Zoe Brooks's Blog, page 8

Fool's Paradise goes free for five days

My award-winning poetry book - Fool's Paradise is free 12th - 16th June on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Paradise-ebook/dp/B0087EB5KA/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fools-Paradise-ebook/dp/B0087EB5KA/

Please download a copy. Reviews are welcome.

Description: 
Three travellers meet a fool and his dog on the road to a great city. This long poem for multiple voices follows the divine fool and his companions on a journey to hell itself.

Winner of the best poetry book in the 2013 EPIC (The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) Ebook awards.

Mother of Wolves Free 29th - 31st May

Mother of Wolves is free to download from Amazon on http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082BT6G8 & http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0082BT6G8


Description

When the King of the Roads is betrayed by his uncle to his murderers, his wife Lupa finds herself alone in a man's world of tribal politics and war. Everyone underestimates Lupa, if they consider her at all. They are making a mistake. Lupa has made a promise to her husband to avenge his death and Lupa is a woman of her word. Her quest takes her away from the tents of her travelling people to the town of the Others, where her husband's eyeless head watches as she takes her first revenge.

Now on the run, through the marshes and rich farmland of the great river, Lupa hunts and is hunted by her husband's murderers. On the estuary islands her sons and their protector are just one step ahead of the killers. But revenge is not simple and Lupa must face a choice, one which will have great consequences for her people. For this is more than a revenge story, it is the tale of the rise of a woman leader and the price she pays for that rise. It is the story of a travelling people, persecuted by settlers and their armies, and the woman who leads them at the time of their greatest peril.

New Cover For Mother of Wolves

I have been playing with new covers for Mother of Wolves. I love the original, which is totally in keeping with the book. But it looks very different from the covers of my other books and so might not encourage readers of those books to buy Mother of Wolves. One of the advantages of self-publishing with Amazon is that one can change covers and test responses. So here is my first trial cover. I made it using Amazon's new Beta cover design. Do tell me what you think.

The image is of a Rajasthani gypsy woman, which I found on 123rf.com

Update

I am currently in a Czech hospital after an emergency operation, which is why I have been so quiet/silent over the last four weeks. But I'm on the mend now, so hopefully I will be online more soon. 

Perhaps this enforced rest will allow me to get some reading and writing done. 

Why Become a Book Blogger

Last Autumn I took part in another Celebrating Bloggers Blog Hop. In that post I talked about how important book bloggers are as a way of finding good books, especially those by independent authors. At the time I was only just starting out as a book blogger with my magic realism blog, so I did not truly appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating a good book blog nor the rewards that book blogging offers to writers. 
Let us start with the hard work. When I first set up my book blog, I set myself the target of reading and reviewing one magic realism book a week. I thought this was quite a difficult target to hit at the time, but I now realize that it is nothing unusual. In fact there are many book bloggers who manage a book a day. I could never manage that without giving my life to reading. I have many other things to do with my time, not the least being writing my own books. I find reading and reviewing one book a week to be surprisingly doable. I am capable of reading more than that and on slack weeks I sometimes read extra books, which I bank against weeks when my job or my writing take precedence. My reviews tend to be quite long and so I like to read each book and then think about it for a day or two before I write my review. I believe that consistency of posting is important. As a result my readership is steadily growing and can be confident that there will be a new review up every Wednesday.  
Why is my book blog important to me as a writer? I know some writers would say that I should be concentrating on this blog -my writer's blog - and to building my platform. Others might say that I should focus on writing my books, rather than reading other people's.  To the first criticism I would say that, whilst I know people enjoy this blog, the magic realism blog is also an important part of my platform building. I write magic realism and so people who visit my book blog are my target audience. In addition my blog has provided me with all sorts of useful contacts, such as publishers and writers of magic realism and magic realist websites, which I can approach with more authority than I would have simply as an indie writer. 
There is a simple answer to the second criticism: in order to improve as a writer one needs to read more as well as write. I have learned so much about both my craft and about magic realism through my book blog, that I would never have discovered any other way. I am lucky that magic realism is less of a genre and more of an approach to writing. This means that the books I have read come from many genres - women's fiction, horror, short stories, speculative fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, young adult - so many that I just cannot get bored. Nevertheless it helps me to limit my reviewing to magic realism books, because otherwise I would be overwhelmed with the choice. As it is, I have enough books on my to-be-read list to last me three years.
I hope the above gives you some ideas about why you might start a book blog. Here is another: after a while you will start getting books for free. If your criteria for reviewing books are too wide and unspecific, you could find yourself overwhelmed with writers asking you to review their books. Even though my criteria are limited, I do get approached by writers whose books are not what I would define as magic realism, because they lack either magic or realism. The clue is in the name, guys! Another source of books is Netgalley, which is a website where publishers offer advance review copies to bloggers and which has produced some gems for my blog. Because of my blog I have met with some fascinating writers and had interesting conversations with them.
And finally a confession: reading was a pleasure that I had allowed to slip under the pressure of work and family. As a child I worked my way through every book in the children's section of the local library. But after a while it became something to do when I had leisure time, which was seldom, usually only when I was on holiday. I knew if I was to write well, I had to read again. I tried and succeeded up to a point. But the discipline of having a deadline for the blog means that the habit of reading is now firmly established once more. 
This all sounds very self-centred. One of the important reasons for my book blog is that I am able to give back to other writers what many wonderful book bloggers have give n to me: a fair review and publicity for their books. To the readers of my blog I give intelligent (I hope) and honest reviews of books that they might be inspired to read.

This blog is part of the Celebrating Bloggers Blog Hop. To visit other blogs involved in the blog hop, please see links below

Friday Poem - On Wounded Heads

English: Celyn y môr (Eryngium maritimum) Sea Holly (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Coming home between dewfall,when time became conspicuousand my forehead flowed in riverssavagely staining my shirt,I met a priest walking in the fields.
He carried sea-holly in his hand,I could see its twisted purplein a crown of thorns.He told me "Kings only rulethat bear their crowns on wounded heads."Said he was making a hat for St Peter's Day.
I offered him brionyknowing no other flower.I offered him elderthough the scent reeled me.I offered him dockto calm his wounds.And three times he denied me. 
Over the fields, on the tower head, the metal cockerel clangedand shattered the sunlight.

Fascinating Gypsy Video

I found these video clips via the wonderful Romany Heritage Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Romany-Heritage/239756389434356

I have heard and read different accounts of the origins and history of the gypsies. But these clips are fascinating. 

Love of Shadows Free 26th - 28th March

My novel: Love of Shadows is free 26th - 28th March on Amazon.  You can get it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009PCG602  and http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009PCG602


What would you risk to pursue your calling? Judith, must decide whether to follow her mother and become a healer and so risk the gallows. This magic realism novel is a study in grief, love and defiance.
Judith's world is shattered when her employer and mentor dies. She expects to inherit the perfume-making business, but is accused by the doctor of making the drugs that killed her mistress. Worse when the will is read, she feels betrayed by her mistress and the person closest to her, Sarah, her Shadow.

Winner - EPIC Ebook awards

I am delighted to say that my book Fool's Paradise has won the best Poetry Book category in the EPIC (The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) ebook awards. 

Blurb:
Three travellers meet a fool and his dog on the road to a great city. This long poem for multiple voices follows the divine fool and his companions on a journey to hell itself.

The Smell of Disease

I have been busy writing the final book in my Healer's Shadow trilogy. The heroine, Judith, is a traditional healer as well as a perfume maker. She therefore has a very refined sense of smell, which she uses to diagnose disease. There is some evidence that cats and dogs can detect illness in their owners and modern-day researchers are looking at developing an "electronic nose", but in the past healers, like Judith, would have used their own sense of smell.

When I was researching the book in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, I found a fascinating old book, which listed the smells of different illnesses. In traditional medicines healers and doctors would smell the urine, breath and skin of the patient. The book listed some of the smells of different diseases.

With the second book in the trilogy Love of Shadows going free 26th - 28th March on Amazon (click on the link), I thought we would have some fun with a puzzle. See if you can guess which smell belongs to which illness. Click on the key symbol to get the answers.