Rachelle Ayala's Blog, page 73

Finished #NaNoWriMo? Re-Vision with The Plot Whisperer #BookReview

The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master by Martha Alderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recommend this book to anyone who has written a first draft and is now wondering how to tackle revisions. The Plot Whisperer encourages the author to look at the story as a holistic union of character transformation, dramatic action and thematic significance. Instead of merely creating index cards and tracking characters and settings, the Plot Whisperer method suggests relating the entire story to that of a writer's life or that of the Universal story typical of all human condition. Birth, crossing thresholds, struggles, crisis, high point, and resolution/death.

Perhaps what sets the Plot Whisperer apart from other writing or plotting craft book is the emphasis on thematic significance. The theme ties together the plot and character changes. There is a goal to every action, and the underlying theme is sometimes not clarified or revealed until the third or fourth draft.

Using examples from popular stories such as "To Kill a Mockingbird", "East of Eden", and "The Lord of Flies", the Plot Whisperer demonstrates graphically the rise and fall of energy through the three act structure. It is also a motivational handbook, one that relates the crisis and struggles a writer faces with the conflict and setbacks of the characters. Just as story characters are held back by their flaws, so are writers held back by their negative attitudes. Just as story characters must cast off the traits and beliefs that hold them back, writers must do the same.

I reread this book every time I finish a first draft and meditate on my story for a month before embarking on the rewrite. I don't necessary do all of the mechanical steps, like Scene Tracker and Plot Planner, but I use the concepts to further refine and unify my characters' goals with the themes that run through the story.

Special Sale: The Plot WhispererEbook is 99cClick to Download!
Books by Martha Alderson:



View all my reviews on Goodreads

#Book #Promoter James Fraser: Founder of BookGrow

Today, we have a special guest, James Fraser, owner of multiple book promotion websites.

Rachelle: Jamie, er James, you seem to be very knowledgeable about online marketing. You're the owner of FreeBookFeed.com as well as the new Author Marketing Site BookGrow.com. What are some of the reasons you started each site?

My background is actually in online marketing.  I worked for a number of years in digital marketing agencies in London, specialising particularly in viral video marketing when it was all the rage.  For the last couple of years I have been working solo as an affiliate marketer and I love the freedom this career and lifestyle gives - not to mention the virtually limitless earning potential it offers!

My big earner for the last two years has been in the audiobook industry and I have steadily worked my way up to being one of Audible.com's top affiliates.  I have done this primarily through my AudioLiterate.com and BookShepherd.org sites as well as from driving a huge amount of traffic via thousands of YouTube videos.  It's through this proximity to audiobooks that I grew to have a deeper understanding of the digital book market as a whole.

I began to see the voracious appetite people had for Kindle books, and, in particular, the free Kindle promos that authors run on the KDP program.  It was then that I decided to have a go at building a site to promote free Kindle offers.  There were already big hitters in the field when I started, namely Pixel of Ink and eReaderIQ, but I figured that there's always room for more competition online.  After setting up FreeBookFeed.com - a pretty simple site -  I began by manually posting all the books I could find on a daily basis.  This soon got too much for me, so I came up with a sneaky way of getting around this problem.  I coded a script which works 24/7 'scraping' the web for free Kindle books.  It then formats and posts all of these books (and related blurb) to FreeBookFeed as it finds them.  This was all going great until I fell foul of Google's dreaded algorithms.  They're not fans of automatically generated content; particularly if that content is duplicate (which it inevitably was with all the mirrored book summaries etc. that I was posting).  The net result of this, is that my site will never generate any decent organic traffic from Google alone.  So, I turned to Facebook as my main source of traffic and this has been a great success ever since.  By syndicating the content of FreeBookFeed and auto-posting it into a Facebook page I was able to offer fans a constant flow of free books to their news feeds.  My page spread virally and I managed to get it up to 11k fans in the space of a couple of months.  Unfortunately, this page got noticed by Amazon, and while they were delighted with the traffic I was driving to their Kindle promos, they didn't like the fact that I had 'Kindle' (their trademark) in the page's title and URL.  Sadly, I had no choice but to pull down the page and migrate as many of my fans as possible over to the new page www.facebook.com/FreeBookFeed.  This page is now running on far fewer fans than the previus one and therefore has a reduced level of traffic, but it's growing and I'm still getting fairly decent affiliate commissions off the back of it via Amazon's Associates program - around $50 per day at the moment.

Now, as a natural progression to all this Kindle marketing, and from having tried my hand at publishing on Kindle myself, I have created BookGrow with the aim of it being a one-stop-shop for self-published authors and their marketing needs.  I must add, that the site is very much a work in progress right now.  There are still a tonne of features to add and the forum / exchanges haven't got off the ground yet, so I will be putting all my effort into building it up in the coming weeks after I streamline my other internet marketing projects.

Rachelle: What are some of the features of BookGrow and what new ones are on the horizon?

As it stands, BookGrow is a free membership site which features a Free Book Submission Tool, designed to make it easier for Kindle authors to share their free promo days and to create buzz around their Kindle titles.  Rather than working from a mishmash of spreadsheets and lists (as many authors do when finding sites to list their books on), the Free Book Submission Tool allows authors to quickly open up preloaded submission pages on the most popular free book sites - all within the one page on BookGrow.  This tool is pretty useful as it is, but eventually I want to work towards a one-form solution, whereby my members can fill in a single form on my site and it will cleverly feed out to all the submission sites and post their titles automatically.  This would be a great feature and I'm sure it would be very popular with Kindle authors?

The site also includes a private member forum, the most useful features of which will include the Amazon exchanges.  Basically, they will work on a 'karma' system, where one member will 'Like', 'Tag' and review other members' work.  They can then post their own work in the hope that other members will follow suit and engage with their content.  This can give authors the social 'proof' required to stand out from the crowd and help boost their Amazon rankings a little. These systems can sound quite unethical to some authors, but I try to emphasise that they should be used responsibly.  My experience is that a lot of people are working with similar methods.  Ultimately, if you don't like it and feel you can afford not to give your books a helpful boost, then don't bother.  In the end of the day, if your books are no good they will get perfectly genuine crap reviews and ratings and will be consigned to the bowels of Amazons ranks.  If your books are good, then you're just giving them a nudge in the right direction by using such methods.  It's no worse really than the questionable methods mainstream publishers use to get cover endorsements etc. for their print titles.  As to whether or not Amazon really hates these methods and will do something about it is yet to be seen.  But in the meantime, I know a lot of authors will do everything they can to give themselves a competitive edge, and that's what I am aiming to help them achieve with BookGrow.  If things change (as they inevitably do in the world of internet marketing), we will all adapt and continue to explore innovative ways to help self-published authors promote their books.

In addition to these Amazon exchanges, there will also be areas on the forum where authors can request blog post exchanges, social media exchanges as well as a host of other cool and useful ways for authors to promote each other.

I will also be including some thorough guides on all things related to Kindle publishing, from formatting right through to every current method of digital book marketing.

First and foremost, BookGrow will be a community site.  I believe the strongest form of marketing in the book world will always be word-of-mouth and other forms of peer-to-peer endorsement, so by building an active and very targeted community, I hope to create a truly powerful tool in the book marketer's arsenal.

Rachelle: You're also a published author. How do you find the time to pursue both activities? Website host as well as author?

Yes, I am also running a number of my own titles on the KDP platform.  The most recent success is The Marine Diet, which at time of writing is sitting around #15k on the bestsellers chart and in the top 100 for both of it's categories.  Nothing amazing, but  it's making me around  $40 per day at the moment, so I'm quite happy with this.  Sales and rankings are growing by the week, so we'll see how far it gets!  I can't speak for the fiction market, as I don't have the skills to write a novel.  However, playing to my interests, I have a number of new titles in the pipeline focused on the the How To, Dieting, Make Money and Self Help genres.

It is sometimes difficult to find the time to balance writing with all my other online marketing activities, but I find it a good break from the monotony of some of the tasks I have to do on a daily basis.  I also love the fact that Kindle offers a truly passive income stream for self-published authors.  And it is so scalable too!  If you have just a few reasonably performing titles you can be looking at a the equivalent of a pretty decent salary in the 'real world' of work.

Rachelle: The self-publishing landscape changes by the minute. Do you have any advice for new authors on how they can successfully balance writing and marketing time? What is the most important marketing tool they should use at the beginning?

It's difficult to answer that objectively as I am personally approaching writing from a different angle to most.  I imagine most writers do it for the love of the art and that the marketing becomes an exciting new skill set to learn as they begin to explore the world of self-publishing?  The writing is probably the easy part for many?

I think that one of the things that many writers fall disastrously short on is in their cover art.  Regardless of how good your writing is, a shoddy looking cover will ruin your chances of success.  If you can't learn to use Photoshop and can't create good cover art, then it's really worth your while paying a professional to get it right.  The cliche of not judging a book by it's cover genuinely doesn't apply here.  The Kindle consumer is a fickle beast and the first impressions your cover art gives will make all the difference to sales.  This goes hand in hand with formatting.  Bad formatting alone is going to give you bad reviews and a tonne of refunds right off the bat.  If you write well and you have these two elements in check, your already well on your way to climbing the Amazon ranks!

Apart from getting these basics right, it's worth dedicating as much time as you can to learning all of the tricks of the digital book marketing trade.  So, make sure you check out BookGrow and keep your eyes peeled for all the new features being added in the coming weeks!


Thanks James, for being on Rachelle's Window. AND.... TA DUM!!! The Real James Fraser!
Dreaming about Claire!Don't tell me Brianna came back as a cat!


Hi, James here,

I'm a nine year internet marketing veteran and I've been a full time affiliate marketer for the past couple of years.

I'm 30 years old, and live between London, UK and the South West of France. I'm originally from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

I began my career working in marketing agencies, specialising in SEO, viral marketing and then all-round social media marketing. Latterly, I had my own small agency under the Centrality Media name, but affiliate marketing took over and has made me more money than I ever had before. I now do affiliate marketing full time with no need for clients, nobody to answer to and no deadlines - just pure freedom and a potentially limitless salary :)

It's taken countless hours and late nights of hard work to forge a truly independent and autopilot income. It has been - and continues to be - the most rewarding thing I've ever done.

Thanks again for the opportunity to be featured on your site, Rachelle!  I hope I haven't waffled away too much?  I just wanted to get all the facts in there!

Rachelle: Well, thank you for the WEALTH of information.

Buy James' book, The Marine Diet. Available at Amazon.



And Ladies, for a comprehensive search of the other Jamie Fraser pictures, click here.

#GuestPost by Natasha Brown, author of the Shapeshifter Chronicles on #fantasy #worldbuilding

Writers have the world at their fingertips. Any world.
I have the power to create anything I want in any place or time. It’s quite a pleasure, really. By tapping my fingers across the keyboard I can give life to characters that react to each other and their environment. Similar to a science experiment, you don’t always know what will happen until you’re in moment, feeling it with them. Sometimes your own story can surprise you.
When building a world in a fantasy series there are many things to consider. If magic or paranormal powers are involved, where did they come from? What are the rules? In my series, The Shapeshifter Chronicles, I had to sit down and think it over.
A good rule of thumb – nothing should be all powerful. Everything must have a chink in the armor, no matter how strong or impressive, like one of my favorite childhood stories, The Hobbit. Smaug the dragon was a powerful creature that harassed the people of Middle Earth for generations. It was the wise and watchful hobbit, Bilbo Baggins who noticed a weakness in the beast’s scaly armor, which is what led to the dragon’s downfall.
When working with fantasy or sci-fi, limitations are important. Weakness and strength are two essential elements to balance. In my novels I had to make plenty of tricky choices. When my character shapeshifted would he retain his clothing or not? Would there be a price for using his powers? Were his powers unlimited? Was he born with the ability or was it a learned skill?
I have always loved reading fantasy, but one of my pet peeves is when the rules in a world just don’t make sense. Okay, I know that sounds silly, because c’mon we’re talking about things that are make-believe. They aren’t really real, right? Sure. But that’s not so in a fiction story. If you don’t believe in the world you’re reading about, there’s a problem. You should believe and completely forget about your shopping list, or your dinner sitting on the table.  The good old fashioned reasoning of, ‘because I said so’ doesn’t always work with world building. I am not a physicist and I did not get a Masters in college. But I don’t need one to create a new world. All you need is patience and time to think it through (then think it through again). Look at it from all sides and try to poke as many holes into your reasoning as possible because everyone else will.
There will always be people who won’t buy it. There are actually readers out there that never liked The Hobbit, or A Wrinkle in Time and countless other classic fantasy novels. But everyone’s a critic. As a writer, the most important thing to remember is – first you must believe it if you’re going to try to convince anyone else.
So, squeeze your eyes tight and repeat after me, I believe.

Natasha Brownwww.theshapeshifterchronicles.com
Fledgling (Book 1)
Prodigy (Book 2)
Buy her books at Amazon:

#BookChat The Tangled Web and why it's like Goldeneye #mystery

When top Caribbean reporter Lauren Anderson gets on the trail of a major story involving government ties to drug cartels, she steps into a world where nothing is as it seems.
From the author: While I was writing The Tangled Web, I thought it would be cool to spend a few weeks at Goldeneye, once Ian Fleming’s Jamaican vacation home where he wrote many of the James Bond novels. Never mind that Goldeneye is now a very pricey luxury resort, just being there in that old house of Fleming’s would have been such inspiration. Why? Because The Tangled Web is very much in the same vein as Mr. Fleming’s thrillers – meaning at times I was being a bit flippant about drug trafficking, just as Ian Fleming was a tongue in cheek about the workings of British intelligence. There were guys like James Bond, though maybe not as capable of tumbling into the sack with a beautiful woman after escaping death by the skin of their teeth. And there are women like my notorious cocaine queen Maria Echevarría, though one of them was just assassinated and the other is in jail in Miami.
You may be surprised to hear this, but writing a novel was the last thing in the world I planned on doing. The Tangled Web was a fluke - just the way my 24-year career as an advertising copywriter happened by fluke. I was actually a fashion designer at the time I took up writing. Since then, there’s hardly a thing I haven’t written, or written about – Godiver chocolates, catalogs for department stores, embalming fluids for funeral homes (my first ad), speeches, TV and radio commercials, billboards, magazine articles, poetry. I won’t bore you with the whole list, not that I can remember it all anyway.
Like every author, I’m thrilled when readers say they’ve enjoyed my book. “Couldn’t put it down” is music to my ears. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear that, it still makes me ecstatic. I had a great time writing it, so it’s nice to know it’s enjoyed by someone. Though I confess I don’t have any profound messages buried in those pages. Profound messages don’t go with the territory of a suspense novel. But I have given readers something very unique. Whereas I’m not the only author to have used Jamaica as the setting for a novel, being originally from Jamaica I’m able to provide a rare insider’s view of the island. It also helps to have been to all the countries in The Tangled Web – that is all except Colombia where my character Maria runs a mean show.
Readers React:“Ms. Lane’s book reminds me of Helen McInnes’s wonderful espionage thrillers…I was hooked from the start by the exotic setting(s), international verbage/dialects, and the spy-novel type thrills that run rampant in The Tangled Web.” Aaron Lazar, mystery author
“Ahhh, the beautiful Caribbean...it is enticingly beautiful and welcoming. J. P. Lane spends some time sharing that beauty in her narrative, but I noticed right away that she writes with that edgy tension that makes me realize that I'm going to be fast pulled into the action and adventure she's providing. And I wasn't disappointed!” Glenda Bixler, reviewer
“I highly recommend The Tangled Web by JP Lane for anyone who likes their romance spiced up with political intrigue that will keep them on the edge of their seats.” Dellani Oaks, author
“Some fall prey to the wiles of women while others fall prey to the brilliance of this author who weaves a dangerous plot…” Fran Lewis, author
Find J.P. Lane at her Website: www.jp-lane.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/jpLANEauthorGoodr... http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4158170.J_P_Lane
Buy her book at Amazon.

#BookReview - Fighting the Effects of Gravity by James Robinson, Jr. #humor #satire

Fighting the Effects of Gravity: A Bittersweet Journey Into Middle Life by James Robinson, Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I invite anyone on the threshold of middle-age to take a peek at this hilarious yet serious book. James Robinson woke up one day and realized his once buff body had sagged and taken a different shape. Aches, pains and body parts he didn't know he had cried for attention. And boy does he make fun of that Middle Aged Face, when trying to read small print without seeming as if you can't decipher it.

His observations of middle aged dancers is also spot on and a riot. And then there is the brain mush memory issues. While laughing about the indignities of medical examinations and the been-there-done-that seen-it-all head shake, Mr. Robinson looks ahead to old-age with dread. He expounds upon death and dying and then attacks the life-plan many people have bought into. The final analysis. It's never too late to start living. Middle age is the perfect time of life to set yourself free and begin self-actualizing.

I enjoyed these essays for both the humor and the truth.

View all my reviews

Books by James Robinson, Jr.:

#AuthorInterview Rebecca Berto releases her first book PRECISE #LiteraryFiction

1. Your first novella is out. In reading it, I couldn't help but wonder how you came up with the mother daughter dynamics.

Well, PRECISE is actually the second book in the Pulling Me Under series. I got to know Rochelle, who is the main character, Katie’s mom years ago. She didn’t start out as crazy. But as I got to know the story, I knew that Katie had become such a damaged person because of how she sees the world. From there I just continued backstepping: how would Katie learn her habits, how did she become to live in such a state that she felt she wasn’t worthy of any attention or allowed to express herself? Questions like that.

It always came back to Katie’s childhood. Parents have the biggest influence on how a person grows up to cope with difficulties in life and with a dad that is a “silent” figure in the family, Rochelle as the deranged mother was a fantastic character to write. With the more scenes I wrote, the crazier her obsession with power became.

2. Why did you decide to write literary fiction? What intrigues you? Is it exploring relationships or delving into a warped mind?

Yes to both of those last questions!

When I started writing I had no idea what the genre was. I hopped from calling it a thriller to general fiction to women’s fiction to romance. I kept going nowhere. But once I started chatting about my manuscript with another writing friend, I discovered this series wasn’t genre fiction but a book that explored damaged people and damaged relationships and how it can get better, if at all. That’s when I realised that was literary fiction.

And that was also the moment I laughed at myself for being a “literary” writer. Nowadays, I know that stigma is what people stick on literary fiction when, like me, they don’t get what the point is. Literary isn’t fancy writing, but it delves deeper into a certain aspect of humanity than genre fiction does.

3. You're an editorial assistant. What is it like and what do you do?

I’m blessed that my work is more “editorial” than “assistant”. In fact, in my role I lead updates of non-fiction book products, briefing the authors on what content to update, editing the text, managing the project of the update, doing all the admin work. It’s gratifying being able to know a product is out there in the best shape because of my efforts to make the author’s work shine.

4. When you write your first draft, how do you turn off your inner editor?

You really gimme the hard questions, Clare. Though, I’m going to go against the “said” word about writing first drafts. As an editor, aspects like run on sentences, comma placement, formatting, grammar, sporadic adjective usage, etc are a constant buzz in my mind.

The way I make myself write first drafts is like this:

Write the “cleanest” draft you can without wasting time analysing words or phrases and write as fast as possible.

So I balance, really. My brain is working like mad, trying to think forward if certain parts will be edited out later anyway, mixed with the other half of my brain telling me to just write what comes to mind.

5. What's next? How do you see your writing career progressing?

Book two, PULLING ME UNDER, was written a while ago, before PRECISE, so the next year is going to be big for me in a couple senses. One, I plan to publish two more books, making my first year publishing with three books out. Two, my second two books are going to be novels. Now that my audience have tasted my fiction for a steal of a price and a quick read, I want to give them *more*.

This book, PRECISE, is literary fiction; book two in the Pulling Me Under series is a literary suspense; and my third book to be published will be a romance, still deciding whether contemporary or literary.

I want to be a diverse author, but still have a logline. My fiction is about characters and breaking them apart and seeing how they manage to fix up the huge disasters that occur to them. I love writing about relationships whether they be platonic or romantic. That’s what will never change in my writing career. I want to push myself further than I think I can go and publish stories about characters who are torn apart and broken, and how they come back together.


Rebecca Berto writes stories that straddle the line between Literary and Tear Your Heart Out. She gets a thrill when her readers are emotional when reading her stories, and gets even more of a kick when they tell her so. She’s strangely imaginative, spends too much time on her computer, and is certifiably crazy when she works on her fiction.
Rebecca Berto lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner and their doggy.

Rebecca Dahlke, Publisher of All Mystery e-newsletter

Rebecca Dahlke publishes a thriving Mystery Newsletter. She's here with us today to talk about how she started it.

Rebecca:
In 2010, I started an e-newsletter for mystery and suspense authors. It ran, free of charge to the authors until December 2011.  I decided to let it go because: 1) authors just weren't with me on how effective this kind of advertising could be, and 2) I had my own books to write.

So I put the website in mothballs, but kept the Facebook site, the yahoo group (which is where authors meet to talk about promotion, and readers come to see what authors are talking about.) and Good Reads group for Indie and small press promotion, and a Twitter account.

Since then I have put four mysteries up on Amazon/Kindle, and because I understood that my books are a product, I also began a six month quest for the best, and most effective, form of advertising.

The results were exciting!  I discovered that with a combination of inexpensive paid and free promotion, I could sell more books. I thought the results of this were interesting enough to share. I put together a 7 page handout and spoke on this subject with my local Sisters in Crime chapter in Tucson. The handout was necessary because I had a lot of powerful information to share, but also I cautioned my grateful listeners with the following: The only thing I could guarantee about this information was that some of it would change.

That was in June 2012, and sure enough, things did change. One of the sites I listed as smart and creative bit the dust, and another site, Digital Books Today, has taken a giant leap after only 18 months in the business.  Eighteen months? Gee, All Mystery e-newsletter started before DBT… so that meant… but wait! There's more!

In a 2012  e-mail from the founder of Digital Books Today, Anthony Wessel  says, and I quote: "Traffic on our Sites: March: 8,000, June 16,000" and in their "The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List: November 2011: 600+ and June 2012- 10,000+ with 38,000 click outs to books on Amazon."

Obviously authors had finally seen the light and were using paid book marketing as part of a successful campaign to sell books. I know, because I was using them too, and the results have been gratifying—except I had one complaint: As a mystery writer, all of the promotion sites had mystery squished in between vampire and memoir.

It didn't take me but a nano-second to see that All Mystery e-newsletter's time had finally come. I ticked off the obstacles for resurrecting this e-newsletter against the fact that it might take some time to gain momentum. Then realized I already had all of my requirements for a good promotion site: I still had my list of readers from last year's e-newsletter, and I had a Facebook page, Yahoo and Good Reads groups, and Twitter with a small army of Re-Tweet pals.

September 1st I sent out the first weekly e-newsletter  accompanied with additional author posts at Facebook and Twitter that would continue throughout the week.

Sound interesting? Author information page: http://allmysteryenewsletter.com/author-information/
Last but not least, for those of you who would like a copy of my copy of that 7 page hand-out for both free and paid promotions for authors, send me an e-mail with "promotion handout" in the subject line and I'll send you a PDF copy. E-mail: rp@rpdahlke.com
 RP Dahlke, author
Mystery/romance/humor on Kindle Amazon
Publisher of All Mystery e-newsletterhttp://allmysteryenewsletter.comhttp://pinterest.com/allmysteryenewshttp://www.facebook.com/allmysteryenewsletterhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/allmysteryenewsletter/?yguid=185161871
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/42847.All_Mystery_e_newsletterTwitter: @allmysteryenews

Find her Books on her Amazon Author Page

#BookChat The Search by Susan Leigh Noble #paranormal

Synopsis/Book DescriptionFor over a thousand years, telepathic cats known as STACs have faithfully searched for those with power over the elements looking for the one foretold to save the Land. None have questioned their duty to fulfill this ancient task.
But when Tosh’s latest charge is murdered because of his Elemental powers, Tosh considers abandoning The Search. Will a glimpse of the future destruction be enough to change his mind?    
From the AuthorWhile taking a break between finishing Book 2 ( Quietus ) and starting Book 3 (Destiny) in my The Elemental trilogy, I thought it would be fun to explore a little more of Tosh’s life before he meets Lina (the main character from my trilogy). I have had at least one cat in my life at all times except during the college years so it was easy for me to set a short story with a cat as the main character. I think readers will sometimes forget that Tosh is a cat as they read The Search.
Reader’s Reaction
“Ms. Noble has a wonderful way with words that allows the reader to suspend belief. Never for a moment did I think ‘We have a talking cat. Cats can’t talk.’”  - J. Keller Ford, author
“Halfway through the first page my attention was fully drawn to Tosh, and I just had to keep reading to find out what his mission involved.” - Kristy Centeno, a booksbycenteno.com review
“Cat lovers will recognize a lot of their own cats in The Search,” - Amazon Reviewer
Behind the ScenesOften while I am writing I have my cat, Nikki, either trying to sit in my lap or lie in front to the monitor which of course makes it hard to write, but she is quite insistent on being there with me. Actually, she is the only one (we have three cats) that likes to sit with me while I write.
Readers can find out more about Susan at her blog – http://susanleighnoble.wordpress.com/ or her author page on the Independent Author’s Network – http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/susan-leigh-noble.html

The Search is FREE on Amazon, 11/29 to 12/1 - download it now!
Books by Susan Leigh Noble:




Don't have a KINDLE? Download a FREE Kindle APP and enjoy your ebooks on PC, Mac, iPad, Android and smartphones.

#BookChat The Last Letter by Kathleen Shoop

Synopsis:She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t found the letter... 
Katherine Arthur's dying mother arrives on her doorstep, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget. When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband Frank it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank. But, it was a society of uncertainty—a domain of natural disasters, temptation, hatred, even death. 


Ten-year-old Katherine had loved her mother fiercely, put her trust in her completely, but when there was no other choice, and Jeanie resorted to extreme measures on the prairie to save her family, she tore Katherine’s world apart. Now, seventeen years later, and far from the homestead, Katherine has found the truth – she has discovered the last letter. After years of anger, can Katherine find it in her heart to understand why her mother made the decisions that changed them all? Can she forgive and finally begin to heal before it’s too late?
For every daughter who thinks she knows her mother’s story…
WHY I WROTE THIS:This book came to be through family letters that were written over 120 years ago. My mother’s father gave her this stack of letters my great-great grandmother wrote to her fiancé during the year of their engagement. They’re beautiful, heart-felt sentiments about all the hopeful ways the future would be theirs. But…of course things did not go as planned as the first blush of love is often veiled, with the truth about who the lovers are, being hidden until the wedding is over.  It was seeing the gorgeous, optimistic letters in contrast to another set of letters written decades later that I saw a compelling story develop. It’s what happened in between the tell-tale family letters that I created.  My great-great grandmother’s letters, the early and the late ones revealed a strong, stubborn, though probably, a little difficult to live with woman. She was very educated and intelligent and cobbled together a life when she had no materials to work with. It was this character that was compelling to me.
Also the history of the pioneering Americans, the land they lived on and worked—every day was a challenge, an obstacle to survival. The Children’s Blizzard of 1888 worked into my plot perfectly as the environment in which they lived was extraordinary. All of these elements, mother/daughter relationships, love, the land—helped me construct a story I thought was moving.
For me, relationships--the nature of them are partly revealed in times of crisis and partly revealed in reconciliation. Many readers have talked about how they could relate to Jeanie and Katherine's relationship and they were warmed by its strength. Others found it hard to understand the fracture that marked it for so many years after seeing the love they shared in younger years. But, everyone seems to really appreciate the way James and Jeanie were so close.  Many were disheartened by Frank and Jeanie's relationship--but I think that's a testament to it being realistic. For me, this story is Katherine's--hers to learn from and to finally become capable of growing past her childhood wounds.  I think that's hard for all of us sometimes!
Readers' Reactions:I don't know when I have read a book where the heroine has stolen my heart.  I just love Jeanie Arthur.  She is strong and determined, and her journey is heartfelt. Kathleen Shoop is a marvelous talent with a fresh new twist on historical fiction. Selina MacPherson, award-winning author of Rough and Tender
Shoop's characters breathe. I’m blown away by the naturalness and authenticity of the dialogue and setting. The author is a gifted writer with a bang-on sense of atmosphere, time, place, and social class. Bev Katz Rosenbaum, author of I Was a Teenage Popsicle and Beyond Cool.

About the Author:
Kathleen Shoop, PhD is an author and educator who has taught, researched and worked with teachers for twenty years. She writes historical and women’s fiction. Her first novel, The Last Letter (Kindle bestseller), won a Gold Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and her second novel, After the Fog, won Silver the next year. Kathleen has also contributed stories to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Cat’s Life. Her background in education came in handy in writing her latest novel—a quirky, post-college, coming of age story called Love and Other Subjects. It launches in January, 2013. Kathleen lives with her husband and two children in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. Kshoop.com 

Read more about Kathleen at her Amazon Author Page

Books by Kathleen Shoop:




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#BookReview A Lick And A Promise by Jo Leigh #romance

A Lick And A Promise by Jo Leigh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A quick read and very steamy. The plot and character development was a little cliched. We have Margot, an eccentric food designer who likes to change people, and Daniel, the ultraconservative architect who designs boxes for accountants. I liked Margot because she was very opinionated and ample with her advice, style, and hips. Daniel was played a very good game of allowing her to open him to new experiences. The cast of neighbors and friends each had their own quirks and added to the fun and informal atmosphere.

Predictably, the two of them get together and have hot sex everywhere. At about 75% the problems crop up with their jobs. There is the obligatory let's blame ourselves and break up, and then the friends pushing them together and another hot session followed by the "L" word.

Descriptions and scenery was good, as was the backdrop of the food stylist world. I enjoyed that. But as with all of these serial romances that have limited word count, don't expect the character emotional development to be ground breaking. They seemed to have gone through the crisis, climax and recovery a bit too easily: a cute post-coital question and answer session and everyone's happy again.

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Books by Jo Leigh:

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