Bernard Jan's Blog, page 19

My Book Cover Contests

The last few weeks were marked by my e-book A World Without Color taking part in a few cover contests. I should be pleased with how it all ended, though it was such a tight fight to win the AllAuthor contest—I lost it by five votes only!

The Book Designer

My book didn't win the e-Book Cover Design Awards for July 2017 among 93 entries in fiction category. However, it has received the following comment: "An interesting approach, but the composition never comes together, weakening your message. Although it's an ebook only, the cover looks like it was designed more for print."

True, the cover was designed both for print and an e-book but due to some technical problems the paperback edition is late; I hope it will be published this month.

Cover Wars

In Author Shout one-week contest Cover Wars, my book won the 3rd place out of 15 entries that started to compete on August 20 for the title "Book Of The Week". Not bad, huh?

AllAuthor

AllAuthor Cover of the month August contest is my favorite and most exciting contest so far! 113 books started the contest, 24 ended up in finals, and after a long and tight competition with the winner, my book ended up ranked as #2 with only 5 votes behind!

I am proud of this success and very grateful to more than 450 of you who registered to vote for my book cover both in AllAuthor and Cover Wars contests!

AUTHORSdb—The Voting Continues!

On August 31, my e-book A World Without Color has been approved for the ongoing AUTHORSdb Cover Contest 2017! First round voting closes October 15, 2017, so please vote for my book now!

Please vote at the following link here or, if you prefer, get to it via Facebook or Pinterest.

Thank you for helping my book get to the next round of voting!

You can show further support to my book by purchasing it at Amazon or reading it for free at Kindle Unlimited and leaving an honest review.

Thank you very much!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Cover photo by Zach Singh; Cover design by Mario Kožar MKM Media

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Bernard Jan

Hounded Review

Hounded by Ellie Douglas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What would you do if your beloved pet suddenly turns into a mortal enemy?! Kill him in the merciless fight of survival or give in to your emotions and serve yourself as a meal to his unquenched hunger and thirst for human flesh and blood?

Savage and brutal, Hounded by Ellie Douglas is a zombie horror novel of unique excellence! A bloody mayhem of gnawed skulls, snapped bones, torn bodies, scattered intestines and ripped extremities is described to a chilling detail. A dried stench of the walls and streets painted in human gore makes you gag on a scary drive through the streets and cities populated by someone's pets-turned-zombies.

This is the dusk of humankind, hounded by dead but very alive dogs and a virus. As we witness the gruesome destruction of one human individual after another, it's hard to feel sympathy for the whole human species. People liked dwarfism for exotic animals to have pet tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes.... But that idea came from the same laboratory as something else with a much higher price and dire consequences.

Even when the most dominate species on the planet becomes the species facing its sudden extinction, humans again showed their ugly face of robbing, scavenging, praying and killing one another. The weak beacon of hope lays in the hands of the few willing to sacrifice themselves for their beloved ones and the general good of complete strangers. Is that so different from our world? When will we learn the big lesson?

The transformation of the beloved dog Pepper into a living dead is remarkable. The end of the book is brilliant. No reason to delay purchasing and reading this gripping horror story!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Cover Wars

My book has entered another best book cover contest this month; this time it is Cover Wars!

Each week Author Shout posts 15 book covers in Cover Wars and at the end of the week (Sunday at 8 AM EST) voting will end. The cover with the most votes becomes their book of the week. They will promote it for one week on their website, shout outs, and their newsletter.

Please vote for my A World Without Color book cover. You can vote more than once, but only vote once a day. You can vote again only after full 24 hours or the vote will not count.

You can show further support to my book by clicking on its link and purchasing it if you haven't done so already. :)

Another book cover contest

In AllAuthor Cover of the month August contest my book cover has been shortlisted and earned a spot in top 50 (out of 113 books which started the contest).

Its current rank is #2 and I'm going after #1! For that I need your support. Please vote for A World Without Color now! The contest will be open until the end of August.

Thank you!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Cover photo by Zach Singh; Cover design by Mario Kožar MKM Media

Rusticles: Real Beauty Never Dies

Rusticles by Rebecca Gransden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


You watch a huge white canvas from the comfort of your armchair and a painter mixing colors before applying her first spontaneous strokes on its surface. A rough sound of brush mingles with the enthusiastic chirping of the birds, the dance of the wind and the light curtains at the open balcony door and the clinging of the ice in the half-filled glass of lemonade sweating in your hand. Soft French music plays on the gramophone in the darkest corner of the room. Maybe Edith Piaf? Non, je ne regrette rien followed by La vie en rose?

Rebecca Gransden is the painter and Rusticles is the painting. As you read it in the silence of your room, devoid of outside distractions of the modern world, you are contemplating the beauty that prostrates before you. One short story after another, one stroke of a brush giving you goosebumps after another.

This is the book you need to read slowly. Only then you will grasp its depth and the ingeniousness of the writing that sometimes surprises you and sometimes leaves you with brief questions to which you must find answers by yourself. This is the intelligent collection of short stories and—oh boy, why I am not surprised?!—it may not have the fate of a shooting-star-bestseller-to-be-replaced-with-another-bestseller in a few days, weeks, months. It rather tastes and smells like evergreen... like a potential classic.

I am glad I bought this book and I recommend everyone who craves for the beauty of the written word to have it in their library. I hope for its long life as it conquers the hearts of many readers, like a perfect rosebud or a breathtaking painting coated with a fine layer of protective rust.

Time is gentle with things of significance and real beauty never dies.

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Innocence Taken Review

Innocence Taken: Pray He Kills You Quickly by Victoria M. Patton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Some books suck you in from the first page and you know you'll enjoy reading them. The time you spend with their plots, in their settings, spying on their characters, eavesdropping to their conversations and witnessing their dramas is just too short, no matter how long the book is you are reading, how many pages you still have left before you reach the end.

This is the case with Innocence Taken: Pray He Kills You Quickly by Victoria M. Patton. This police procedure—detective—crime thriller signed by an author with BS in Forensic Chemistry and a former Coast Guard doing Search and Rescue/Law Enforcement, was a promise from the start and remained a great read until the end.

No spoilers except for the mention of Lieutenant Damien Kaine, Detective Joe Hagan and Special Agent Dillon McGrath with the FBI on their frantic hunt for a handsome serial killer, a psycho and a sexual sadist who takes slow and great pleasure in abusing and punishing his young female victims. The bright lights showed every drop of blood, every piece of skin, and every other horror. The walls had more space covered with blood than without. Pieces of flesh and bone draped almost every surface.

Patton balances gruesome scenes of pain, torture and suffering with the scenes of infatuation, fatal attraction and passionate lovemaking; criminal and forensic investigation and psychological profiling with the scenes of common and undisturbed everyday life of rural farming in Illinois.

My biggest kudos, though, go to the protagonists' characterization whose strong, fluent, entertaining and real dialogues I consumed with gusto. I didn't miss a single word, I couldn't, because I was there with them all the time!

We are lucky Innocence Taken: Pray He Kills You Quickly is just the first book in The Damien Kaine Series; Patton signed us up for good crime stories in its sequels as well!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

This Author Needs Your Votes!

I am happy to tell you that my e-book A World Without Color, a true story about the last three days I spent with my beloved cat Marcel, has been selected to partake in the monthly "Cover of The Month" contest for August, 2017 on AllAuthor—a fast growing bibliophile network connecting readers and authors together.

The book cover is beautifully designed by Mario Kožar from MKM Media, while the amazing cover photo was taken by a fashion, lifestyle and portrait photographer Zach Singh.

At the moment my book's rank is #4 with 38 votes. It's excellent, considering 113 books compete this month. Since it's highest rank a couple of days ago was #3, you and me both know that with your help it can do better and rank even higher!

Please vote for my book and give it a boost!

You can also purchase A World Without Color e-book at Amazon or read it for free with Kindle Unlimited.

Thank you a million and thanks to all of you who have already voted for it!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Amazon's Bernard Jan Page

You found the link; you purchased my story A World Without Color; you read it and wrote the review on Amazon. I thank you for that! Or, if you are a member, you found it on Kindle Unlimited, read it for free and posted your kind review. And I'm grateful again!

Under the title A World Without Color: A True Story Of the Last Three Days With My Cat you noticed my name Bernard Jan in smaller letters. Its bluish color shows that this is the link to Amazon's Bernard Jan Page. In other words my page.

You are more than welcome to click on it and follow me. Beside my book(s) displayed there, you can also read my updates, which means my latest blog posts streamed directly from my web page www.bernardjan.com to my Amazon's Bernard Jan Page. Don't miss those updates, there is some cool stuff to read!

If you want to socialize with me on my other networking platforms, I am happy to connect with you on Twitter, Goodreads, LinkedIn, and Steemit!

Thanks and see you there, guys!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

My ReadRantRock&Roll Interview!

For those of you who didn't notice or get to read it yet, I gave an interview for ReadRantRock&Roll blog about books, music, movies and more...!

After reading and reviewing my novella A World Without Color, Mischenko, the author of ReadRantRock&Roll, asked me if I would like to do a Q&A for her blog, which I happily accepted.

In about herself and her blog Mischenko explains: I created this blog to talk about the books that I read, music that I listen to, health matters, movies, and other things that interest me. I love doing Q&A's and learning about others. I use the word “rant” for anything that I want to talk about, especially things that I feel passionate about.

I am privileged and happy that she feels passionate enough about my book to write a review about it and ask me 21 questions for her blog!

She starts the Q&A with me with the introduction: A few weeks ago I came across a book on Goodreads titled A World Without Color: A True Story Of the Last Three Days With My Cat and knew right away I needed to read it. It’s a memoir written by Bernard Jan pertaining to the loss of his beloved cat Marcel. Bernard was very kind to offer some of his time to discuss his writing and some other questions I had about the book. You can see my Q&A with Bernard Jan below.

Please click here to visit ReadRantRock&Roll blog for my answers to Mischenko's questions.

As a teaser, I'm sharing with Mischenko's permission my answer to her first question!

Q: When did you first start writing and when did you first think about becoming an author?

A: My first writing steps started already in the elementary school when, at a very early age, I flirted with the Croatian and English language, books, school assignments in literature and writing when I did rather well.

My first book, though, I wrote at the beginning of war in Croatia in 1991, amidst the air alerts and illusory attempts when I wanted to believe and think life is normal, that everything is all right with the world. That was the time when madness controlled our lives and we all walked on the thin line between life and death. So the war was just a trigger that took my writing to a higher level and its full potential. I wrote my first two novels as the testament of the time that has influenced so much of everyone’s life here.

Don't forget to read her review of A World Without Color and look for my book on Amazon!

Happy reading and THANK YOU, Mischenko!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Angel's Nightmare Adventure Review

Angel's Nightmare Adventure by Angel Ramon Medina

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Those who have already read some of Angel Ramon's work (The Thousand Years War: The Trilogy and Janus: The Devil's Election) will undoubtedly expect in Angel's Nightmare Adventure short story the same amount of action and monster-mutants creatures. And they will be right. Angel invaded New York City with zombies and mutant-iguana-snake-spider-and-human-like creatures that crawled out of the Hybrid Corporation laboratories.

Angel's Nightmare Adventure is a story told from two different perspectives so it rather seems as two stories instead of one. The first part is about a teenager Angel who is getting ready for an oral operation and ends up in the hospital where he is chased by zombies and other nightmarish creatures, while the second part is about Louis, an NYPD officer who is stuck in a mansion in his search for survivors.

It is interesting to see how the author merges these two stories into one and, what I like in particular , a surprising end at the moment we think we figured it all out!

I would prefer that the author built the whole nightmare adventure on the zombies only, but monster-mutant-like creatures worked too in this laboratory induced combination of characters. This way the lovers of zombie and horror stories will both have their moments of pleasure and needed dozes of scare!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Things I didn't Tell You

I wasn't thrilled on the morning of my A World Without Color book launch. Even though I was up until 3.40 am waiting to see when it would be live and available for purchase I fell asleep before that happened. In the morning, I continued with my daily activities: vacuum cleaning, dusting, texting with my friends who were more excited than me that my book was live on Amazon, tweeting.

I felt calmness holding onto the vacuum cleaner. Focused on sucking in the dirt, I felt enormous relief that one part of this long journey was over. Yet I have to finish the paperback book and then collect as many good reviews as possible, but in the morning of my book launch I left myself to calmness.

Nobody knew how hard it was and how well I faked it. I can be a great Pagliacci. A perfect pretender. Screams and cries and tears and sobs I killed within me, because if I gave in to my emotions even for a second longer, I would be done. I would be catapulted back to the day when Marcel died... when we killed him.

It is such a thin line between grief and happiness, an invisible flight of a grain of dust from one part of the room to another.... Do you also know how hard it is to be happy when your heart wants to bleed into nothingness?

Two days later after the Saturday of July 1, 2017, I returned to my daily job full time. Four months during which I worked only part-time were over, not that I was too happy about it. But hard days at work are before us and I have to leave my baby, right after its birth, and tend to other things. I can only hope it won't suffer too much, that I will get it a decent life and exposure.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yeah, I know I can count the days of the week, but the point is that after those super-crazy-busy days at work came Friday. And my trip to Sweden. A comforting thought of my land of refugee that has lived in the back of my mind for a couple of months already came to life. I barely had time to think of it, let alone rejoice it, between my daily work and my self-publishing efforts.

Now it is here. Sweden and my book together. Even if I planned it that way....

Not even the best marketing plans and experts can predict the future. No one can guarantee things will happen that way, the way we want them. No online lectures and marketing gurus can prepare us for the twists and turns that will happen when life decides to shows us who directs the order in the universe and where our role is in a bigger plan. We can only try, do whatever we can and hope for the best.

Sweden is on my plate now. I will breathe it with every pore on my skin. Its smells, its beauty, its calmness and order. Two weeks I will live by the order of another universe and I am determined to be happy. My down-to-earth and supercool friends Claire and Tommy are with me and they will make sure I recover from the accumulated stress and remember again that there is life outside of constant work and that it can be beautiful.

Like Sweden, like my book, like you my friends. I will be on a summer vacay on the north of Europesummer vacay on the north of Europe, but I won't forget you. This is where tweets, texts and e-mails prove their worthiness. Maybe that is the greatest value of social networking.

Bernard Jan

For images from Sweden please click here.

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Bernard Jan