Michael Schmicker's Blog, page 3
December 3, 2015
Book Obsessed Awards for 2015
Just learned that "The Witch of Napoli" has earned a "Best Books of 2015" Award from Book Obsessed, the stylish Canadian blog penned by French-born bibliophile Cecile Sune. Merci Cecile! She selected five winners in each of three categories -- Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Graphic Novels -- and poses a timely question as the old year passes: "What were YOU'RE preferred books of 2015?" http://bit.ly/1jCsDAX
Meanwhile, aloha, and "mele Kalikimaka" (Hawaiian for "Merry Christmas")to all. My grateful thanks to each of you for your kind words and encouragement this year!
Michael
Meanwhile, aloha, and "mele Kalikimaka" (Hawaiian for "Merry Christmas")to all. My grateful thanks to each of you for your kind words and encouragement this year!
Michael
September 4, 2015
The Witch is Book of the Day on Ereader News Today
Happy Labor Day weekend, all! The Witch of Napoli is the featured Book of the Day on Ereader News Today, only 99 cents through Monday. You'll find it here if you're interested: http://bit.ly/1JHKkYG
August 2, 2015
Nook broomstick for the Witch
Aloha all:
Better late than never?
Nook aficionados have been emailing me to put Alessandra on an epub broomstick. Happy to announce "The Witch of Napoli" is now available as a Barnes & Noble e-book: http://bit.ly/1MGFcrb . Sorry it took so long. (We authors prefer to write, not wade through the growing swamp of publishing formats).
If Smashwords is you preferred ride, the Witch just got uploaded there as well: http://bit.ly/1KKR34k
Better late than never?
Nook aficionados have been emailing me to put Alessandra on an epub broomstick. Happy to announce "The Witch of Napoli" is now available as a Barnes & Noble e-book: http://bit.ly/1MGFcrb . Sorry it took so long. (We authors prefer to write, not wade through the growing swamp of publishing formats).
If Smashwords is you preferred ride, the Witch just got uploaded there as well: http://bit.ly/1KKR34k
July 31, 2015
David and Goliath
Library Thing is tiny compared with Goodreads – only 1.9 million members. More hippie commune than Amazon corporate, it exudes a funky 1950s, Dewey decimal vibe. But I find it refreshing when I tire of Jeff Bezos’ uber-efficient but Orwellian empire. If you’re not a member, you might want to check it out – there’s no cost to join.
To encourage your visit, I’m giving out 50 free Kindle e-books of “The Witch of Napoli” while they last. Click here for your copy: http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaw....
It’s my small contribution to making sure Library Thing survives and thrives in this Darwinian corporate jungle.
To encourage your visit, I’m giving out 50 free Kindle e-books of “The Witch of Napoli” while they last. Click here for your copy: http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaw....
It’s my small contribution to making sure Library Thing survives and thrives in this Darwinian corporate jungle.
July 19, 2015
On the Eve of Destruction (Book Review)
If high school text books read like James Dalessandro's "1906," nobody would sleep through history class.
The apocalyptic earthquake that levelled San Francisco on April 18, 1906 started at 5:12 A.M. Fifty –three seconds later, the “Paris of the Pacific” was a pile of rubble. A hellish three-day firestorm followed, cremating the ruins. Final toll: 5,000 dead, 29,000 buildings collapsed or burned to the ground; 80 percent of the city erased from the map.
San Francisco on the eve of its destruction wasn’t Sodom and Gomorrah, but you could see it from Telegraph Hill. Sin and corruption suited the city’s rough and tumble, gold-fever, get-rich-quick citizenry. City Hall was a cesspool of bribery; its infamous, red-light Barbary Coast was Satan’s crib – chockablock with whorehouses, saloons and gambling dens where you could get drunk get laid, get robbed and get shanghaied to China, all in one night.
Dalessandro’s sprawling, colorful novel fully exploits the reader-grabbing potential of both themes – humanity’s persistent vices, and the unfathomably destructive power of a 7.8 earthquake unleashed on a criminally unprepared city.
"1906" is big, bold, operatic historical fiction.
You viscerally root for the good guys, like the novel’s narrator, plucky muckraker Annalisa Passarelli, and the virtuous Brotherhood (a secret clique of ethical cops), as they attempt to take down venal S.F. Mayor Eugene Schmitz and the avaricious political machine which owns him (Schmitz isn’t fictional; in real life, President Teddy Roosevelt and federal investigators were preparing to nail him on the eve of the disaster).
The bad guys are soap-opera bad – Shakespearean villains you want to jump up and punch. Cartoon characters? Hardly. The Darwinian ethics and scandalous excesses of America’s ruling class and their muscle during America’s Gilded Age are shocking in hindsight. The rich owned the police, Congress and the court system. They did what they damn well pleased. The injustices inflicted by the powerful on the urban working poor at the end of the 19th century made a mockery of democracy. San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and other major U.S. cities were awash with vulnerable immigrants treated like animals, routinely cheated and scammed, living in horrific squalor. No safety net existed in 1906 – no Social Security, no food stamps, no Medicaid, no OSHA. If you lost an arm to a factory machine, you were tossed aside without compensation. Photographers Jacob Riis (1849-1914) and Lewis Hine (1874-1940) have left us a painful record of the era. Hine risked his life to document the nation’s child labor scandal – ten-year-old kids slaving away in noisy, dangerous factories 12 hours a day. Company goons threatened and harassed him every step of the way. Riis famously focused his lens on the over-crowded, fetid, fire-trap tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Meanwhile, across the continent, San Francisco’s “Big Four” – Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and Collis Huntington – vied to construct the largest, most lavish palace on Nob Hill. “Stanford built a fifty room palace whose entrance boasted a 75-foot high vestibule with the twelve signs of the zodiac done in black marble, a hothouse conservatory, indoor Corinthian pillars of Aberdeen granite, mechanical singing birds, a music room where a servant changed cylinders every few minutes so that a continual stream of classical music was piped throughout the house, and a miniature railroad.” (According to Wikipedia, “In the 1970s the student body of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder”). As wealthy Anson Hunter says in Fitzgerald’s famous novelette, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Never more true than turn-of-the-century America. Dalessandro gets your juices flowing. As Passarelli and the Brotherhood close in on Schmitz and the city’s crooked nabobs, you’re passing the hang noose.
The novel brims with finely-observed period detail that snaps scenes into sharp focus. Ever ridden San Francisco’s famous cable cars? Here’s the ride Easter morning 1906: “The city’s only Negro gripman eased the brake lever and ratcheted up the hook that snagged the heavy cable underground. The six-ton car lurched forward, jerking and rumbling past the Victorian row houses. Within seconds the rising sun illuminated the entire bay and filled the cable car with blinding amber light.”
Pages are crammed with Michener factoids. Passarelli leans out her fourth-floor window at the Fairmont hotel and describes an Easter Day street march jammed with political and social protesters: “...pickets seeking higher wages for chambermaids, Industrial Unionism, shorter hours for carpenters, Suffrage for women, vegetarianism, enforced temperance, recruits for Socialism, and end to Imperialism. The Prevent Premature Burial consortium, the short-lived Committee for Improved Mastication (‘32 Chews to a Healthier You’), appeared to have lost steam to the point of near extinction, as had the Back to Africa outfits. A roller skater headed for the frightening plunge down Mason Street, almost taking one of the Temperance women with him.”
His research is impeccable. Dalessandro’s cinematic description of the horrific earthquake and firestorm fits the facts. The doomed city is destroyed, minute by minute, street by street, pretty much as history records.
The author’s storytelling skills are backed by a lifetime working as a screenwriter and poet. Together with his Beat Generation pals Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; “Sometimes a Great Notion”) Dalessandro co-founded in 1972 the famous Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, then headed to Hollywood and UCLA film school. He wrote and sold a half dozen screenplays; penned the San Francisco noir thriller “Bohemian Heart” (1993); true crime “Citizen Jane”(1999 – subsequently a Hallmark Channel movie); and published "1906" two years before the centennial of the celebrated quake. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks and Warner Bros. engaged in a legendary bidding war for the film rights before the novel was even finished, but the book never made it through the Hollywood meat grinder to become a movie. Instead, a decade later tinsel town regurgitated this summer’s flashy, but formulaic San Andreas, now playing in a theater near you. Dalessandro is currently turning “Bohemian Heart” into a TV series with the help of his friend Bobby Moresco (2005 Academy Award winner “Million Dollar Baby”).
Meanwhile, "1906," re-issued in Kindle, made the Amazon Top 100 this Spring.
Geologists agree that San Francisco will inevitably be destroyed again. In 1989, the city shrugged off the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake, but the USGS estimates a 7 percent chance that the “Big One” (magnitude 8) will occur in California within the next 30 years.
For $2.99, you can get a preview of coming attractions.
The apocalyptic earthquake that levelled San Francisco on April 18, 1906 started at 5:12 A.M. Fifty –three seconds later, the “Paris of the Pacific” was a pile of rubble. A hellish three-day firestorm followed, cremating the ruins. Final toll: 5,000 dead, 29,000 buildings collapsed or burned to the ground; 80 percent of the city erased from the map.
San Francisco on the eve of its destruction wasn’t Sodom and Gomorrah, but you could see it from Telegraph Hill. Sin and corruption suited the city’s rough and tumble, gold-fever, get-rich-quick citizenry. City Hall was a cesspool of bribery; its infamous, red-light Barbary Coast was Satan’s crib – chockablock with whorehouses, saloons and gambling dens where you could get drunk get laid, get robbed and get shanghaied to China, all in one night.
Dalessandro’s sprawling, colorful novel fully exploits the reader-grabbing potential of both themes – humanity’s persistent vices, and the unfathomably destructive power of a 7.8 earthquake unleashed on a criminally unprepared city.
"1906" is big, bold, operatic historical fiction.
You viscerally root for the good guys, like the novel’s narrator, plucky muckraker Annalisa Passarelli, and the virtuous Brotherhood (a secret clique of ethical cops), as they attempt to take down venal S.F. Mayor Eugene Schmitz and the avaricious political machine which owns him (Schmitz isn’t fictional; in real life, President Teddy Roosevelt and federal investigators were preparing to nail him on the eve of the disaster).
The bad guys are soap-opera bad – Shakespearean villains you want to jump up and punch. Cartoon characters? Hardly. The Darwinian ethics and scandalous excesses of America’s ruling class and their muscle during America’s Gilded Age are shocking in hindsight. The rich owned the police, Congress and the court system. They did what they damn well pleased. The injustices inflicted by the powerful on the urban working poor at the end of the 19th century made a mockery of democracy. San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and other major U.S. cities were awash with vulnerable immigrants treated like animals, routinely cheated and scammed, living in horrific squalor. No safety net existed in 1906 – no Social Security, no food stamps, no Medicaid, no OSHA. If you lost an arm to a factory machine, you were tossed aside without compensation. Photographers Jacob Riis (1849-1914) and Lewis Hine (1874-1940) have left us a painful record of the era. Hine risked his life to document the nation’s child labor scandal – ten-year-old kids slaving away in noisy, dangerous factories 12 hours a day. Company goons threatened and harassed him every step of the way. Riis famously focused his lens on the over-crowded, fetid, fire-trap tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Meanwhile, across the continent, San Francisco’s “Big Four” – Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker and Collis Huntington – vied to construct the largest, most lavish palace on Nob Hill. “Stanford built a fifty room palace whose entrance boasted a 75-foot high vestibule with the twelve signs of the zodiac done in black marble, a hothouse conservatory, indoor Corinthian pillars of Aberdeen granite, mechanical singing birds, a music room where a servant changed cylinders every few minutes so that a continual stream of classical music was piped throughout the house, and a miniature railroad.” (According to Wikipedia, “In the 1970s the student body of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder”). As wealthy Anson Hunter says in Fitzgerald’s famous novelette, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Never more true than turn-of-the-century America. Dalessandro gets your juices flowing. As Passarelli and the Brotherhood close in on Schmitz and the city’s crooked nabobs, you’re passing the hang noose.
The novel brims with finely-observed period detail that snaps scenes into sharp focus. Ever ridden San Francisco’s famous cable cars? Here’s the ride Easter morning 1906: “The city’s only Negro gripman eased the brake lever and ratcheted up the hook that snagged the heavy cable underground. The six-ton car lurched forward, jerking and rumbling past the Victorian row houses. Within seconds the rising sun illuminated the entire bay and filled the cable car with blinding amber light.”
Pages are crammed with Michener factoids. Passarelli leans out her fourth-floor window at the Fairmont hotel and describes an Easter Day street march jammed with political and social protesters: “...pickets seeking higher wages for chambermaids, Industrial Unionism, shorter hours for carpenters, Suffrage for women, vegetarianism, enforced temperance, recruits for Socialism, and end to Imperialism. The Prevent Premature Burial consortium, the short-lived Committee for Improved Mastication (‘32 Chews to a Healthier You’), appeared to have lost steam to the point of near extinction, as had the Back to Africa outfits. A roller skater headed for the frightening plunge down Mason Street, almost taking one of the Temperance women with him.”
His research is impeccable. Dalessandro’s cinematic description of the horrific earthquake and firestorm fits the facts. The doomed city is destroyed, minute by minute, street by street, pretty much as history records.
The author’s storytelling skills are backed by a lifetime working as a screenwriter and poet. Together with his Beat Generation pals Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; “Sometimes a Great Notion”) Dalessandro co-founded in 1972 the famous Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, then headed to Hollywood and UCLA film school. He wrote and sold a half dozen screenplays; penned the San Francisco noir thriller “Bohemian Heart” (1993); true crime “Citizen Jane”(1999 – subsequently a Hallmark Channel movie); and published "1906" two years before the centennial of the celebrated quake. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks and Warner Bros. engaged in a legendary bidding war for the film rights before the novel was even finished, but the book never made it through the Hollywood meat grinder to become a movie. Instead, a decade later tinsel town regurgitated this summer’s flashy, but formulaic San Andreas, now playing in a theater near you. Dalessandro is currently turning “Bohemian Heart” into a TV series with the help of his friend Bobby Moresco (2005 Academy Award winner “Million Dollar Baby”).
Meanwhile, "1906," re-issued in Kindle, made the Amazon Top 100 this Spring.
Geologists agree that San Francisco will inevitably be destroyed again. In 1989, the city shrugged off the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake, but the USGS estimates a 7 percent chance that the “Big One” (magnitude 8) will occur in California within the next 30 years.
For $2.99, you can get a preview of coming attractions.
July 17, 2015
BRAG Medallion Award
Just found out that The Witch of Napoli has earned a 2015 BRAG Medallion award. A real honor.
You'll find some quality historical fiction on their website (www.bragmedallion.com). In an ocean of uneven indie prose, the medallion serves as a welcome beacon, guiding readers safely through the shoals of some embarassing literary wreckage out there.
I've already reviewed BRAG winner Helena Schrader's "Knight of Jerusalem" on Goodreads; and have teed up on my "To-Read" list books penned by a half-dozen other BRAG awardees, including Historical Novel Society's Helen Hollick (The Sea Witch Voyages Series) Aargh!; Sophie Perinot and colleagues ("A Day of Fire"); Paula Lofting's recent BookBub selection ("Sons of the Wolf"); Glenn Craney (two-time BRAG awardee); Janet Oakley ("Timber Rose") and J.D. Smith ("Tristan and Iseult"). Smith is a member of the vibrant Triskele Books collective whose authors include Liza Perrat, author of the excellent WWII novel "Wolfsangel" I reviewed on Goodreads.
Strong writers, all. I'm honored to share their online shelfspace.
You'll find some quality historical fiction on their website (www.bragmedallion.com). In an ocean of uneven indie prose, the medallion serves as a welcome beacon, guiding readers safely through the shoals of some embarassing literary wreckage out there.
I've already reviewed BRAG winner Helena Schrader's "Knight of Jerusalem" on Goodreads; and have teed up on my "To-Read" list books penned by a half-dozen other BRAG awardees, including Historical Novel Society's Helen Hollick (The Sea Witch Voyages Series) Aargh!; Sophie Perinot and colleagues ("A Day of Fire"); Paula Lofting's recent BookBub selection ("Sons of the Wolf"); Glenn Craney (two-time BRAG awardee); Janet Oakley ("Timber Rose") and J.D. Smith ("Tristan and Iseult"). Smith is a member of the vibrant Triskele Books collective whose authors include Liza Perrat, author of the excellent WWII novel "Wolfsangel" I reviewed on Goodreads.
Strong writers, all. I'm honored to share their online shelfspace.
May 16, 2015
Sequel to "The Witch of Napoli"?
Decision time. Do I go for it?
A few weeks back, an enthusiastic reader named Denny posted a question for me:
"I really enjoyed The Witch of Napoli. Is there any chance you're going to develop a series around Tommaso Labella? He's a great character with a lot of potential. I'd love to see him investigate Nigel Huxley's misdeeds and bring him to justice. I felt kind of cheated after Elsa's disappearance from the story shortly after her disclosure to Tommaso of Huxley's abuses. Take care, be well, and happy reading!"
I wrote him back:
"Aloha Denny: Thanks for the question. A sequel is tempting. I had a lot of fun creating the novel’s narrator, Tomaso. He’s me when I was just starting my own journalism career. He’s cocky, curious; handy with a camera and pen; determined to see the world. And of course, it would be great to pursure Huxley for his misdeeds -- and the hundred pounds he owes Alessandra after her Naples sitting.
That said, I'm not a natural fiction writer; I primarily write non-fiction, and it's equally tempting to say I've had my fling with fiction.The time commitment to writing a second novel is scary. .A novel is a nightmare for the amateur, and a challenge even for a pro. It requires playing with a Rubik’s cube of characters, plot, subplots, pacing, dialogue, style, emotional arc – pieces which the writer must move in a certain sequence, and at the proper moment, to propel the tale forward, hold the fickle reader’s attention, and arrive at a successful denouement. Historical fiction raises the complexity another level. Where do you find information in the cost of a plate of pasta in 19th century Napoli? How much history should be included? When and where do you drop it in? How do you share it without slowing the story and boring readers? It took me 18 months to write THe Witch of Napoli; I can write a non-fiction book in half the time, and I've got a long list of possible book ideas in my head.
And yet... it's so tempting to resurrect Tommaso. He would be in his early 40s, in Rome, editor of the Messaggero, with Doffo still working for him. Mussolini has taken power in Italy; the Fascists and Nazi movements are sweeping Europe; the British aristocracy (including Huxley) and the Catholic Church are sympathetically cheering their rise to power. Everyone is nervous about the future of their family, their business, their country, and a shadowy, Italian woman psychic everyone calls "the witch of Roma" claims to have the answers.
Tempting...
Thanks for your kind comments about the Witch of Napoli, and I'll let you know if I do decide to take a crack at it!"
Last week I started seriously playing with ideas for a sequel. I'm getting hooked.
Let's see where this leads...
A few weeks back, an enthusiastic reader named Denny posted a question for me:
"I really enjoyed The Witch of Napoli. Is there any chance you're going to develop a series around Tommaso Labella? He's a great character with a lot of potential. I'd love to see him investigate Nigel Huxley's misdeeds and bring him to justice. I felt kind of cheated after Elsa's disappearance from the story shortly after her disclosure to Tommaso of Huxley's abuses. Take care, be well, and happy reading!"
I wrote him back:
"Aloha Denny: Thanks for the question. A sequel is tempting. I had a lot of fun creating the novel’s narrator, Tomaso. He’s me when I was just starting my own journalism career. He’s cocky, curious; handy with a camera and pen; determined to see the world. And of course, it would be great to pursure Huxley for his misdeeds -- and the hundred pounds he owes Alessandra after her Naples sitting.
That said, I'm not a natural fiction writer; I primarily write non-fiction, and it's equally tempting to say I've had my fling with fiction.The time commitment to writing a second novel is scary. .A novel is a nightmare for the amateur, and a challenge even for a pro. It requires playing with a Rubik’s cube of characters, plot, subplots, pacing, dialogue, style, emotional arc – pieces which the writer must move in a certain sequence, and at the proper moment, to propel the tale forward, hold the fickle reader’s attention, and arrive at a successful denouement. Historical fiction raises the complexity another level. Where do you find information in the cost of a plate of pasta in 19th century Napoli? How much history should be included? When and where do you drop it in? How do you share it without slowing the story and boring readers? It took me 18 months to write THe Witch of Napoli; I can write a non-fiction book in half the time, and I've got a long list of possible book ideas in my head.
And yet... it's so tempting to resurrect Tommaso. He would be in his early 40s, in Rome, editor of the Messaggero, with Doffo still working for him. Mussolini has taken power in Italy; the Fascists and Nazi movements are sweeping Europe; the British aristocracy (including Huxley) and the Catholic Church are sympathetically cheering their rise to power. Everyone is nervous about the future of their family, their business, their country, and a shadowy, Italian woman psychic everyone calls "the witch of Roma" claims to have the answers.
Tempting...
Thanks for your kind comments about the Witch of Napoli, and I'll let you know if I do decide to take a crack at it!"
Last week I started seriously playing with ideas for a sequel. I'm getting hooked.
Let's see where this leads...
May 2, 2015
Awaiting My Fate
I've been nervously waiting for the last two months to learn my fate.
The Historical Novel Society is the premier, online gathering place for historical fiction aficionados worldwide; the informed taste-maker for the genre; and they held The Witch. Their reviewers call it like the see it -- no unearned praise; criticism where it's merited. Debut novels notoriously suffer from pacing problems, plot holes and assorted weaknesses, and I'm painfully aware of the many in mine (I primarily write non-fiction). So I held my breath yesterday when I opened the email from the Society's indie reviews managing editor, Helen Hollick, and clicked on the link to Steve Donoghue's review.
Steve can be intimidating. Here’s what greets you when you hand your baby over to him:
"Steve Donoghue is a writer and editor living in Boston with two dogs (one good, one very bad) and uncounted thousands of books (a good many of which are historical novels). He writes regularly for The National, Kirkus Reviews, and The Washington Post, reviews frequently for Open Letters Monthly (where he’s also the Managing Editor), and is the US/Worldwide editor for the Indie branch of the Historical Novels Review, where he’s thrilled to come in contact with a steady stream of promising authors and interesting novels."
In short, he’s a pro. Your literary sins –mortal and venial – will be uncovered. Would Steve still find me a “promising author” with an “interesting novel?” I was about to find out.
Here’s the verdict: http://bit.ly/1GFFd6Z
Thanks, Steve. I might attempt that sequel after all!
P.S. Hope Boston has finally dug out from its winter deep freeze, and you’re happily back walking your basset around Boston Commons.
P.P.S. If you love to read or write historical fiction, join the Society. Membership is only $50 a year; you can access 12,000+ reviews; and I hear they throw a fun conference (in Denver, next month). Click here: http://historicalnovelsociety.org/
The Historical Novel Society is the premier, online gathering place for historical fiction aficionados worldwide; the informed taste-maker for the genre; and they held The Witch. Their reviewers call it like the see it -- no unearned praise; criticism where it's merited. Debut novels notoriously suffer from pacing problems, plot holes and assorted weaknesses, and I'm painfully aware of the many in mine (I primarily write non-fiction). So I held my breath yesterday when I opened the email from the Society's indie reviews managing editor, Helen Hollick, and clicked on the link to Steve Donoghue's review.
Steve can be intimidating. Here’s what greets you when you hand your baby over to him:
"Steve Donoghue is a writer and editor living in Boston with two dogs (one good, one very bad) and uncounted thousands of books (a good many of which are historical novels). He writes regularly for The National, Kirkus Reviews, and The Washington Post, reviews frequently for Open Letters Monthly (where he’s also the Managing Editor), and is the US/Worldwide editor for the Indie branch of the Historical Novels Review, where he’s thrilled to come in contact with a steady stream of promising authors and interesting novels."
In short, he’s a pro. Your literary sins –mortal and venial – will be uncovered. Would Steve still find me a “promising author” with an “interesting novel?” I was about to find out.
Here’s the verdict: http://bit.ly/1GFFd6Z
Thanks, Steve. I might attempt that sequel after all!
P.S. Hope Boston has finally dug out from its winter deep freeze, and you’re happily back walking your basset around Boston Commons.
P.P.S. If you love to read or write historical fiction, join the Society. Membership is only $50 a year; you can access 12,000+ reviews; and I hear they throw a fun conference (in Denver, next month). Click here: http://historicalnovelsociety.org/
May 1, 2015
Fact or Fiction?
What's fact and what's fiction in "The Witch of Napoli"? Curious readers continue to ask me that question. My friend and fellow author C.P.Leslie invited me to guest blog the truth, and I finally reveal the answer here: http://bit.ly/1OMLfwo .
While you're there, check out Leslie's wonderful novels. I reviewed her book The Winged Horse here: http://bit.ly/1DQ1Rsv.
While you're there, check out Leslie's wonderful novels. I reviewed her book The Winged Horse here: http://bit.ly/1DQ1Rsv.
April 19, 2015
Two Free Copies of The Witch of Napoli
All:
Two free copies of The Witch of Napoli are being given away as part of Amy Bruno's Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour. If you'd like to enter to win a copy, click on this link: http://bit.ly/1H3LEWG
Two free copies of The Witch of Napoli are being given away as part of Amy Bruno's Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour. If you'd like to enter to win a copy, click on this link: http://bit.ly/1H3LEWG
