Friday, July 27, 2012

New Release - DEATH SPIRAL by James Boedeker

Yes, we're on a roll! Three books in one month, and more to go...


DEATH SPIRAL
Jim Boedeker
Fiction: Paramilitary, Men's Fiction
(Content Rating: Contains material some readers may find objectionable)

When SEAL sniper Robert O’Leary was kicked out of the Navy, he was told he would be fine, that he was a survivor. Not likely. A squid through and through, with serious trust issues, O’Leary’s been trained to kill and is very good at it. But he’s haunted – not by the shots he made, but by the ones he was ordered not to take. The ghosts of the past won’t stand down and let him to adjust to civilian life, and the beast within demands blood and will not be ignored.

While on vacation in Thailand, O’Leary decides to stay in the country that is home away from home for many expatriate veterans. When he falls for a disfigured woman and learns how she was mutilated and tortured, he sees a chance to redeem himself by exacting revenge on her behalf. Suddenly he’s on a mission to make things right and ensure no more girls are victimized.

Together with a group of other American expats, he declares war on East European pimps and drug dealers that terrorize local bar girls. The plan is to hit the Romanians hard and let the Germans take the blame. After the Germans and Romanians start fighting, the Russians will get sucked into the fray. Then they all will die. The trick is not to join them in the dying part. But if there’s one thing O’Leary knows, it’s that any plan can go south in a heartbeat.

This against-all-odds paramilitary action thriller is a triumph for truth, justice, and automatic weapons. It tells of one man’s fall from grace, and the journey he makes to reclaim his sanity, his soul, his life.

Available now in ebook at popular online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Coming soon in print to Amazon.

Look for the sequel, coming soon!



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Boedeker was born in Lander, Wyoming, and grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania. James enlisted in the United States Navy shortly after graduating from high school. After serving honorably, James entered the private sector, working as an industrial mechanic and technician for Procter and Gamble.

James lives with his wife in the country, enjoying the peace and solitude of the Endless Mountains in Pennsylvania. James enjoys the outdoors and target shooting. James is known for stalking and hunting the wily but dangerous bull woodchuck.

To find out more about the author and his books, visit his web site at...
 
http://www.counterpunchbooks.com/

Monday, July 23, 2012

New Release - A MOON CALLED SUN by Christopher F. Cobb

A MOON CALLED SUN
Christopher F. Cobb
Science Fiction / Time Travel / Alien Abduction

Available now in ebook, coming soon in print

Mysterious disappearances have plagued humanity throughout Earth’s history. The Bermuda Triangle, spontaneous combustion, alien abductions – all farfetched theories, but possibly closer to the truth than anyone imagines.

In 1942, a young woman vanishes from a bar in war-torn France, leaving behind an abandoned suitcase and a pile of ashes. In 1967, a solitary accountant goes home after work, and all that’s left is a pile of ashes in his bed. In 7013, a diminutive scientist attempts a daring escape from a crumbling society inside the frozen Earth, only to become ash himself. But when Trace Jackson of Florida goes on a fishing excursion in his trusty boat, accompanied by his faithful dog Skiff, he gets more than he bargained for when he comes upon a Coast Guard cutter in distress.

When Trace awakens, he finds his boat beached in pure white sand, and Skiff is nowhere around. But things quickly get strange when a beautiful Seminole woman dressed in scraps of deerskin follows Skiff to greet him. Trace knows he’s not in Kansas anymore – not that he ever was – because this is just downright weird. And it just keeps getting weirder when he realizes he and his dog and boat have been transported to the Florida coast of 1818.

Can Trace hold onto the love of his life when his distant ancestor, General Andrew Jackson, is determined to drive the Seminoles from the land? Can Trace hold onto his sanity when he suffers increasingly disturbing hallucinations and takes advice from a talking osprey? Trace realizes there actually is an alien abduction behind all this – a botched one at that. And far, far away, in a place where time no longer has meaning, he meets his destiny ... on a moon called Sun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, Christopher Cobb eventually ventured off to the wilds of New York City for several years to experience the world of acting. Finding it a cruel and inhospitable world, he hid high in the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia for a time. Having grown weary of snow and perilous black ice, his life path took him back home to South Florida where he earned college degrees at Florida Atlantic University and ultimately landed rewarding employment for the State of Florida. He now lives with his wife, Melissa and his sons Grant and Joey in Port Saint Lucie, where foreclosures are outnumbered only by surly seniors on electric scooters. He is a member of the Bloody Pens writers group and the South Florida Writers Association. He loves his family (all of them!) and his dogs, Gizmo, Dudley and Magnum (all rescued!) and intends on writing more exciting books for publication. All this makes Christopher a very happy man indeed. Visit his web site at...

http://ChristopherFCobb.com

Saturday, July 21, 2012

New Release - FLIGHT TO NOWHERE by Blas E. Padrino

FLIGHT TO NOWHERE
Blas E. Padrino
Fiction / Suspense / Cultural Heritage

Available now in ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashword
Coming soon in print on Amazon

Hurricane Frodo is gearing up to be the next big national disaster. Part of a national weather forecasting team, Miami storm-chaser Felix Robles routinely flies into the eye of storms to help keep tabs on dangerous weather activity. He never imagines that hurricane tracking could bring him fifteen seconds of fame or the thrill of a lifetime. Invited to be featured in a news segment on a local TV station, he is enamored of sexy and sassy news anchor, Terry Toledo. Of course he knows he’s way out of her league. Next to her, he feels like a silly schoolboy.

Terry Toledo is smart, ambitious, and always on the lookout for a news scoop to propel her to investigative reporting stardom. She never dreams that riding on a hurricane-tracker plane in the eye of a storm will result in anything more than a thirty-second news segment about ferocious weather. The one surprising plus in that wild ride is charming storm-tracker, Felix Robles. Somehow he manages to get under her skin.

When Felix examines the weather plane’s pictures after their trip through Frodo, he finds something curious and asks Terry about it, hoping to get one more chance to breathe in her alluring perfume. But when they realize they’ve stumbled upon a half-century-old plane wreck dumped by the hurricane onto a deserted Bahamian islet halfway to Cuba, they suddenly find themselves targeted by someone who will stop at nothing to keep the truth about the wreck a secret forever.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR...

Blas Padrino was born in Cuba and arrived in the US at age fourteen as an unaccompanied Cuban refugee under the Pedro Pan Program. Two years later, he graduated from high school at the top of his class and enrolled in New York City’s Columbia College. He graduated in 1968 – in the midst of that school’s iconic student revolt – with a BA in Anthropology. Four years later, he received his JD from Columbia School of Law and moved to Washington, DC, where he worked as an attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice. He moved to Miami, Florida, in 1976 and continued to practice law until 1995, when he shifted from writing legal pleadings and briefs to writing fiction, essays, and creative non-fiction. In 2006, his screenplay, A Wild Ride on a Seesaw received Honorable Mention in that year’s Writer’s Digest magazine annual competition. He has completed three novels and is working on others, as well as a memoir. He also writes a regular column on popular Cuban history and another on local Central Florida politics for the online news and information site, Examiner.com, as well as short stories and poetry in English, Spanish, and occasionally in Portuguese. He lives in Orlando, Florida, with his two cats.

To find out more about Blas, look for him on Facebook and Twitter and visit his web site at...

www.authorblaspadrino.com

Thursday, July 5, 2012

NOW AVAILABLE - ANGEL MOON, Book 2 BLOOD AND SUNLIGHT

ANGEL MOON
Book 2: Blood and Sunlight
by Jamie Wasserman
Fiction - vampire, horror, fantasy, paranormal

The tale continues...

Kirsten Tyler has been obsessed with angels since she was a child. When she was just a baby, her mother died. When she was five years old, her father and older brother were violently murdered while she was hiding in the house. Although she hadn’t been harmed, she’d been treated in the hospital for severe and unexplained blood loss, and the details of what happened that horrible night always remained fuzzy in her mind.

Soon after she went to live with her aunt and uncle in a neighboring town, the angels came to visit her. Every night they would tuck her in and read her bedtime stories. She lived a quiet, protected life with her loving aunt and uncle, but she couldn’t wait for the secret of the nighttime – when her mysterious angels would come through the open window to see her. They promised they would always be there for her. But then, suddenly, they were gone, and she was alone.

For the next ten years, Kirsten studied everything she could about angels, in hopes of finding her guardians again. During that time, she always had the feeling someone was watching over her ... or maybe just watching her.

In college now, she continues her search for the truth about angels, but every obscure text, every clue, leads to a dead end. She’s ready to give up until the people closest to her start turning up dead. Again. These bloodless unexplained murders will force Kirsten to deal with the terrible truth about her past – and who the angels really are.

Available now in ebook, coming soon in print!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

4TH OF JULY - A GREAT DAY TO DECLARE YOUR INDEPENDENCE

While the 4th of July is strictly a US holiday commemorating the independence of the original 13 colonies in the New World as the United States of America, it's a great day for any author to declare his or her independence.

Independence means a lot of different things to different people. But for authors who are trying to get their work published, it means something important and self-affirming. For all you authors out there hoping to get your work published and share with readers, the best time to declare that you WILL do this is right now - today. So, what are you declaring when you declare your independence? You may have your own ideas about this, but here are some things that come to mind when I think of authorial independence...

INDEPENDENCE FROM A CLOSED, ELITE SYSTEM. Specifically, I'm talking about the closed and elite publishing system that has been in effect since publishing a book (putting it in readable format as opposed to verbal storytelling) has historically been a real possibility. From the time of ancient papyrus scrolls, forward past illuminated (fancy letter illustrated) handwritten copies of the Bible painstakingly produced by monks in secluded monasteries, to 1493, when the Gutenberg system of movable type revolutionized the book-making process, publishing has been a closed, elite system available only to a few who were capable of the manufacturing process of book-making. This closed nature of publishing still persisted until around 2007, when print-on-demand and self-publishing services were made reasonably affordable to the masses. The advent of electronic books also made distribution of books easier, virtually erasing the barrier that allowed only an elite few to call themselves publishers, who then decided which authors and which books would be published.

Granted, part of the reason book-making was an elite process was because the skill of reading the written word was not generally possessed by the general population. So, not only did technology have to make the leap, so did education. And, given that there are about 6,000 languages in the world today (not all of them spoken), the task of educating the masses to develop this reading skill was the most monumental task. Right now, that task has largely been accomplished, and technology has arrived to make reading a possibility for nearly everyone - and has made publishing available to a larger spectrum of the population.

Now authors have more choices than ever. They can still try navigating the agent/traditional big publisher closed system, but if they choose not to, there are other alternatives. Small independent publishers, paid self-publishing services, and do-it-yourself free publishing services are all available for authors to try.

INDEPENDENCE FROM SELF-DOUBT. Most people can write in the literal sense, meaning those of us who can read and are physically able, can string some sentences together to record our thoughts for sharing with others. However, that does not mean anyone who can string some sentences together can write a book. Some folks have no desire to do this and therefore won't even try. Some folks have the motivation but can't seem to stick with it or organize their thoughts or carve out the time to complete the task. But for those who can finish, many don't, due most probably to self-doubt.

What if people think my writing isn't good enough? What if they don't like what I've written? They'll laugh and make fun of me, hurt my feelings. I'll be too ashamed to show my face anywhere.

As with any objective you may want to accomplish, if you take the proper steps to achieve your goal, you'll have a much better chance of success. If you want to play professional ball, you'll practice until your skills are good enough. You wouldn't dream of going out on the field and trying to pitch a no-hitter without honing the proper skills first. Why would any wannabe author think that writing a book others will want to read is going to be any easier? It is a skill that is learned, like any other, and the successful application of that skill is certainly affected by chance and opportunity, but in the end is measurable by the results produced. As with baseball, there are tryouts. So try your book out with a small sampling of objective readers before deeming it ready for publishing. Go back and tweak if you get mixed feedback. Once you are sure your product - your book, your result - is worthy of public assessment, then submit for publishing consideration or publish it yourself.

INDEPENDENCE FROM PROCRASTINATION. So, what are you waiting for? Declare your independence today. If you've been wanting to write that book but haven't, start today, and keep going tomorrow and the next day and the next until you get it done. Then, don't just sit on your book - do something with it. Follow prescribed steps for success, and complete the process to the finish. Once you've achieved your goal, if you have more stories in you, waiting to get out and be shared with others, repeat the process and achieve your goal again and again.

There's no better time to start than today - Independence Day. Happy writing!

Patricia Morrison
Penumbra Publishing