Rod Raglin's Blog, page 22
July 2, 2020
BirdWhisperer
July 1, 2020
FREE E-BOOK of The Triumvirate ’til midnight July 1, 2020
Wow!
The free launch of The Triumvirate – Love for Power. Love of Power. The Power of Love, topped out on the Amazon free ebook category at 12,340 on June 29.
That’s with a homemade cover, self-edited, and your help.
Now if that converts into reviews I may even make some money. The free ebook is still available until midnight July 1, 2020.
Oh yeah, Happy Canada Day, eh?
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2799793/free-e-book-of-the-triumvirate-til-midnight-july-1-2020
June 28, 2020
FREE E-BOOK of The Triumvirate – Love for Power. Love of Power. The Power of Love.
FREE E-BOOK
My New Novel
The Triumvirate – Love for Power. Love of Power. The Power of Love.
Only ’til July 1, 2020, at
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU
How long do you wait?
For me, it used to be six months, but time’s running out.
I don’t care how many thousands of manuscripts they receive, they’ve had 100 days. You’d think that would be long enough to at least take a look and tell me it’s crap? I’m talking about traditional publishers. You knew that, right?
I started writing The Triumvirate – Love for Power. Love of Power. The Power of Love, in response to climate change. I had this idea there were solutions. Sure, we’d need to make tough choices and sacrifices, but in the end, a better world would emerge. I’d write that story.
I was wrong.
The Triumvirate turned out to be dystopian fiction rather than the opposite. I saw the future, or at least I researched it and, as Leonard Cohen said, “it is murder”.
Redemption in The Triumvirate doesn’t come by way of technology, or by adopting a vegan lifestyle, it comes in the form of the indomitable human spirit. Believe me, I didn’t see this coming, but it’s a story about love.
Considering the protagonist is asexual, it’s not your usual love story. It’s brutal, it’s frightening, and in the end, tragic, but never the less, it’s about love.
The Triumvirate has a lot of contemporary themes, even a pandemic scene written and researched two years prior to COVID-19. It’s life imitating art – in this case, life imitating my new novel. I’m thinking timing is important.
So, I self-publish on Amazon. Again. That makes eleven novels, two plays, and a collection of short stories.
Will it sell?
You can read it free until July 1, 2020, and let me know, or better still, write an honest review.
Download your free e-book at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2787003/free-e-book-of-the-triumvirate-love-for-power-love-of-power-the-power-of-love
June 21, 2020
June 18, 2020
We’re all captives of our personal and collective history.
Review: 
It’s 1968, the year following the Summer of Love. “There’s a whole generation with a new explanation.” Anna Rossi is one of them, a twenty-three-year-old woman from a middle-class family who describes her life as “a set of random chromosomes adrift in a meaningless life. Useless, weak, a creature of clashing impulses.”
Anna is also conflicted. She’s Jewish, though loath to reveal or accept it, the anti-Semitic incidences in her life leaving her feeling “isolated, insecure, and vulnerable.”
After college, her parents pay for a summer in Europe. She heads for the continent with a friend, but when her friend bails on her in Greece, Anna has a decision to make: head home or continue on by herself.
A young man suggests they hitchhike together and her decision is made. A few days later, when they’re offered a ride by Max, a charming, attractive German with obviously more means than her backpacking partner, she decides he would make a more suitable traveling companion. Besides, Max is heading to Yugoslavia, and the Balkans have always intrigued Anna.
Though affable and unthreatening, Max has an agenda other than playing guide to an American tourist. He reveals he’s a smuggler and that his contraband is the Mercedes he’s driving. Anna will make a good foil when dealing with suspicious border officials if she’s willing. Without hesitation, or consideration of the consequences, Anna agrees. Traveling with Max through Yugoslavia, she’s introduced to Spiro and a cabal of associates and soon finds herself seduced by the rich culture and passionate people of this chaotic region of Europe.
As she tries to reconcile her own identity and understand that of Spiro’s, her lover, she becomes embroiled in the intrigue and violence spawned by ethnicity, politics, personal jealousy, and centuries of tortured history.
Despite the author Michele Levy, digging deep into the dark machinations of the land and its people, I was not able to understand why Anna was so interested, especially considering the anti-Semitic undertones and her anxiety about being Jewish. Characters in the novel are well-drawn through dialogue and action. In the case of the protagonist, it isn’t flattering. The reader comes to know a young woman who lacks initiative and is passive, impressionable, irresponsible, and incredibly naïve for her age. Living in the countryside with Spiro, Anna readily takes on the subservient role of his peasant wife doing domestic chores and gardening, but I got the impression once she tired of it, which she no doubt would, she’d simply buy a ticket and fly back to her privileged life in America. Unfortunately, events overtake her before boredom does.
Anna’s Dance: A Balkan Odyssey is an ambitious undertaking. It’s part tragic love story, part history lesson, and part travelogue with well-written descriptive passages evoking a simple people living in rustic villages amidst brooding mountains. Rich with drama and passion, it’s a poignant story of love and misadventure, the clash of culture and attitudes, and how, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, we’re all captives of our personal and collective history.
– Review for City Book Review
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2732950/we-re-all-captives-of-our-personal-and-collective-history
June 16, 2020
FREE E-BOOKS – BACKLIST BLOW-OUT – HELD-OVER
FREE -EBOOKS
Backlist Blowout HELD-OVER
Selected titles FREE ’til June 18, 2020.
Download your free copy now at
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU
Watch the Video
https://animoto.com/play/noj5gui1xDMDf3emRw56ZQ
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2720387/free-e-books-backlist-blow-out-held-over
June 14, 2020
FREE E-BOOKS – BACKLIST BLOW-OUT IS BACK!
Free E-books
Backlist Blowout is Back
Selected titles until June 16.
Download your free copy now at
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU
Watch the Video
https://animoto.com/play/noj5gui1xDMDf3emRw56ZQ
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2705021/free-e-books-backlist-blow-out-is-back
June 1, 2020
Tightly plotted murder mystery provides insights in Tokyo and it’s criminal element
Review:
When violent intruders interrupt a film shoot in a Tokyo pornography studio, they brutally murder three people but overlook a young actress hiding in the cavernous building.
Sukanya is an illegal Thai immigrant who was smuggled into Japan and lured into the business with the promise of big money and transit to the United States. She makes her escape with cash from the dead director’s wallet and a leather bag containing a computer and iPad. Penniless and friendless, she wanders aimlessly through the streets of the megalopolis; though she’s lost, she’s not undetected. Unknown to her, the digital devices she’s taken contain sensitive information as well as trackers that reveal her location.
Kenta, a shady businessman and loan shark wants those devices back. The information they hold could compromise him and his relationship with Yoshitaka Kirino, the ruthless mastermind of the criminal enterprise he’s involved in. Kenta assigns three street punks the task of recovering the priceless data as well as the only person who witnessed the crime.
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu was trained as an accountant in America. Now he’s a Tokyo detective specializing in deciphering the finances of criminal activities by examining bank records, statements, spreadsheets, and cryptocurrency. Money trails extend “like spokes from every murder,” and Shimizu has the expertise to grasp their implications.
As Sukanya tries to elude the men sent by Kenta, she’s assisted by Chiho, a young Japanese woman who empathizes with her predicament. Together they manage to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. But for how long? It’s a race to see if Hiroshi and his colleagues can unravel the motive and identify the murderer(s) before they catch up with Sukanya and the evidence in her possession.
While being a tightly plotted, well-structured murder mystery, Tokyo Traffic, provides insights into criminal activity surrounding pornography, the sex trade, human trafficking, and to some extent how organized crime uses cryptocurrencies to transfer and conceal profits from illegal activities.
Equally engaging is author Michael Pronko’s knowledge of contemporary Japanese culture including food, fashion, entertainment, and the environs of the world’s largest city.
Pronko’s characters are fully developed, his dialogue is authentic, and his writing is clear and concise. An ambitious novel, Tokyo Traffic at times feels bogged down with the excessive Tokyo travelogue, a confusion of characters, and plot minutiae; however, realistic detective work, action, romance, and even humor make for an overall entertaining and enlightening story.
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2628490/tightly-plotted-murder-mystery-provides-insights-in-tokyo-and-it-s-criminal-element
May 16, 2020
FREE E-BOOK – Cold-Blooded – The Mattie Saunders Series Book 2
To help you cope with COVID-19
THIS WEEK’S FREE E-BOOK
Cold-Blooded
(Adjective): without emotion or pity, deliberately cruel or callous.
Book 2 in the Mattie Saunders Series
Cold-Blooded, Book 2 in The Mattie Saunders Series has Mattie navigating
personal relationships, the challenges of education and career all the while
addressing the issues of the exploitation of reptiles as exotic pets
and the devastating opioid crisis sweeping North America.
Romance, drama, action, and exotic pets combine for an entertaining thriller.
Download your free copy
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU
til midnight May 18, 2020
TO WATCH THE PROMO VIDEO CUT AND PASTE
https://animoto.com/play/f47RaoUk1jTUET0w3Epyrw
Original post:
rodraglin.booklikes.com/post/2499948/free-e-book-cold-blooded-the-mattie-saunders-series-book-2
