AND TALK

AND YOU WONT DO ANYTHING!

SEXY_REXY

Chill out, K-Zorro.

Stop yelling at us.

K-ZORRO

DONT CALL ME K-ZORRO.

DONT KNOW ME YOU.

SEXY_REXY

Somebody get a breathalizer

On that guy.

STANLEYJOR_4

I’m on it!

(and 3 min. later)

STANLEYJOR_4

He’s almost three times drunk.

SEXY_REXY

Wait? In what state is he

Almost three times drunk?

STANLEYJOR_4

Iowa. Of course.

SEXY_REXY

Wow. Drailing at 12:30pm.

I’m impressed, K-Zorro.

K-ZORRO

I told YOU! not call me that.

SEXY_REXY

You don’t want to be

Called by your IM tag?

Change your tag at least.

K-ZORRO

2 drunk. And I saw that stuff U

Wrote about me on p2p. why didn’t

You come tell it to my face

Instead of write some shit U

Knew i would see.

SEXY_REXY

Do you bite your thumb at me?

K-ZORRO

???? U’re an idiot, Rex.

I dont see how u ever

Voted consul.

SEXY_REXY

Do you bite your thumb at me,

Sir?

K-ZORRO

U’RE LUCKY I DON’T COME OVER

THERE!

SEXY_REXY

My door is always open…

K-ZORRO

I’ll be WRITE[sic]! over…

(and 2 min. later)

M_KESSLER

What’s happening? I can’t see

Anything I cant get thru the

Hallway crowd??

STANLEYJOR_4

K-ZORRO went to Rex’s room and

Pushed him Then shoving. A few

Punches. Rex’s shirt gets torn

By K-Zorro. Red faces.

(and 3 min. later)

M_KESSLER

What’s happening RIGHT now?

STANLEYJOR_4

I cant see. I lost my place when

I went to type. Can anybody see?

WILL_POWER

They took it to the ground. And

Knocked over a coffee table.

Fights always end on the ground.

Booo!

WILL_POWER

Rex has K-Zorro in a sleeper

Hold. Rex got a cut on his

Forehead and it trickle little

Into his eye. I swear he’s

Mumbling somehting about zombies

Or ‘fucking zombies.’

K-zorro’s gonna have some nasty

Carpet burns on his shins

And knees.

WILL_POWER

People are trying to get Rex to

Let K-zorro go because K-zorro’s

Cashed and they think Rex’ll

Kill’em. That mutherfucker’s

Cashed man. He’s so cashed.

Being drunk didn’t help him

Noon[sic].

(and 10 min. later)

SEXY_REXY

DO YOU HEAR ME K-ZORRO? I

FUCKING

LOVE

YOU!!!!

(and 30 seconds later)

SEXY_REXY

I WISH YOU NOTHING BUT

HAPPINESS IN YOUR LIFE.

(and 104 seconds later)

SEXY_REXY

GOD ITS BEAUTIFUL!

I LOVE IT ! ! ! !

(and 1 hour later)

SEXY_REXY

I knew that

Drailing,

Fat-fingering

SOB

Bit his thumb at me.

The trial scene that theoretically starts the real action is a sham and a hollow parody of a Joe McCarthy era witch hunt. It is slow and didactic. The characters are wooden stereotypes and the scene does not work. By contrast, the attack on the house mother’s apartment is fast paced and progresses in a logical, if frenetic succession. The pacing is intense, but it works.

The main character’s pursuit of the girl of his dreams which takes up the last quarter of the book is well done and is enough justification to read the rest. The ending asks as many questions as it answers as it explores territory that has been worked over many times. Questions left for the reader include why a woman would post suggestive pictures of herself knowing that the boys she sees every day will pore over them. Does Internet porn really impact a boy’s ability to relate to a woman or are the usual forces of insecurity and social ineptitude more relevant?

The title “Growing up Wired” alludes to a promise that is never fulfilled. The “wired” part refers to a single aspect of one man’s life. It does not address the wider spectrum of influences the current proliferation of electronic communications devices has wreaked on the lives of people growing up today. A more proper title might have been “The Effect of Internet Porn on a Frat Boy and the Women He Meets.”

Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt

3 out of 5

ABOUT:

Virulent pockets of plague, first reported in China, break out worldwide and spread with mind-boggling speed. CIA black ops agent Chad Halverson flies to Los Angeles to visit his brother after receiving a call that his brother has been hospitalized after a car accident. Halverson’s Boeing 737 crash-lands in an eerie Los Angeles shrouded with an impenetrable haze of smog. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of Halverson’s nightmare. Lurking in this mist are legions of plague-infected living dead who are driven by an all-consuming lust for human flesh. Halverson’s reunion with his brother must take second place to his own struggle to stay alive.

As civilization crumbles into chaos, it will take all the skills and wits Halverson and his fellow passengers possess for their hunted party to survive in a world overrun with hordes of flesh-craving zombies. Which will pose a bigger threat to Halverson and his ever-dwindling band–their own bickering as they try to organize and defend themselves, their enemies the living dead, or the new “civilization” of men that is superseding the old?

REVIEW:

Zombie Maelstrom is filled with the repetition of killing the virus riddled dead. It tells the story of a group of survivors trying to make it through the zombie apocalypse with limited information.

Chad Halverson knows that something is amiss with the so-called plague, because he works for the CIA. Chad keeps what information that he has to himself, as he, and a group of plane crash survivors try to make heads or tails of what is happening. The action keeps rolling as the group is devastated over and over by the onslaught of the undead.

The story reminded me of Night Of The Living Dead, but in a bug out scenario. My biggest complaint about the story is that I couldn’t find anything that hasn’t been portrayed in every zombie movie or book in the last 40 plus years: A couple of leaders, an over opinionated jerk (that everyone wants to see get offed), a girl that seems to lose her marbles, some one that flips out under the pressure, a group of renegades that want to build their own government, and then a few stragglers that just seem to waste space and resources.

There are a two things I consider when I read a zombie book.

ONE: What makes this different from every other one that I’ve read?

With Zombie Maelstrom I couldn’t seem to find anything that struck me as different. But with that said, there are quite a few zombie fans that love the repetition of the zombie ‘slash and dash’ story. They want the gore and carnage, and they aren’t looking for anything but the overflow of an all-consuming virus. For those people I would suggest this book.

TWO: Being a zombie coinsure, I look for whether or not I would have stayed with this group if I were there.

I’m sorry Bryan Cassiday, I would have cut and run from this group as soon as possible. The inevitability of my death would have had me hightailing it out of there as soon as I was able to obtain a weapon. With this group they took too much time overanalyzing their every move, and bickered amongst themselves under the siege of zombies.

If you like the tried and true zombies of 1964 then Zombie Maelstrom is for you.

A nail-biting, heart-pumping ride into the wild mind of a serial killer

DARK MIND, the third in the Emily Stone series, is a tightly plotted thriller set in an island paradise. The lush descriptions of Kauai, its trails, ancient rituals, its beaches and forests, soothe or arrest the reader. Most of the time they contrast sharply with the graphic depiction of the brutality Emily and her mates encounter in the hunt for this serial killer. Despite the action, I found myself transported to the peace of this Hawaiian paradise.

But make no mistake: the action and heart pumping start on the first page and never abate.

The novel begins with Emily Stone, a vigilante detective, and her partner, Rick, in the middle of their quest for a kidnapped child. Throughout the novel tension is maintained by the promise of future danger. These promises, usually couched in form of character reflection in the midst of high-wire scenes, have the effect of compounding fear and ratcheting up the tension. Throughout the novel danger and pace never wane. On the contrary, they increase, culminating in the story’s nail-biting climax. In the final scenes, characters are sure of their demise, and so, with a sinking heart, is the reader.

The author’s credentials and experience are impressive, doubtless the reason for the authenticity of the novel’s detail. Jennifer Chase holds a bachelor degree in police forensics and a master’s degree in criminology. She also has certifications in serial crime and criminal profiling and is a member of the International Association of Forensic Criminologists.

If at times the prose is stiff, this novel will not disappoint the reader who cannot wait to turn each page, and, on the last page, will long to read Ms. Chase’s next Emily Stone thriller.

Reviewed By Jaime Hypes

Greed, revenge, lust, government corruption, and mystery.  These are all indicators of a fast-paced novel of suspense, and are all present in Karen Keilt’s debut novel The Parrot’s Perch.  When Freddy Lauria gets entangled in the drug trade while a student at Harvard, he thinks he can put it all behind him when he moves back home to Brazil.  However, Jack and Red, dirty cops who are on to Freddy, have a different plan when they follow him to the South American hotspot.

When Freddy arrives back in Brazil he is thrown into the same stressful home life he had managed to escape for years, and is drawn to the life of dealing once again.  Only this time, his sister Caitlin becomes unwittingly involved in his sordid affairs as well.  In Freddy’s quest to hide his past and his dealings from his family, he becomes more enmeshed in a maze of lies and deceit at every turn.

While Jack and Red both begin surveillance on Freddy and his circle, they quickly realize that he may be a better pawn than kingpin in their game of greed.  Meanwhile, Caitlin Lauria is living her seemingly perfect life planning a perfect marriage, when things go extremely wrong in the plans of the Brazilian authorities and the American cops.  Still, she has no idea how she fits into the scheme, and how she will be paying for the crimes and sins of those around her.

The Parrot’s Perch gives us an inside look into the corruption of some foreign justice systems.  Living in a country with fair trials and representation, the brutality and injustices seem unimaginable, albeit all too real.  It is evident that it is much too easy for the innocent to pay for the crimes of the guilty, and that greed is a pervasive tool in such a world.

Keilt gives us a story that is based on real events, although by the end, the reader will be wishing it was entirely fiction.  It is a story that will haunt long after the last page is read, and will make one realize that the political corruption that is seen at home is nothing compared to what others must face daily.  The Parrot’s Perch has been optioned as a major motion picture.  However, it remains to be seen whether reading the words on a page are as harrowing as seeing the images on the screen.  Regardless, this is one story in which you will become entangled with and will never forget.

I’m not talking about authors writing to fulfill the need in a genre, or to satisfy the popularity of what’s driving the market in hopes of getting attention and gaining sales. Case in point: How many vampire or werewolf books have been self published ever since Twilight first came out?

Take into consideration Amazon’s KDP Select program that went into effect in December. Amazon dedicated $6 million dollars to the program for 2012, enticing authors to make their books available to Prime Members in the Lending Library which allows those members to check out books for free each month.  Obviously, authors gained no commission from the lending of their books prior to this, which meant authors probably weren’t making their books available.

But, with the Select program, money allotted to each month is divided up by how many ever books were lent that month.  December’s pot was $500,000 which equated to $1.70 in commission every time your book was lent.  Yep, do the math and that’s just over 294,000 books that were lent. The program was apparently so popular that Amazon increased January’s pot to $700,000. February was announced a few days ago as being $600,000.

So, readers enjoy the perks of their Prime membership by having a large array of free books to choose from, and authors benefit by still earning some amount of commission from those free downloads. Everybody’s happy!

Amazon also threw in another perk for authors by giving them the option to promote their book by making it available to everyone – not just Prime members - for free for up to 5 days.  Within a 90 day time period, you can divide up the days however you like or run all 5 days consecutively.

I decided to take advantage of the 5 day free promotion with my second book, Stealing Wishes, by making it free from January 29th to February 2nd. Regular visitors to LLBR might remember this is the book I chronicled in my POD Diary back in 2009. The book was a semi-finalist in the very first Amazon ABNA contest in 2008 and also a semi-finalist for a Lambda Literary award in 2009.

While the book has enjoyed very minor success, I still see a handful of sales each month at the current Kindle price of $2.99.  It had earned 14 reviews at Amazon, but with the last one being posted 14 months ago, prior to the promotion.  Since it was the one book of my three with the most reviews,  it was an easy choice for the 5 day promo.  It’s also been labeled a “light romantic comedy” so I thought kicking off February with the promotion would be a nice touch.

Last week, I decided to visit the Amazon Forums in hopes of doing some light promotion and to spark interest in the book.  I first started participating in the forums in 2008 because the ABNA contest was very forum driven (and it still is), and it’s a nice way to connect with authors and readers.  Over the years, as the forums grew in various subjects, self-promotion was quickly frowned upon and Amazon created a MOA (Meet Our Authors) forum that is more open to self-promotion.

Though you have the option to opt out of following a discussion, anyone who has followed a thread in one of the forums knows that it can get pretty lively, and Amazon will email you every time someone replies.  So, unfortunately, your in-box can feel up quickly with LOL’s and smiley faces, leaving you searching for a needle in a haystack.  It often reminds me of the ole AOL chatrooms I use to troll back in the day.

While reacquainting myself with the forums and searching out the best places to plant a promo seed, I came across this forum about authors replying to one star reviews. It started from someone pointing out how author Ken Foster had replied to some of his negative reviews on his book, The Dogs Who Found Me. He apparently felt the need to defend himself against the reviewers who didn’t like the book, and he even points out some of their errors in the way they interpreted his book.

While I don’t condone Mr. Foster’s behavior, I chimed in and pointed out that I thought it was okay to comment on “good” reviews and mentioned that I had thanked reviewers for their reviews before.  A barrage of comments came in from forum followers, checking my facts by looking up my own books, who mostly disagreed with me and even said “authors should keep their mouths shut” and that “reviews were for readers.”  While I quickly stumbled to the old windmill to avoid the angry mob, I bowed out and immediately stopped following the forum.

Later this same day, I received an email from a fellow author who had just finished reading my 3rd book.  She asked if I was okay with her posting a review of it at Amazon.  She then pointed out that she only asked this because apparently “review swapping” amongst authors was frowned upon in the forums and would get you a lynching for sure! I told her I didn’t care what the forums said and if she wanted to post a review of my book at Amazon, I’d be happy to have it.  In the meantime, this just added more fuel to my fire which is the main reason I’m writing this post. But more about that later.

Two days later, Stealing Wishes goes Free on Kindle as planned. I sent out some Tweets and some Facebook posts.  I announced it on my author website,  and that was about it for day one. To my surprise, the book was downloaded over 400 times just the first day! Mostly thanks to a website called Kinlib.com that I had never heard of before. According to the forums, it’s a website that automatically highlights all the Kindle freebies each day.  I checked it, and indeed my book was there.  (Authors, no need to worry about getting your book on Kinlib if you do the free promotion – it should happen automatically.)

But I had not given up on those forums just yet.  With a quick search I found the MOA forums where self-promotion smoking was allowed. I put on my kids’ mittens and replied to a few, specifically this one about the KDP Free Promotion where other authors were sharing their success stories.  This led me to another forum devoted each day to FREE books that become available on that day.  After a bit of friendly post swapping with a few folks, I ended Monday with downloads almost doubled from the first day.

I decided to keep quiet on Day 3 (the day I’m actually writing most of this article.) but downloads still reached 957 in the U.S.  and I picked up almost another 79 downloads from the UK and Amazon’s other international sites. I started Day 4 by checking out the UK Forums, the only international site with forums available.  I posted in a couple of the MOA discussions there and then returned to the U.S. forums to hit a few of the MOA forums again to remind readers they still had two days left to get my book for free.  Let’s not forget Tweets and Facebook posts again.

I also greeted Day 4 with 2 new reviews.  Both were brief. One was a 5 star and the other was a 3 star.  I frowned at first at the 3 star review, but the more I thought about it, I was happy to even get it.  It meant that people were actually reading my book and not just being one of those free loaders filling up their Kindle device with freebies they will probably never get around to reading.

On Day 4, my author friend that I mentioned earlier also emailed to inform me she’d posted her review over at Amazon of my 3rd book. She mentioned that she too once liked to say thanks to reviewers, but the angry mobsters forced her to delete her thank you notes and choose never to do it again.  Another poster also didn’t approve of a self-promotion post she made about her first book, but chose to review it anyway and gave her a somewhat negative review.  The same poster went on to review her second book and made personal, somewhat attacking, comments about her and even questioned her expertise on the subject matter of her book (of which she had 20 years experience)!

I was honestly appalled by this!  Would a forum ogre really buy and read your book and purposely give you a negative review just because they disapproved of a comment you made in the forums to promote your book? Apparently there are such vindictive minds out there! And they stalk you, waiting on your next book, just so they can attack again.

But as Day 4 came to a close for me, I had only 1 dismal download in the UK despite a few last minute plees I posted in the (proper) forums.  I hit the forums again early on Day 5 announcing that it was the last day.  Tweeted it. Facebooked it. And quickly saw my downloads rise above 50 in the U.S. with only a handful in the UK.  And my 3 star review that I mentioned earlier mysteriously disappeared, but not before I noticed three people had “disliked” it and marked it as not helpful. I’m not pointing fingers here, but it wasn’t me.

Going back to the subject of authors keeping their mouths shut, I really thought that forum comment was a bit harsh. Would you not ogle at the chance to meet your favorite best selling author face to face?  Let’s say Stephen King, Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling…just to name a few.  And what if, as you stood there getting a copy of their latest book signed while clamoring over yourself with slobber and admiration, they simply looked at you with a cold eye (two cold eyes even) and never said a word – all because they knew you were the one behind the forum comment that said authors should shut up?

Sure, if you don’t want us playing Big Brother by commenting on your reviews, that’s fine.  I can respect that. There are plenty of other opportunities for me to thank my readers and reviewers by tweeting about it or posting it on my own website.  I’m guilty of that and will continue to do it off in my own little authordom. But don’t expect me to “like” your comments over on Facebook when you post how much you liked the book.  Like, like, like…look at me and like what I’m doing, like what I’m reading, like me!  Oh, and don’t even think we are going to be friends on Facebook! N’uh! And if you comment on a post on my website, don’t be surprised if I don’t approve it.  How do you like them apples now you, you, you forum muggle!

As for Day 5 of my Free Promo, I tweeted.  I Facebooked.  I hit just a few forums on Amazon for a last call.  And it paid off.  I got 117 downloads in the U.S. on the last day, and 7 in the U.K.  And even though that 3 star review disappeared, another 4 star review was posted on the last day.  So, 2 new reviews during the 5 day promo! And that brings my grand total of downloads over the 5 free days to 1,074 in the U.S. and 86 in the U.K. and other international Amazon sites.  More than I would have ever imagined, so I would call this promotion a success!

What do I hope to gain from it now?  Well, here’s hoping all the free loaders might read and review the book.  I’d love to gain just even another 3 reviews, maybe even a new review in the U.K. But most of all, I’d love for sales of my other 2 books to pick up.  But if not, I’m still already contemplating another free promo later in the year for one of them.

As for the forum fodder and angry authors and no thank you notes on reviews… Readers, you need authors to write more books!  Authors, we need readers to buy them! Can’t we all just get along?

Though I am a gay male and admit I have never read any lesbian erotica, I was more than willing to give Ms. West’s short story “Night Train To Florence” a try after having read her novel The Leaving just a few months ago. West wrote it with pure perfection when it came to good story telling and strong characters, so I expected her shorter work to be no different and I truly was not disappointed.

Night Train is the story of two young female students in Italy getting ready to return back to Florence after their travels. Though the narrator goes unnamed, we get to know her through various details she provides about her friendship with her companion, Liz, and the time they have spent together.

West focuses the attention of her two characters on the littlest of nuances such as two girls they see playing Frisbee in the street or a pipe that a fellow male passenger is smoking. We learn of their likes and dislikes and there are brief glimpses at their life and family away from each other. It is these small details, often explored in just a handful of sentences, that really give the story color.

Eventually, the two explore their sexuality and deeper feelings for one another that night on the train. Our narrator admits to being a novice when it comes to romance in general with boys or girls, but Liz – the stronger personality of the two – carries on, eagerly wanting to pleasure her friend. West treats this scene almost innocently between the two, though still awkward, revealing both emotion and fragility rather than necessarily trying to light a spark in the reader. The real naughtiness comes from the fact that an older male passenger is sleeping not too far away from them, but they remain uninhibited.

Though previously published in an anthology, this work can truly stand alone. It shows the shy walls that can often be let down when two friends connect on a more personal way. There are no enticing steamy relationships leaving the reader eager for more hot adjectives, but rather a real life honesty that is more true to life.

Reviewed by Author C.V. Hunt

5 out of 5 Stars

ABOUT:

A young disabled woman in a wheelchair protects an unaware world from demons and monsters.

Ester Vasquez, born with arthrogryposis, hunts the monsters and demons that hide from the unsuspecting masses along with her 6’8, 360lbs Samoan care provider, Sammy. In episode one – ‘Pilot’ – Ester and Sammy travel just over the Mexican border from their home in Arizona to help a little boy possessed by a demon, but what awaits them when they return home is far worse than anything they’ve ever faced. It will take all of Ester’s brains and Sammy’s brawn to repel an attack that threatens not just years of hard work, but their lives as well.

Hellwatch is planned to be an ongoing serial fiction series told in 9 monthly ‘episode’ novellas per ‘season’. This is the pilot episode, and if well received, 8 more will follow each month starting in January 2012.

REVIEW:

The opening of Hellwatch had me hooked:

Ester Vasquez was not a big fan of the Man Upstairs. As she saw things, He was a quitter, just like the father that she never knew. She eventually came to the conclusion that the deist belief in a clockmaker God that created the universe and simply walked away was pretty much on the money. He had long ago lost interest in His creation, or maybe He hand never been interested at all. Praying to an invisible man in the sky seemed, as the late George Carlin once said, just as effective as praying to Joe Pesci. She wasn’t an atheist, however – she knew He existed, at some point in time. He just didn’t care anymore. How did she know this?

Ester hunted demons and monsters.

Ester Vasquez has a straight forward character that peppers her conversations with sarcasm and humor. With a warmhearted Samuel as her care provider, she fights more than just her inner demons of doubt, life, and creation, but the real demons rising up from hell.

Jacob used to work for the Catholic Church as a priest, but he left after trying to convince the church that there are cracks in their foundation. He taught Ester how to exercise the possessed using faith, but she abandoned it for a more scientific approach.

Ester and Samuel work as a team using her method of demon removal. In this story they head to Mexico to help a boy that has been possessed, but once the incantation starts they find out that they may be in over the heads. Ester’s strong headedness keeps her from backing out of the ritual. She more than proves that being disabled by arthrogryposis is not going to stop her. Ester takes down the strong demon with little fight as the creature bellows about her darkest secrets.

It was easier than she had first feared… too easy.

Things just don’t sit right with Ester about the incident. The things that demon spoke about, the branch of hierarchy that the creature came from, and the ease of its removable have her worried. She plans on recuperating at home before they set out again, but other forces have different plans for her.

Larime Taylor has written an addictive pilot for Hellwatch. I flew through this episode, and was left with a feeling of wanting more. This is just the start of serial fiction series, which is getting harder and harder to find. I look forward to reading the rest of them. I would suggest this to anyone that likes to read about the battles between good and evil, or for someone that is looking for a strong-willed protagonist that can overcome anything that life throws at them.

Slotback Rhapsody
By Christopher Harris
CreateSpace
Copyright © 2011
266 pages
$12.00 at Amazon.com
$5.99 Kindle

Slotback Rhapsody by Christopher Harris is an intelligent football story not just for sports fans. Harris, who writes for ESPN.com, merges his football knowledge and writing craft to fine effect in this fictional yet insightful depiction of a struggling athlete and the choices he makes to achieve success.

It’s another training camp for determined but diminutive Nick Morrison who has had little success launching his professional football career. This time it’s with equally struggling Detroit—oddly, all team nicknames are conspicuously absent, perhaps for legal or copyright reasons—but he fails again. He’s in his late twenties now and the odds of succeeding are diminishing rapidly. Unless he loads the dice.

He remains in Detroit and strikes up a casual friendship with one of the team’s employees, Gasper, who becomes a connection for Nick to illegal Human Growth Hormone. What’s he got to lose? The stuff works and just in time as injuries create an opening for a slotback with Detroit. While his teammates and coaches notice he’s larger and faster, his intelligence, dogged hard work, and a bit of luck divert suspicion.

While hardly a Tim Tebow, Morrison’s success inspires his mediocre team and turns them into an unlikely playoff candidate. Furthermore, he becomes a fan favourite, a proletarian success story for a proletarian community. He’s easy for the Detroit fans to cheer for but not so much for the reader who knows his secret.

The season progresses and we’re along for the ride with Nick’s episodic observations and experiences on and off the field. Throughout, he remains even-keeled, enjoying but not flaunting his success, acknowledging but not feeling guilty about its cause. That makes Nick a worthy and reliable recorder of events but it also takes away from his impact as a protagonist.

His passivity and generally dour persona makes one question how or why people are drawn to him, other than to serve the story. We are not told his basic beliefs or values, let alone shown them, which makes it hard to relate to Nick. Early on he is shown to be kind, especially to dogs, but it’s not convincing. We really have no hope of knowing what his general motivation for life is, which is perhaps due to his rather detached worldview:

Relentlessness is the coin of this realm (football). To be on the team, you’re either an elite athlete even by professional standards, or you’re relentless. You pound on, the same way the days pound on. The general public, at a grocery store, in a movie theater, in traffic: they’re like phantoms to me now. Their incidental conversations are babble. They hint at lives that seem like secrets. I know I’m the one in the exclusive club, but they’re the ones who seem in on something. When I can see them. Sometimes they’re a blur. If ever by happenstance I run across a teammate away from the facility, I recognize that he feels it too. We are confused instruments at rest. And so finally I’m convinced that much of the world really is illusory. But what’s in this building, in these rooms and on these fields, and what’s waiting for us Sunday: that’s a reality I can’t get around. It’s coming. It’s coming so fast

He’s a gloomy guy by nature. It’s his teammates and coaches, his old girlfriends (particularly Henny), the underworld characters he encounters along the way that color his story. And for a subject matter riddled with cliches, these characters are not typecast. They are unique and interesting, more interesting than Nick in several cases. 

From a plotting standpoint, I felt things went a bit too easily for our underdog whose questionable choices never really carry a threat of significant, life-altering consequence. We see him in trouble but he never faces enough real danger or ultimate accountability to force out his true nature. His primary goal is to make the team, any team, and he does so within the first third of the book. After that, other than Nick’s hoping he doesn’t get caught using HGH, the drama is really more about the team and whether they’ll make the playoffs or not.

Nick’s passion is football and that part of him, the best part, does come out—often rhapsodically as implied by the title—in the frenetic and carefully crafted play-by-play passages and mini-essays about football. This is where the novel shines.

Football is beloved because there’s a scoreboard, because the rules are arcane but perfectly known to millions. Is there any wonder the slowest of slow-motion instant replay has evolved through football broadcasts, where we must know whether this shoe definitively touches the sideline marker or if the ball jiggles brownly in the wanton receiver’s mitts as he hits the turf? It is perfection because everything will be known. Anyone who says the sport is simply a venal substitute for warfare and that it satisfies the modern human’s suppressed bloodlust needs, they’ve either advanced to a higher stage of dealing with life’s unfathomability and should be followed like yogis, or are uncharitable to a fault. The beauty of statistics and formations and (yes, by heavens) instant replay is they let us touch bottom. And of course there is no bottom to life, which is wonderful but awful, and so we pretend: for a few hours, we allow ourselves to be charmed by a common spell. The first time one of my college games was televised—by some regional sports network with a two-camera setup and a tiny production truck—I DVR’d the broadcast and saw myself in instant replay, saw my body frozen in mid-lunge as the talking heads discussed whether the ball in my hands had broken the end zone’s plane. It was sublimity itself.

The creative use of language blends well with the football lingo. The latter can be cryptic and distracting but you don’t need to be a football expert to enjoy it. You do need expertise if you want to dissect every play call, but that’s not at all essential to the story. Indeed, non-fans might appreciate its atmosphere while gaining a decent overview of the football player’s world and a dramatized, albeit not in-depth, portrayal of issues such as HGH and gambling.

Slotback Rhapsody is more of an extended and dramatized report than an actual novel, but one that’s literary, informative, and bolstered by strong writing. Definitely a worthwhile read, and a satisfying one, but also one I think could have taken more risks.