Here is the recipe for False Witness:  Add two parts action novel to one part John Grisham courtroom drama, mix in vicious Chinese gangsters and deceptive government agencies, sprinkle liberally with Christianity and stir until well mixed.  What you end up with is a hot mess, but not in a bad way.

As the curtain goes up, we are stowing away in the laptop of an Indian mathematical prodigy who is in possession of the magic algorithm, a key to factoring prime numbers which would render useless all of the cryptography used to secure the internet.  When he attempts to sell the formula to security experts, we quickly learn that this isn’t going to be your father’s Christian fiction novel.  He meets his bloody demise at the hands of the Chinese mafia who wants the algorithm and will stop at nothing to get it.

The prodigy was just the messenger though, the true developer of the formula is his mentor, Professor Kumari, who intended to use the proceeds from the sale to help his persecuted caste (the dalits, formerly known as the ‘untouchables’) find hope through Christianity.  That’s about as much religion you will have to grapple with if you’re worried that this book is going to be ‘preachy.’  It’s not.  God is in the details here, not the main theme.

Enter Clark and Jessica Shealy, bounty hunters.  Clark is pulled into the search for Professor Kumari by the desperate Chinese mafia who kidnap his wife to gain access to his shadowy connections in the bounty hunting world.  With less than 24 hours to find Kumari and save his wife, Clark begins a whirlwind manhunt that finally nets him the prize.  Can he trade the professor for his wife and live to tell about it?  End Act 1.

In Act 2, Clark and Jessica are no longer Clark and Jessica.  They are part of the witness protection program but their identities have been compromised and again they are being hunted.  They turn to a group of legal students to sue the government to be re-instated with new identities.  However, before Kumari was handed over to the Chinese mafia, he gave Clark the encrypted formula and a promise that he would get the encryption key at a later date.  Now that he has the formula, the government feel that he has welched on their deal and they aren’t going to re-instate the couple until they’ve turned it over.

For me, the legal part dragged a bit but Randy Singer is truly in his element here and I’m sure Grisham enthusiasts will find the courtroom drama riveting.  I’ll fast forward a bit.  Clark and Jessica head to India, find the encryption key and enlightenment, then return to do battle with the nefarious head of the Chinese mafia.  He is finally taken into custody and as the dramatic finale unfolds… well, you’ll just have to read for yourself, won’t you?

False Witness is a fast-paced thriller or maybe a courtroom drama, or perhaps just about good versus evil.  However you slice it, it will keep you guessing until the very end.  Although it has Christian underpinnings, anyone should be able to relate to the characters and enjoy the twists and turns as we follow the magic algorithm from hand to hand to hand.

You might look at the words “Historical Fiction” and “Young Adult” and decide to pass on The Raven Girl by Kathy Cecala. I almost did, there are other reviewers who typically review the young adult titles and historical fiction isn’t necessarily my thing. I’m glad I didn’t though, because it turned out to be a delightful book; very hard to put down and a quick but interesting read.

The Raven Girl is set in Ireland circa 1488. A strange girl washes ashore on a small island near Galway. Her skin and hair are dark and around her neck is a large pearl from a far-away sea. She is rescued by a young boy, the son of the local priest, who hides her away knowing that the villagers would probably kill her out of superstition. He names her ‘Marra’ meaning ‘of the sea’ and tends to her needs. She convalesces but has brought with her a fever that quickly spreads throughout the village.

Meanwhile, in a small church in the city, a young man named Aedan studies for the priesthood. He is the son of a Spanish wine merchant who had an affair with a woman from the town where Marra has appeared. The woman died in childbirth and Aedan was brought to live with the priests. Although he has recently come to know his real father, he feels closest to the priest who took him under his wing when he arrived at the church.

While Aedan tries to be a dedicated student, his heart calls him to adventure and discovery. When word of the maiden reaches him, he sets off with his priestly ‘father’ to disprove that she is a witch or a mermaid and perhaps to convert her to Christianity. He does find her, and with her the trouble that follows her everywhere. Together they must fend off the pirates from whose vessel she escaped, Aedan’s biological father who would sell her to be a slave, and the villagers who are sure that she is a witch.

In her query, Kathy Cecala mentions that she tutors English classes, and her mastery of the language is evident in this book. While it is clear that she researched the book extensively, she weaves the historical details into the book subtly, not making them the central point of the story, just the colorful backdrop. At its heart The Raven Girl is a good story. As readers, we connect with the characters and cheer them on. Here, Marra explains a bit of her story to Aedan:

She told him of how she had been a pearl-fisher with her father, of her gentle little lagoon and her gentle people, but also of the fierce tribes who lived south, the tribes who killed her mother and brothers. She told him of her father, who she had loved so much, and how he taught her many things. How she and her father had been fishing together far out in the ocean beyond their lagoon, too far, and how Urraco’s ship had come from nowhere, dragging them up out of their canoe. How Urraco killed her father, so quickly. And then the terrible voyage, and the drift of the ship into ice. The fever that had raged aboard the ship. But also, how she had learned Basque, by carefully listening to the sailors.

While this book will appeal to older teens because of the young main characters who persevere against tall odds, it might be disturbing for younger readers due to some depictions of violence and death. The technical details of the book are top notch, I didn’t find a typo until page 85 and that may be a record for the self published books I’ve read.

You won’t know you’re reading a self published book. You won’t know you’re reading a young adult book. You won’t know you’re reading an historical fiction book. All you’ll know as you read The Raven Girl is that you’re reading a good book.

Lulu.com
Copyright © 2009
214 Pages
$13.95 Softcover
$ 7.99 E-book
ISBN 977-0-578-01334-3

I can guarantee you’ve never read anything like The Sophisticated Savage. Part scholarly essay, part interview, and part soul-baring diary, Carla Seidl weaves a tale that is hard to put down. What you will likely discover is that you end up finding out much more about Seidl than you do about the title character. Whether you end up empathizing with her or shaking your head, you will be right inside her head during a fascinating time in her life.

While studying at Harvard, Seidl decided to take a sabbatical to teach English on the Galapagos islands. I had to hand it to her right there, at 19 I was nowhere near that adventurous so it was fun to live vicariously through someone who is. Quickly she meets Fredy, a transplant from the jungles of Ecuador. She is struck by his self assurance and he spins her away into his world when he pulls her onto the dance floor.

Fredy is many things. To the locals, he is known as Billabong because of the shirts he wears. To the tourists, he is a surfing instructor that always knows where the best waves are to be found. To Seidl he is an enigma, she finds herself both attracted to and repulsed by him. He spends much of his time putting the moves on her, feeding her lines, and she spends much of the book trying to determine what is real and what is fabrication.

The most thoroughly researched claim made by Fredy is that his Huorani ancestors were cannibals and as a child, he had tasted human flesh. Here is an example of Seidl researching the likelihood of this boast:

For my own purposes, trying to find mention of cannibalism among the Huorani, my hands came up empty. Blanco Villalta, for instance, in his 1970 book on cannibal rites in the Americas, describes cannibalistic traditions observed in Brazil, for example, among the Tupinambaes, the Tupiguaranies, and the Guaranies, and in North America, among the Algonquin, Athapascos, and Aztecs, but does not share any information about cannibalism in the region of Ecuador.

Much like Fredy both fascinates Seidl and drives her a little crazy, her book did the same for me. I chose this quote because it sums up both the good (the thorough research and documentation) and the bad (too many commas). After awhile you forget about the commas and enjoy Seidl’s book for what it is, a glimpse into a world most of us will find quite foreign while seeing behavior that is quite familiar. Here is another excerpt that is more typical of what you will find in the book:

Meanwhile, Fredy asks me to lend him a dollar so he can take a taxi to his surf spot, and then after dinner says he is going to buy a tabaco. I stop. How, I say, do you have money for cigarettes if you don’t have any for food? He says he has diez centavos, and I say, with that you can buy an egg, some bread, or a banana. He laughs, as though what I am saying is strange or funny.

Seidl goes so far as to ask Fredy to take her to his jungle home, to meet his tribe and spend time with his family. While they do trek back to the mainland and end up somewhere, they get only as far as meeting a cousin and seeing the town where Fredy lived before coming to the Galapagos. Eventually his claims of living in the jungle as a savage cannibal, the son of the king of the tribe starts to unravel and we see him for what he most likely is, a bit of a scam artist and womanizer from humble roots. And yet there is enough truth to his story that Seidl, and by extension we, can’t rule anything out completely.

There is much more to this book and I encourage you to discover it for yourself. It’s a travelogue, a look into tribal Ecuador, and a coming of age story rolled into one. You probably knew people like Fredy from your own past, people who were so fascinating that you always thought you’d like to write a book about them. To Carla Seidl’s credit, she did exactly that. She shares her adventure with us as she goes from Harvard undergrad to world wanderer. On the way she matures and discovers both passion and loss. When it is all said and done, we are left to wonder if the Sophisticated Savage is Fredy, or Seidl herself.

Copyright © 2008
Lulu.com
$13.15 Paperback
$ 6.25 E-Book
12 pages

I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t Dan Marvin one of the reviewers for the LL Book Review? Of course his book is going to be reviewed. It’s an obligation isn’t it? To answer those unasked questions: Yes, Dan is one of my fellow reviewers and No, there is no obligation. We review the books which interest us based on where we are at the time. That being said because we’ve built up a relationship as reviewers we are interested in each others work. I’ve been waiting all year for Dan to finally post his review request for Bogo’s Revenge. Late last year, when I knew Dan was going to join the LL Book Review team as a reviewer, I took the opportunity to check out his writing and noticed Bogo’s Revenge right off the bat.

What made this book so appealing to me? The illustrator. I enjoy children’s books, especially because of the illustrations. When I saw Bogo’s Revenge was a joint father/daughter project where Dan wrote the book and had his nine year old daughter, Cassie, illustrate it I loved it. What a wonderful dad!

Dan Marvin is well suited to writing childrens books because he’s had plenty of practice with brevity through his love of flash fiction, which brought us the growing in popularity, Briefs for the Reading Room which was featured in Review 52 for LLBR. Marvin’s ability to get to the crux of the story without leaving the reader wanting more works well in this tale.

In Bogo’s Revenge, Bogo is a chipmunk who is continually harrassed by two racoons, the Rascal brothers. All Bogo wants to do is get to his favorite sunny spot so he could eat his fill of seeds in peace, but the Rascal brothers thwarted him at every turn. So, Bogo decided he needed a plan.

Bogo wished he had a big dog for a friend. Raccoons didn’t like dogs, and dogs didn’t like raccoons, always it had been this way. But Bogo didn’t have a dog for a friend, or any large animal that would make the Rascal brothers leave him alone.

Bogo ultimately comes up with a plan to lead the Rascal brothers away from his precious seeds on a merry chase through the brambles. The Rascal brothers get into trouble and its up to Bogo to help them out.

Bogo’s Revenge is a good old-fashioned story which teaches us that the best revenge against bullies is to do them a kindness. The delightful illustrations help bring the characters to life and it is a story which can be enjoyed by children and parents together.

Preview Bogo’s Revenge at Lulu

Dan’s book, Briefs for the Reading Room, made the list of top books with the most views in Full Screen Mode with 228 hits in the month of August.

LK’s book, Misfit McCabe, made the list of top books with the most views in Widget Mode with 4693 hits.

While I myself have not taken advantage of using the BookBuzzr marketing feature, we here at LLBR are big supporters of it and often use the widget in our reviews when posting book previews.

Click here to get started with fReado and BookBuzzr today!

Congrats to LLBR’s reviewer Dan Marvin on his recent interview on Fox 56 in Kentucky about his book, Briefs for the Reading Room.

Without the benefit of super hearing, Alphonse cowered beside his bed and wondered when it would be over. The noise had started well after he was in bed. Like most nights, he had tucked himself in bed. He made the best out of an oversized t-shirt since he had no pajamas to wear. The food in the pantry had run out two days before and the sound of his stomach rumbling was the last thing he heard before falling asleep.
The low murmur of conversation was familiar. Often it wove in and out with the tinny sound of late night TV and the occasional ‘ffffpht’ of a beer can being opened. Sometimes it included a sharp word or a quickly hushed argument. Tonight had been different. Tonight had been scary. Tonight Alphonse had heard the conversation start, then the front door flying open. He had heard the hard words from an unfamiliar voice, and the strident response from his foster father. The tone of his voice had gone from angry to placating to begging in a few sentences. A sharp sound had ended the conversation and Alphonse had jumped behind his bed. That was where he now lay, listening intently and wondering what had happened.
“Alphonse?” A voice sounded outside his door, but it wasn’t a familiar voice. “Alphonse, where are you?” He wondered if he should answer, but some deep-seated sense of self preservation told him it was a bad idea.
“It’s Ben, Alphonse. Ben Latimer. You met me last month at the food bank. We have to go Alphonse. We have to get out of here. I know you’re scared and I know you don’t understand what’s going on, but we have to leave soon. If you can hear me, please answer. I won’t hurt you. In fact, we’ll go get some dinner.” Ben Latimer’s voice didn’t sound scary, it sounded a little worried. Alphonse wasn’t used to people being worried about him. His stomach grumbled at the suggestion of dinner. It had been a long time since his last dinner. Still, he wasn’t sure, what had happened to Larry and Monica? Why weren’t they in the living room anymore? Or were they?
“Alphonse, we need to go now. We really need to go now.” There was another unfamiliar sound, a clicking sound, or maybe it was a ticking noise. And he smelled smoke. “Please tell me where you are!” The door to his room opened and the light came on.
“I’m here. Who are you?” Alphonse rose from behind the bed and shielded his eyes from the light with his arm.
The man quickly hurried to his side of the bed. “My name is Ben. We have to go, Alphonse. We have to go now. Right now.” Alphonse could see the strange orange light from the living room. The flickering orange light. He lifted his arms to Ben and was quickly carried out into the night.

The End

If Lulu publishes your book, they have the rights to your book. For most people this isn’t a big deal, but for a growing minority of us we still prefer to have our fate in our own hands. Yes, my book is fully available on Lulu as a download and as a book, but I’ve also gone the extra step of buying my own ISBN numbers and putting my book on Amazon myself.

In going through the exercise, I can tell you a few of the things to watch for and might be able to ease the process for you. I call this option “Truly Self- Publishing” because my book is published under my imprint, Marvcorp Publishing.

The advantages are, I control how my book is handled on Amazon and with other retailers. I can allow for returns, for instance which Lulu does not. This is more attractive to brick and mortar retailers who have to buy books to have them in stock. Lulu will let older titles go out of stock on Amazon and there isn’t much you can do about it. I also found a cheaper way of printing my books that got the unit cost down to $3 each instead of $7.

First, a word about ISBN numbers. Every book that is sold commercially needs one of these numbers, they tell the world who published the book and what its number is. Unfortunately, they’re kind of annoying to get. I did a lot of research and didn’t find a good way to buy just one, they usually come bundled as a 10-pack. By buying ten, I’m pretty much covered until I’m 90 at my current pace of book production, but I may decide to publish a few books for friends, you never know. You can’t sell them, once they’re yours you are the publisher for any book that uses that number. 10 ISBN numbers cost about $250 and are available in the US through Bowker (www.bowker.com)

To get set up on Bowker, you need to decide what you want to call your new publishing business and give them an idea of how many and what kind of books you are planning to publish. Then, you need to give them your money and wait about 10 days, it’s not instant (although they did send me mine in about 3 days by email.) Be careful to print out and record everything you get from Bowker, if you need them to send it again it costs more money. Also, have Bowker add your books to Bowkerlink, a free service that lets distributors search for your book. Bowker also provides other fairly costly services like giving you your ISBN in a barcode (other software does this cheaper including Lulu that does it for free) and a SAN number which some retailers require (but I haven’t had any ask me for yet.) One ISBN number is available for $99, but I went ahead and got 10 because it dropped the cost per number by 75% and I had multiple books already that I wanted to publish.

OK, so now you have your 10 ISBN numbers, have set your new book up on Bowker link and figure Amazon will soon be knocking, right? Unfortunately, no. Amazon does want to carry your book, but Bowker doesn’t do that for you, as the publisher you have to do that yourself. I’ll tell you how I did it, and then tell you how I re-did it and you can pick for yourself.

The first option on Amazon is setting up for an Amazon Advantage account. (http://advantage.amazon.com) and set yourself up as a publisher. You will have to fill out a lot of information about your address, contact information, and bank accounts so they can pay you. Then, you have to tell them about your book, the price (be prepared to be disappointed with either your slice or theirs, or both) add some marketing text, some reviews if you have them, and submit the whole thing. Check back often because soon you will have a purchase order from Amazon requesting your book. The Purchase Order will include a shipping label and a piece of paper to include with the book.

With purchase order in hand, you have to mail your book to Amazon’s Kentucky distribution center. I live here and I couldn’t just drop it off, you have to mail it. The day I sent mine in, it cost $2.20 by media mail which is a pretty big hit on your profit margin. In a few days, your book listing will go from “out of stock” to “in stock” and there, NOW you are on Amazon. One thing I didn’t realize I needed to do was to add the cover picture so it would appear on the page. Hunt around for awhile, there’s a link for adding the cover picture through your advantage account, it’s just hard to find.

Barnes and Noble had a 10 page application which I downloaded but have not yet submitted because I decided to go in a different (and I think, easier) direction. In addition to publishing on Lulu, I now have my books set up on LightningSource. This is basically like taking out the middle-man, the same book costs $3 instead of $7. There are others out there, but the nice thing about LightningSource (www.lightningsource.com) is that they also can act as the distributor through Ingram (for an additional $12 per year), one of the biggest book distributors. This is a huge advantage when you are trying to get in your local bookstore or any chain. They also will automatically set your book up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and 8 other places.

As of this writing, I’m still waiting for my book to show up there, but the wheels are turning. The down side to LightningSource is more cost, to get a book set up there cost me $105. Still, if I factor this into the per book cost of the first 50 books I ordered, it still was cheaper than ordering 50 books from Lulu. Also, LightningSource is a little fussier about file formats than Lulu and any changes you make there cost $40 so you have to make sure everything is perfect. Lulu was handy for this, I could make the 17 revisions to get it how I wanted it without paying $40 17 times. Once I got the cover and the inside how I wanted it, uploading it to LightningSource was easy.

So, my advice is this. Definitely still use Lulu for their online bookstore and ebook feature and to refine your book. If you want to get onto the online book sale sites and make more than a few pennies per book, set up your own publishing company. Buy 10 ISBN numbers from Bowker for $250. Use one of them for your new book and publish and distribute it through LightningSource for around $150. Good luck!

Dan Marvin is a writer and reviewer living in Kentucky.  He is the author of two books, Briefs for the Reading Room and Thomas Granger, both available on Lulu.  He also writes for Bluegrass Dog Magazine and for the LLBR.

     Drifting without mass through a wall, Reginald vented his frustration with life, or the lack of it. The outward manifestation of his angst was slightly colder spot in an already cold and empty room. The Madison family knew conceptually about him. They knew that he had died, messily, in this very room. They knew that the murderer had never been caught. They knew that late at night they would sometimes hear a creak in the hallway or see a shadow that shouldn’t exist. And they knew that Tuesday was shopping day and on Thursday they watched TV and Jimmy had soccer on Saturday. In other words, they knew about him, and went right on living anyway. How he envied them.
     For the first 100 years or so, Reginald figured that the happy afterlife was waiting for him to figure out how to cross over. That’s what people always said about ghosts, that they had not yet crossed ‘over’. Like a puzzle where you didn’t even know where to find the pieces, Reginald had looked for over so he could cross it without much success. Or any success.
     The next 50 years, he had been a bit of a grouch. He had banged and thumped and tried his hardest to make his displeasure known. The toughest part was the boredom. Being a disembodied spirit without any other disembodied spirits to play with was boring. Really boring.
     Now, 17 years past that, he had settled into a routine and pretty much kept to his cold room and his depressing thoughts. He held out some hope that over would present itself or he would be offered up a choice of two doors or some other spirit would drop by and explain to him why he was stuck here. Mostly though he just moaned and sulked.
     The muffled sound of the doorbell was something vaguely interesting, Reginald decided to check it out. Part of the rules appeared to be that he couldn’t leave the house. Still, he could pop his head out of the eaves over the front door, so he did. Standing on the stoop was a group of youngish people, dressed in the sloppy and disheveled way of the young. Conversation didn’t come through intact to the afterlife so he tried to interpret what they were saying and failed uttlerly. In they trouped and there was a bunch of noise and then all the lights went off. Fair enough, he would retreat back to his room.
     As he drifted and pondered the meaning of this new intrusion, the door opened and a bright light appeared. This had to be it! Bright light, for sure now he would cross over! He headed towards the light not feeling particularly drawn to it but trying to play along.
     From near the light there was an excited buzz. Gages spiked, buzzers buzzed, and someone talked into a microphone attached to a camera. They chased him for the rest of the night, capturing shadows that shouldn’t exist and hearing a muffled sound or two. It was the worst night of his death.

The End

It was a rather cloudy day in 2009 that I decided, once and for all, to give Tuesdays a miss. I had tried with past, misguided attempts to simply circumvent Tuesday. I took a sick day here or canceled an appointment there in the desperate hope that it would be enough to stave off the devastation Tuesday typically wrought in my life. This time, however, I was quite sincere in my desire to cease to exist for 14.3% of the week.
I’m not even clear on when I discovered Tuesday’s scheming ways. For most people, Monday is their stated nemesis. The first day of the work week is a more likely target. We are ripped away from our leisure pursuits and thrust once more into the company of co-workers we did not select. However, Monday is more of a tepid phantom, a perception that things have changed for the worst. Tuesday is the real demon, as real as plague or fire or locusts of the Old Testament. Of the bad events in my life, only a precious few have occurred on days apart from Tuesday.
Armed with this insight into my life, it was only natural that I would try to find a way to correct the imbalance. I went so far as to ask a voodoo practitioner for an amulet or spell to protect me from whatever swirling darkness was casting its pall over my Tuesdays. I saw the hesitation that told me everything I needed to know; in his mind I was as crazy as a loon. Perhaps I am, at that.
So, fast forward with me to present time and this particular dark and gloomy Tuesday. I think Tuesday knows I’m on to it and is trying to fight back with thick clouds and spitting rain. On this Tuesday, I will simply cease to be. On Wednesday I will pick back up with my life already in progress and carry on. I will not be impacted by whatever evil Tuesday has in store for me this week.
The answering machine is turned off. My email account is set to spit out a generic out-of-office message. The doors are locked, my cell phone is off, the post office knows not to deliver mail today. I slip into my bathroom and look at my more advanced preparations. There stands a mirrored box, reflecting back all light and energy. Inside is a pool of body-temperature water. As I lower myself into the isolation chamber, I shut the top and there is no noise, no smell, no sight, no sensation of any kind. Sighing in the anticipation of victory, I slip down into the water and pull up my goggles.
My goggle catches slightly and then gives way when the elastic band stretches over my ear. The fingers sliding it into place fly up and the nail scratches my cornea. I scream. On my way to the hospital I hear the clarion call of the siren. To my mind, it is the sound of Tuesday laughing.

The End