Simone Salmon's Blog, page 4

Review: Geronimo Hotshot

Geronimo Hotshot by Robert Blake Whitehill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Geronimo Hotshot is a masterful blend of sadistic villainous characters interwoven with non-stop action, wit and intrigue. Author, Robert Blake Whitehill, overloads the senses with thrilling ambushes of disturbing suspense and enigmatic genius in this complex revelation of twisted psyches politicking lethal agendas.

Simone Salmon, Author, Camille and the Bears of Beisa - Drafnel www.ssalmonauthor.com

View all my reviews

The Tyranny of Facebook by RAINMAKER.FM

It’s no secret that Brian Clark is not a fan of Facebook when it comes to so-called “social media marketing.” He’s even less of a fan of those who think of it as a “website substitute.”

That said, Facebook groups are popular for their apparent ease of use. But is it a good idea to build a valuable business community on someone else’s property?

Today on Unemployable with Brian Clark, Brian will tackle that issue based on a listener question.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

3 Resources to Help You Draft Winning Content Ideas by STEFANIE FLAXMAN

As writers, we don’t really take breaks.
Even when we aren’t working, the creative lens through which we view the world keeps our minds active with possibilities.

And then you have to ask yourself: Should I be the one to bring a new idea to life?

To help you pursue smart content ideas, this week’s Copyblogger Collection is a series of three handpicked articles that will show you:
How to write content that attracts customers and clientsHow to stand out with content that makes an impactHow to hook your audience through the magnetic force of fascination READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

No Blog Traffic? Here’s a Simple Strategy to Seduce Readers and Win Clients - Great Copyblogger Article by Henneke Duistermaat

You sit down at your desk.

You start your computer.

You check Google Analytics and your email provider dashboard. A deep sigh escapes from your soul.

Why is your number of email subscribers still so low?

Why aren’t readers flocking to your blog?

And when will those business inquiries finally arrive?

We all know that blogging is hard work, but what should you do when your efforts don’t seem to pay off?

Should you cross your fingers and keep plugging away? Hope that your readership will snowball? Pray that business inquiries will soon flood your inbox?

You need a new blog strategy, not wishful thinking. 

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

Watch Author, Simone Salmon's Video Interview with Salil Jha of The Naked Soul Talk Show

I am so excited to share my very first video interview with the wonderful talented poet, artist and creative host of the Naked Soul Talk Show, Salil Jha. I had the best time speaking with Salil. Our interview was so natural and free flowing. Loved it!!


Please excuse the glare from my glasses can't see without them and didn't realize that would happenoh and the lighting - you live and learn right!

Watch Author, Simone Salmon's Video Interview with Salil Jha of The Naked Talk Show

I am so excited to share my very first video interview with the wonderful talented poet, artist and creative host of the Naked Truth Talk Show, Salil Jha. I had the best time speaking with Salil. Our interview was so natural and free flowing. Loved it!!


Please excuse the glare from my glasses can't see without them and didn't realize that would happenoh and the lighting - you live and learn right!

Ursula K. Le Guin - Interview Magazine Article

Ursula K. Le Guin's first novels—set on alien planets and published as trashy head-to-toe double paperbacks by Ace Books—were first unleashed almost half a century ago, in 1966. She was 36. Two years later she published A Wizard of Earthsea, the defining and enduring classic of the genre of wizards going to wizard school. The Left Hand of Darkness, the book that forced writers everywhere to examine how they wrote gender, was first published the very next year and became one of the most acclaimed books of the last century. 
She published a dozen books in that first decade, a pile of words built up largely during her thirties that, once released, changed the American conversation about fiction. She is the reigning queen of writing about "the nature of human nature," as Margaret Atwood once described it, in regards to Le Guin's "Ekumen" series. Le Guin is one of the rare authors to have twice taken the Hugo and the Nebula awards in the same year. She published three stories in the New Yorker in 1982 alone. 
READ ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE

Author Spotlight - A.B. Funkhauser

Today the spotlight is on the extremely talented and generous author, A.B. Funkhauser and her latest novel, Heuer

Book Description 
Unrepentant cooze hound lawyer Jürgen Heuer dies suddenly and unexpectedly in his litter-strewn home. Undiscovered, he rages against God, Nazis, deep fryers and analogous women who disappoint him.
At last found, he is delivered to Weibigand Brothers Funeral Home, a ramshackle establishment peopled with above average eccentrics, including boozy Enid, a former girl friend with serious denial issues. With her help and the help of a wise cracking spirit guide, Heuer will try to move on to the next plane. But before he can do this, he must endure an inept embalming, feral whispers, and Enid’s flawed recollections of their murky past. 
Is it really worth it?
“Heuer” as in “lawyer”: Heuer the Lawyer

Here is a short excerpt:
Two Weeks Ago
The house, like the man who lived in it, was remarkable: a 1950s clapboard-brick number with a metal garage door that needed serious painting. Likewise, the windows, which had been replaced once in the Seventies under some home improvement program, then never again. They were wooden and they were cracked, allowing wasps and other insects inside. 
This was of little consequence to him. 
The neighbors, whom Heuer prodigiously ignored, would stare at the place. Greek, Italian, and house proud, they found the man’s disdain for his own home objectionable. He could see it on their faces when he looked out at them through dirty windows. 
To hell with them. 
If the neighbors disapproved of the moss green roof with its tar shingles that habitually blew off, then let them replace it. Money didn’t fall from the sky and if it did, he wouldn’t spend it on improvements to please strangers. 
They were insects. 
And yet there were times when Jürgen Heuer was forced to compromise. Money, he learned, could solve just about anything. But not where the willful and the pernicious were concerned. These, once singled out, required special attention. 
Alfons Vermiglia, the Genovese neighbor next door, had taken great offense to his acacia tree, a towering twenty-five foot behemoth that had grown from a cutting given to him by a lodge brother. The acacia was esteemed in Masonic lore appearing often in ritual, rendering it so much more than just mere tree. In practical terms, it provided relief, offering shade on hot days to the little things beneath it. And it bloomed semi-annually, whimsically releasing a preponderance of white petals that carried on the wind mystical scent—the same found in sacred incense and parfums. 
What horseshit. 
It was a dirty son of a bitch of a tree that dropped its leaves continuously from spring to fall, shedding tiny branches from its diffident margins. These were covered in nasty little thorns that damaged vinyl pool liners and soft feet alike. They also did a pretty amazing job of clogging Alfons’ pool filter, turning his twenty-five hundred gallon toy pool green overnight. 
This chemistry compromised the neighbor’s pleasure and it heightened his passions, blinding Alfons to the true nature of his enemy. He crossed over onto Heuer’s property and drove copper nails into the root system. It was an old trick, Byzantine in its treachery; the copper would kill the tree slowly over time leading no one to suspect foul play. 
But Heuer was cagey and suspicious by nature, so when the tree displayed signs of failure, he knew where to look. 
The acacia recovered and Alfons said nothing. Heuer planted aralia—the “Devil’s Walking Stick”—along the fence line and this served as an even thornier reminder that he knew. And if there was any doubt at all, he went further by coating his neighbor’s corkscrew hazel with a generous dose of Wipe Out. 
Intrusive neighbors and their misplaced curiosities were, by turns, annoying and amusing and their interest, though unwanted, did not go unappreciated. The Greeks on the other side of him weren’t combative in the least and they offered gardening advice whenever they caught him out of doors. The man, Panos, talked politics and cars, and expressed interest in the vehicle that sat shrouded and silent on Heuer’s driveway. He spoke long and colorfully about the glory days of Detroit muscle cars and how it all got bungled and bargained away. 
“They sacrificed an industry to please a bunch of big mouths in Hollywood,” Panos would rant in complete disregard for history: Al Gore and Global Warming didn’t kill the GTO; the OPEC oil crisis did. But there was no point in telling him that. 
Panos was an armchair car guy and incurable conspiracy theorist. He also kept to his side of the fence, unlike his wife, Stavroula, who was driven by natural instinct. Not content to leave an unmarried man alone, she routinely crossed Heuer’s weedy lawn, banging on the door with offers of food and a good housecleaning. 
Heuer had no trouble accepting her cooking. But he declined her brush and broom. Was it kindness, or was she trying to see inside? He suspected the latter. 
No one was ever seen entering Heuer’s house and while this piqued public interest, he never gave in, not even to those who were kind to him. He liked Panos and Stavroula and he regretted poisoning their cat. 
But not enough to let them in to his home. 
Others on the street had less contact with him. Canvassers at election time would disturb him, in spite of the lawn sign warning the solicitous away. That this didn’t apply to neighbor kids brave enough to pedal cookies and magazine subscriptions in spite of the sign, was a testament, perhaps, to some residual soft spot in his heart that endured. 
Even so, he knew that people talked about him and, frankly, he had trouble accounting for their fascination. Short, curt, bespectacled, he courted an ethos that favored enforced detachment. When people got close enough to hear him speak, they detected a trace of an accent. Now faded after years of U.S. residency, his speech still bore the unmistakable patterns of someone undeniably foreign. Elaborate, overwrought and heavy on the adverbs, he spoke very much like his neighbors. Yet the distance between them was incalculable…
About the Author 

A.B. Funkhauser is a funeral director, classic car nut and wildlife enthusiast living in Ontario, Canada. Like most funeral directors, she is governed by a strong sense of altruism fueled by the belief that life chooses us and we not it.
“Were it not for the calling, I would have just as likely remained an office assistant shuffling files around, and would have been happy doing so.”
Life had another plan. After a long day at the funeral home in the waning months of winter 2010, she looked down the long hall joining the director’s office to the back door leading three steps up and out into the parking lot. At that moment a thought occurred: What if a slightly life-challenged mortician tripped over her man shoes and landed squarely on her posterior, only to learn that someone she once knew and cared about had died, and that she was next on the staff roster to care for his remains?
Like funeral directing, the writing called, and four years and several drafts later, Heuer Lost and Found was born.
What’s a Heuer? Beyond a word rhyming with “lawyer,” Heuer the lawyer is a man conflicted. Complex, layered, and very dead, he counts on the ministrations of the funeral director to set him free. A labor of love and a quintessential muse, Heuer has gone on to inspire four other full length works and over a dozen short stories.
“To my husband John and my children Adam and Melina, I owe thanks for the encouragement, the support, and the belief that what I was doing was as important as anything I’ve tackled before at work or in art.”
Funkhauser is currently working on a new manuscript begun in November during NaNoWriMo 2014.
You can find out loads more about A.B. here:

WEBSITE TWITTER FB AUTHOR PAGE SOLSTICE PUBLISHING  GOODREADS FAQs BOOK TRAILER INTERVIEW PART 1 INTERVIEW PART 2
Email: a.b.funkhauser@rogers.com
Grab your copy:  BUY LINK
PRAISE
“The macabre black comedy Heuer Lost And Found, written by A.B. Funkhauser, is definitely a different sort of book! You will enjoy this book with its mixture of horror and humour.”
—Diana Harrison, Author ALWAYS AND FOREVER 
“This beautifully written, quirky, sad, but also often humorous story of Heuer and Enid gives us a glimpse into the fascinating, closed world of the funeral director.”
—Yvonne Hess, Charter Member, The Brooklin 7 
“The book runs the gamut of emotions. One minute you want to cry for the characters, the next you are uncontrollably laughing out loud, and your husband is looking at you like you lost your mind, at least mine did.”
 http://teresanoel.blogspot.ca/2015/05/heuer-lost-and-found-unapologetic-lives
“The writing style is racy with no words wasted.”
—David K. Bryant, Author TREAD CAREFULLY ON THE SEA

“For a story centered around death, it is full of life.”
—Rocky Rochford, Author RISE OF ELOHIM CHRONICLES

“Like Breaking Bad’s Walter White, Heuer is not a likeable man, but I somehow found myself rooting for him. A strange, complicated character.”
—Kasey Balko, Pickering, Ontario

Raw, clever, organic, intriguing and morbid at the same … breathing life and laughter into a world of death.
—Josie Montano, Author VEILED SECRETS

25 Famous Women on Writing Their Own Stories

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

Author Spotlight - Raegyn Perry

Welcome Raegyn Perry today whose sweet smile and huge heart are both reflective of her newest work,  Lavender Fields

“All I can tell you is this. When love is right, it’s true.When it’s true, it’s forever.”
Torrential rain spikes. A scream pierces the dark night followed byshattered glass and a wash of blood.


The haunting dream came upon Greye yet again as it had in years past. It was a nightmare a child could never fully comprehend, and remained as unsettling as an adult. Always set in a faraway place and time; yet there was something more. Under its surface hinted at an unknown that should somehow be familiar. It was like an ending that wasn’t quite finished.
Author Bio

Raegyn (pronounced Reagan) Perry is thrilled to share her debut novel, Lavender Fields , with readers. This is the first book in the Eternal Journey Series. It asks the question:
' What if love found the right people at the wrong time?'
With the inspiration coming from a true family story, and having found the uninhibited time to write, a story was born.
When not writing, Raegyn is perfectly content curled up with a good book, TV binge watching, or on a fun travel adventure. Also, anyone who knows her knows she loves to dance (a lot!) wherever and whenever possible!
How would she describe Lavender Fields? 
It’s a paranormal romance that centers around reincarnation; so it’s basically two romances! The story is funny, sexy, dark, and raw while being twisted, mysterious, and still somehow romantic.
Raegyn believes readers can connect with her lovers, Connor and Greye, on a few levels. It has the elements of the classic love story: boy meets & gets girl, but it also tackles some real and uncomfortable issues, while introducing characters that anyone can relate to, root for, or despise altogether! Then, throw some odd clues with a helping of paranormal in, and you have a unique take on a timeless aspect of romance. The author hopes so anyway!
After Raegyn completes the Eternal Journey Series, she hopes to begin work on another series, which readers can actually catch a glimpse of first within the pages of Lavender Fields . 

The beautiful Pacific Northwest state of Washington has been home since 2001. She has one grown son whom she adores. Raegyn is currently working on the second book in the series, Cypress Groves (working title), and will be investigating options to maybe get her full length stage play produced in the area.

You can check out Raegyn at:

       FB AUTHOR PAGE     TWITTER    WEBSITE    BLOG
Affiliations: PNWA (Pacific NW Writers Association)Publisher: Solstice Publishing/Summer Solstice
Email: raegynperrywrites@gmail.com