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.

ABOUT:

Before the economic downturn, James Scottsdale did all the right things: he went to school and studied the right things, he had all the right friends, he had the love of a good woman and the support of his family. And then the economic crisis began and his secure life was suddenly not so secure.
Now, age 25, he lives on his mother’s couch, in debt and brokenhearted. All of that changes when The Boston 395 train line appears in his living room. The Boston 395 is like no train you have ever seen. Each stop exits into James’ life, revealing truths he would rather not deal with. Guided by The Conductor and populated by a colorful cast of characters, The Boston 395 will take James – and the reader – to places they never expected.

THE BOSTON 395 is a novella, sitting in the literary arena of magical realism/fantasy. The book follows its own rules and weaves an interesting world for the reader to get lost in, and to wrestle with.

REVIEW:

Jason Derr’s novella, The Boston 395, started off as a very captivating read with sharp wit and vivid details that really piqued my interest.  I’ll try to leave out all locomotive puns since the book is about a train, but by the end it had lost a lot of steam for me.

As stated in the blurb, James is down on his luck with no job and no love interest, and moving back in with his mother until things get better. All of a sudden, a train shows up in his mother’s living room, picking him up and transporting him back in time where he has to revisit different events that have taken place in his life – mainly the events responsible for how he got into his current situation.

While on the train, James encounters other passengers going through their own “trip” on the train, along with a peculiar train conductor.  Curiosity abounds as James and the fellow passengers explore the train and try to learn its real purpose and meaning. Unfortunately, too much time is spent trying to answer these questions and very little detail is revealed to James or to the reader by the end.

I also felt the events from James’s past just weren’t as awe-inspiring as I wanted them to be outside of the death of his father, but even it was an event he had missed when he left his father’s bed side to take a shower. One would hope a book being described as “magical realism/fantasy” would have more elements to develop it outside the sole plot line of a train pulling up in someone’s living room. While yes, that’s a major part of the story, it’s not enough to make up for where the rest of the story suffers.

One of the best attributes to the train is that it has a unique library of book that were never written like a part 2 to Treasure Island.  There are also books of dreams and random thoughts composed from the minds of people James knows.  But like everything else, the purpose or explanation of the library is never truly revealed.

There’s also no obvious distinction between the scenes of where James is on the train and when he is gone to a flashback, other than a hint by the change in narrative and the obvious change in scene usually directed by dialogue . The scenes are smashed together with no clear segue.  I would have almost liked to see the conductor leading James off into one of the train cars, a puff of smoke, or some wavy dream-like blur as a harp is strung and both the reader and James magically appear back in the past.  Instead, it just sort of happens in a blink which made the past and present story lines a bit rough when connected.

With James’s lackluster life pulling down the narrative and denying the reader of scenes that could have made this a much more engaging read, the book comes to a screeching halt that, dare I say it, is not a stop you want to get off at.  By the end, much like James, I was just frustrated.

Even the author relies on a pun with the Little Engine That Could by filling the page with the words “I think I can I think I can” off and on for more than a chapter, and even playing with the placement of text despite not having done it earlier in the story. And even then, we still don’t get a clear picture, and neither does James, of what the heck this train business is all about anyway.

Overall, The Boston 395 is a novella that clearly showed promise in the beginning but lacks a certain culmination of events and climaxes by the end.  Derr has a clear finesse for detail and characterization,  but denies his reader the answers to the real questions they’ll derive from the story line.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Sometimes, the least likely encounter changes everything… Jane Pepper is a thirty six year old editor in a small Baltimore press. Until the past year her life has been comfortable and enviable, but when her daughter develops leukemia, then accidentally dies, only Jane knows the reason for the accident. Keeping the secret may cost her her family, her career, and her sanity. Human rights photographer, Riva Hakim, the only child of multi-racial, multi-faith parents, has survived a volatile, itinerant childhood and loveless marriage to gain international acclaim for her work. Now, at fifty-two, and under contract to write her memoirs, she must put away her camera and find a way to frame the past before she can face the future. But that future is turned upside down the morning she finds a stranger named Jane Pepper on her doorstep. Spanning both sides of the Atlantic from Washington D.C. to the Canary Islands to Sudan, Alabaster Houses is the story of an unlikely friendship between two women who are both at a critical crossroad in life.

REVIEW:

Every once in a while there’s a book that almost gets away, especially when you are like me and read and review mostly indie or small press titles.  I just can’t read them all.  That’s almost what happened to Lara McLaughlin’s Alabaster Houses which was first queried to me last October.  Other reviewers passed on it, but there was something in this book that made me pick it.  And now I’m glad I did.

This is the story of two very different women, who share common struggles in life.  It is about how they got to where they are in life, and more importantly, how they became friends.

Jane Pepper works for a small publishing house.  She lives with her young son, Nick, whose father has recently left them. Amy, her teenage daughter from an old love affair she had with a professor before she got married, has recently died of leukemia.  Jane is stricken with grief over Amy, and soon finds herself alone when Nick goes off to Ecuador with his father.  She adopts a dog in an attempt to fill her house back up again, but what Jane really needs is a friend. That’s when she meets Riva Hakim.

Riva is an acclaimed photographer.  Her husband, Per, died two years ago in a car accident. Per also happens to be Amy’s father.  When Jane seeks out Per for the possibility of a bone marrow transplant to save Amy, she meets Riva instead. Almost a year passes before the two decide to meet again and share their stories with each other. Riva is dying of cancer and has written her biography.  Jane becomes the editor of the biography, but in turn the two women become the stability that the other needs as their memories play out on the page.

Much of Riva’s point of view reads as chapters from her biography.  Her childhood was a constant struggle in faith, being raised by a Jewish mother and a Muslim father.  The reader grows with her as a character as she goes off to university, quickly adopting American ideals and falling in love with Per, but still hiding in the shadows of her family’s culture like a woman shielded by the folds of a hijab.

Jane’s story is intertwined with Riva’s and shows the reader a smaller snapshot of time going back only to when she was first pregnant with Amy, and then to when Amy was first diagnosed and started having complications, and then up to her death.  Amy’s personal diary even serves as a chapter in the book. We meet a few of Jane’s love affairs, including how she met her husband, but we are intentionally robbed of the one she had with Per.

McLaughlin has purposely left parts of the story out, leaving those details to be developed by the reader’s imagination.  She keeps thing interesting by following a non-traditional plot line. The series of events switch from present to past quite often and without warning, but the book is still very easy to follow.  In fact, the first chapter is entitled The End and immediately lets you know each woman’s condition. The books with the forward Jane wrote for Riva’s bio. No spoilers here!

It is important to note this book is not just about marital affairs or affairs of the heart.  It is instead a story about affairs of the soul.  Just as Riva struggles with faith in God and men (her father and her husband) throughout life, Jane struggles with her grief not only for her daughter but for her own relationships as well.

It is about the spaces between the heart beats where our tears hide and our laughter is born. It is about life, and the things that happen to us in it when we were too busy doing something else.  It is a reminder that the bonds we share with loved ones, family, friends new or old, are what really matter. Our memories and our homes are empty without them.  But my life and my soul are more full thanks to reading this book. Yours will be too.

ABOUT:

I first became a fan of author C.V. Hunt after reading and reviewing her Endlessly vampire series.  I was delighted to read her new novella, Danse Macabre, when she inquired.   The description above leads you to believe it would fall in the genre of zombie fiction, of which I know C.V. reads a lot of so it’s easy to guess she would be inspired by such.  I myself am not a big fan, though I love watching AMC’s The Walking Dead, but I was willing to give her new book a try since I was already familiar with her writing style.

Instead of a cookie cutter undead novella, Hunt treats her readers to an almost whimsical and frightening little story with characters as fragile as Tennessee Williams’ own Glass Menagerie but with a twisted plot right out of the mind of Tim Burton.  When I wasn’t thinking about how much this made me want to reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I was wanting to watch Edward Scissorhands or the Nightmare Before Christmas again.

We start by meeting Raven, a thirty-something young woman who has just lost her mother. Raven has been blind since birth and has now had to relocate to Ohio to live with her aunt and uncle.  She feels out of place and thinks she is a burden on her aunt’s family.  When Raven befriends Spencer, the local funeral home director, things start to look up for her.  Spencer takes Raven out for regular walks to get her out of the house and the two become close.

But Spencer has a dark secret.  He’s discovered a way to keep the dead alive, starting with his very own brother Chris who he keeps locked in the funeral home basement. Chris is kept alive by eating road kill or the entrails of the deceased who come into the funeral home. His soul still inhabits his body thanks to Spencer’s practice of VooDoo, but his heartbeat is fed by the pulsing beat of indie rock bands like Blink 182. He moves to the bass like a puppet on a string doing a dance of death, hence where the novella gets its name.

The story switches between Spencer, Chris, and Raven’s point of view, evenly presenting each of their story lines.  The most surprising was Chris’s chapters as he reveals the sad childhood that he and Spencer shared at the hands of an abusive aunt and suffering from bullying in school.  Chris was always quick to defend his brother whose Norman Bates-like timidity was often caused by a massive birthmark on his face, which of course Raven cannot see now.

It is these such character nuances, and their severe emotional prostrations, that give Hunt’s novella the type of sagacity  I haven’t read since Faulkner’s own short “A Rose For Emily.”  She reels you in with a heartfelt story, only to punch you hard in the face, making you wonder if you yourself are sick and twisted just for reading it!  Pure brilliance at best!

Since LLBR started in 2008, we’ve reviewed almost 300 books.  We’ve probably rejected more than that. Sadly, we can’t read them all.  But we can give you a chance to promote your book even if we don’t review it.  And indie authors love free promotion, right?  Well, here’s your chance.

We’re starting a new project on the site this year called “Spotlight On…The Story Behind Your Story!”

We want to hear why you wrote and self-published your book.  We’re not talking about soap box stories of how you always wanted to write a book and see it in print.  We want to read stories about you writing a book for a sick or dying loved one, you did it to make money to build a college fund for your kids, you wrote it because your ex husband said you’d never finish it, you wrote it for your sick grandmother because she encouraged you to, and so on.

Real heart felt feel good stories!  The story behind your story!

So, in 1,500 words or less, email us at llbookreview@gmail.com with your story.  Also, include a jpg picture of you with your book.  And if your story involves someone else, put them in the photo with you and your book too!  We’ll post your stories here on our site for everyone to read and enjoy.  So, the spotlight’s on you!  We want to read your story behind the story!

Feel free to email us with any questions.  Otherwise, send us your spotlight stories today!

Last week, I posted an inquiry on Facebook asking other authors if they knew yet how much our books were worth for the first month of Amazon’s new lending library fund.  I expected to get a bunch of “Duh!” comments, but thankfully didn’t get a one.  I guess no one else knew either, or they were avoiding the chance to shame me and just didn’t answer.

For those that don’t know, as an incentive to get you to make your books available for free on Kindle so that they can be “lent” to Prime members, Amazon set up a fund which sets aside so much money per month to be divided up by how many books were lent that month.  December’s fund was $500,000 dollars.  $6 million is the total dedicated to this project for all of 2012.  There’s more information available about it here.

Well, Jeff Bezos or some other Amazon behind-the-scenes person must have heard my cry.  An email went out yesterday announcing the results of December:

Hello from KDP!

We are excited to share with you that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) is off to a great start! Customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles in December alone, and with the $500,000 December fund, you have earned $1.70 per borrow.

Enrolled authors and publishers, such as yourself, on average received 26% more money in December for their KDP-Select enrolled titles on top of their royalties from paid sales for the same titles. Also, our early results show that paid sales of enrolled titles are growing even faster than other KDP titles.

After reading this, of course, I immediately went to my dashboard to see how many times my books had been borrowed, did the math, and figured out how much I had earned total for December. Not too shabby!  Then the email went on to say this:

It gets better – because of the popularity of KOLL, fueled by seasonal use of new Kindles, and your strong participation in KDP Select to date, we are adding a $200,000 bonus to the January fund, raising the total from $500,000 to $700,000! See the press release for this here:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1647593&highlight

As a reminder, your KDP Select December royalty information will be available on your December royalty report in mid-January.

That’s right!  They raised the fund total for January!

I usually have a pretty good idea of how much I’m making per month by Kindle sales.  I check my dashboard almost everyday and record each week’s total on my calendar.  I wish there was something on the dashboard showing us a daily total of what our “lending” titles are worth, like a large jackpot sign representing that month’s fund that constantly changes with each book lent.  Somehow, I don’t see that happening.  Unless, of course… Mr. Bezos, sir, are you out there reading this?

Synopsis:

Normal young women go on dates on Saturday nights. Betty “Boo” Boorman goes on ghost hunts. The paranormal investigator is more comfortable around ghosts than guys, anyway. A violent haunting forces Betty to team up with her rival ghost hunter, the arrogant Carter Lansford. When the violence is turned toward her, though, Betty enlists the help of a handsome stranger, who introduces himself simply as Maxwell, Demon. Her ghost hunting is cut short when she’s threatened and, finally, attacked. Either someone wants her to stay away from a paranormal investigation or Maxwell is more trouble than she realizes. As Betty begins to fall for Maxwell’s mysterious charm, she starts to wonder if her life—and her soul—are worth the risk.

Review:

I’m not a fan of the “romance” genre, but I have enjoyed a few modern women’s lit pieces like Debora Geary’s Matchmaker 2.0. What I mean by modern is that we have a stronger, more dominant, female character in the lead.  She’s not the delicate daughter of some rich rancher who is about to be ravaged by an outlaw or hunky Indian that looks like Fabio. And our female author has an obvious interest in driving the storyline with a strong plot rather than steamy make-out sessions.

I have to admit I almost turned down Beth Dolgner’s Ghost of a Threat simply because of its cover.  Sure, there are no massive male pecs or shaded breasts, no pouty lips or looks of ecstasy, but even this image of the shirtless male embracing a woman almost  pigeon holed the book for me. That is until I read the sample.

We open with a man named Sam who has mysterious things happening in his home one night.  We later learn he’s even been scratched.  He contacts Betty Boorman for help. She’s the  leader of The Savannah Spirit Seekers, a local paranormal investigation group. Unfortunately, he also contacts her rival, Carter Lansford, who runs his own group.  Carter has written a book and is more about the publicity and show rather than the actual investigating.  He’s even known to call press conferences for some of his larger investigations.

Betty bites her tongue, but Carter is so impressed with her work that he invites her to assist him with a huge investigation he’s landed at the Everett-Tattnall House. Betty accepts because she knows the house’s history and wants the chance to investigate it, but when a bizarre stranger named Maxwell shows up at the press conference, things are about to get interesting.  Especially when Maxwell’s business card says he’s a demon.

I thought Betty was a likable character.  There’s a lot of humor here which really kept the dialogue interesting. I’m also have a huge interest in ghosts and paranormal investigation, so I enjoyed that part of the story very much and its probably what kept the pages turning for me. The book takes place in Savannah, Georgia – the perfect setting for ghost hunting.  I had the pleasure of visiting there in 1997, so I was familiar with a lot of the real places mentioned in the book. That also made it a great read for me because I could connect with where the action was taking place.

These aspects of the story definitely outweigh the romance.  Sure, there’s Betty falling for Maxwell while her friends are encouraging her to date, but the other story lines going on here were much more entertaining for me. Interesting characters and interesting places definitely make this paranormal read worth a look!

ABOUT:

A young stargazer receives a surprise late night visit and embarks on a journey he will never forget. This beautifully illustrated story is sure to warm the hearts of children of all ages, instilling childlike wonder and awe.

REVIEW:

I had the pleasure of picking up a copy of Jeff Stewart’s book in my local independent bookstore, All On The Same Page, here in St. Louis the week before Christmas.  At 24 pages, I gave it a quick look mainly to investigate the quality of such a book since it was published through Lulu.com.

The book measures 8.5 wide × 11.0 tall and is what they refer to as a saddle-stitch paperback.  This means the book is printed on flat paper that’s twice as wide and then folded in half and stapled, much like an activity or coloring book.

I have to say I was impressed!  Despite the high list price due to color printing, Lulu really does do good work even with small projects like this.  It may be small in size, but Jeff’s book is definitely not a small project itself.

The illustrations are beautiful inside and make this a very attractive and striking read for young readers.  The print is large and fills multiple pages top to bottom, so there is a well developed story here for kids and adults alike.

Due to the size of the book, I’d love to see a black and white version which kids could color themselves, just to make the story even more interactive.

Stop by All On The Same Page and pick up a signed copy and meet Jeff on January 7th at 1pm cst.  Or contact the store direct and order a copy in advance for Jeff to sign for you!

And if you don’t live in the area, check out All On The Same Page’s website for information on their author consignment program.

Having read and reviewed James Hutchings’s Two Fisted Tweets I have to say that Mr. Hutchings is a master at microfiction. Able to tell a story in 172 characters or less in order to meet the Twitter guideline in TFT, Hutchings now treats his readers to longer pieces of work (but not too long) and poems in his new book called The New Death and Others.

Hutchings relies heavily on the use of anthropomorphism (look that one up!) and personification, giving human qualities and voices to abstract states and inanimate objects which presents many of his stories in almost a fable-like storytale feel that relies heavily on tongue-in-cheek humor and irony.

You’ll stop and scratch your head and ponder the meaning of many of his twisted little tales, or laugh out loud at the silliness which is exactly what Hutchings intended.  Here is an author that enjoys puns and jokes, and obviously enjoys entertaining others.  There are even foot notes in some of the stories which actually turn out to be additional jokes.

There are numerous poems throughout the book, many of which were inspired by other famous authors’ writings.  Definitely good reason to seek out the works he’s cited so that you can compare them and discover Hutchings’s meanings and reason for inspiration.

Here is one of my favorite short poems:

If My Life Was Filmed

If my life was filmed, it would
go straight to DVD
and someone who was famous once
would have the role of me
and if five stars meant ‘excellent’
you’d give it two or three
and most of those who rented it
would watch ironically.

Years later they would track me down
and do an interview.
They say “I heard you died,” and I’d
say “Yeah, I heard that too.”
“Is any of it fictional?”
“Perhaps a scene or two.
There weren’t as many ninjas, but
the rest is mostly true.”
If you are looking for some light, interesting reading and wish to be entertained (and don’t mind a lot of cats), The New Death and Others is worth a look and worth the buck!