David Conway's Blog, page 2

FirstChapters is Revamped With a New Online Book Store

We have just begun to promote books in our new online eBook store, at http://www.Discovery-FirstChapters.net.

For today, only, you can download the first four volumes of Gary Taaffe’s much acclaimed Urban Hunters series, completely free of charge.

There are lots more bargains to come, we will have a special offer or promotion every day.

Tomorrow you’ll be able to download Part I of Aoife Brennan’s The Cougar Diaries for £0.99 less than the normal price. This is a great book, you can find my review at http://cruel-sister.com/2013/08/12/564/

Have a look, and let me know what you think. We welcome comments and suggestions.

Monday sees the launch of our new online book store

We thought you’d like to know that on 18th November we are introducing some major new features and improvements at www.FirstChapters.net.

Monday sees the launch of our new online book store. You’ll be able to buy and immediately download many of the books that we feature on First Chapters. If you’d like to have a sneak preview now, you can see the test website at https://firstchapters.mygostore.co.uk/. Don’t forget that this special test URL will disappear on Monday, when it will revert to www.FirstChapters.net.

Every day from 20th November there will be special offers, and there will be some free books too. We’ll keep you posted as new books become available.

We’ll also be revamping our book discovery site with new graphics and many new features.

More details soon.

The Cougar Diaries by Aoife Brennan

When The Cougar Diaries became the most popular book on www.FirstChapters.net, and stayed there for a record-breaking five days, I set aside a weekend to read the full text.

Although it appears to be erotica, it is in fact a beautifully written slice of life. The Cougar Diaries chronicles the adventures of a Dublin housewife who, five years after being deserted by her husband, decides to experiment with casual sex.

Her trysts, which are fewer than you might think; are described with a level of honesty and humour that renders them almost innocent. We quickly take the side of Aoife on her journey to discover the pleasures which were missing from her marriage. Along the way we learn about the difficulties of raising two teenage boys on your own, while holding down a demanding full-time job and narrowly avoiding redundancy. We also learn about the value of friendship: without the support of her brother and a few close friends, Aoife would soon have been on anti-depressants.

I looked up the name Aoife (it’s pronounced ee + fa and the English equivalent is Eva or Ava). It means beautiful, radiant or joyful. Known as the greatest woman warrior in the world, Aoife was the mother of Cuchulainn’s (read the legend) only son, Connlach. Aoife Dearg (“Red Aoife”) was a daughter of a king of Connacht who had her marriage arranged by St. Patrick himself.

This chimes with the protagonist and narrator, Aoife Brennan. We know she’s beautiful because many men are attracted to her (although she never tells us that herself), and there is something brave and almost warrior-like about the campaign she wages to rediscover sex in her early forties.

This is an intelligent, carefully crafted book which tells us how the human spirit can overcome rejection and despair. Only the Mother Grundys among us will object to the graphic, but honest descriptions of sex. This novel is entertaining, poetic and honest. I look forward to part two.

Why men shouldn’t write advice columns…

Doing a good job for bees

We seem to be doing a good job for bees. Are their numbers recovering? The lavender in our garden is covered in them

How Do You Do, Mrs. Wiley? a new novel by Missi Magalis has gone live on www.FirstChapters.net

http://www.amazon.com/How-You-Mrs-Wiley-ebook/dp/B00E2V834I

Through the years a lot of people have whispered, poor Grace, but I have a different outlook, one worth leaving behind. When I’m gone my ashes will drowse peacefully in my urn, and my spirit will rest easy because I wrote the story of my life the way I want it remembered—the story that shows I was never poor Grace. Sure, I’ve seen heartache, I’ve felt heartbreak, but I’ve been blessed more often than I’ve had to stitch up grieving wounds. I’ve laughed more than a billion times, heehawed so long my sides are still aching. I’ve loved so hard my insides feel like strawberry jelly. Why strawberry? Because it’s red like when blood and air greet one another. And I’ve had adventure. God, have I held adventure in my hands and squeezed all the life out of it, or is it the other way around? Perhaps I’ve held life in my hands and squeezed the adventure out of it. Whichever way is right, if there is a right way, I’ve lived a life for which a queen would gladly trade her kingdom. And, yes, the queen would even want to live my life on the day I killed Louis Windle. 

Grace Wiley is strong and courageous; she’s funny and loveable. She takes the reader through the details of her parent’s whirlwind relationship that ends in tragedy and causes her to have to move in with her grandmother. She continues with whimsical accounts of growing up under the curious guidance of Gwen Wiley. Grace’s two best friends, Sadie Cooper and Ollie Clark, are also unable to escape the firm but loving and often quirky advice Gwen Wiley offers whether they want it or not.

Pretence, a contemporary novel by Gillian Jackson has gone live on www.FirstChapters.net

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gillian-Jackson/e/B0092SATG6

For Rae Chapman the months before her wedding should be the happiest time of her life but the same troubling nightmare that disturbed her sleep in childhood has returned once more. Could something from the past be trying to re-surface? Are they only dreams, or long lost memories? Rae begins a journey to find out more about her past and discovers a family secret which throws her world into turmoil.

Lydia appears to have led a life of ease and privilege but now has a decision to make, one she has put off for nearly forty years and one which will shock her family and friends. As time is running out she turns to Maggie Sayer for help but is it already too late?

Linda thought she had escaped an oppressed life when her husband left, but has she simply exchanged one difficult situation for another and how can she support and protect her only child but still do the right thing?

As always, therapeutic counsellor Maggie Sayer seeks to give her best to these clients but is shocked by an unexpected turn of events in her friend’s life and finds that her support is needed much closer to home. 

Gillian lives in the North East of England where her early, extremely busy career was as the owner and manager of a fifty place Day Nursery. These days life is more sedate with her time devoted to family and writing.

‘Pretence’ released in July 2013 is the third in the ‘Maggie Sayer’ trilogy. When she can bear to be separated from her lap top Gillian also works voluntarily for Victim Support, visiting and supporting victims of crime.  Her training in therapeutic counselling inspires her writing, with all three novels, ‘The Counsellor’ ‘Maggie’s World’ and ‘Pretence’ following protagonist Maggie Sayer, a therapeutic counsellor and several of her clients, allowing readers the unique opportunity of being a ‘fly on the wall’ in counselling sessions. There are some gritty contemporary issues in the novels but all are dealt with in a sensitive and non offensive manner. Gillian is a great believer in happy endings!

A Wretched Man, by R W Holmen, has gone live on www.FirstChapters.net

 

http://www.amazon.com/Wretched-Man-Novel-Paul-Apostle/dp/1935098217

Saint Paul was a sinner. He never met Jesus, but he experienced the famous conversion on the road to Damascus long after the Messiah had been crucified. Paul believed his Damascus experience had healed his guilty soul, but Jesus’ own brother doubted Paul’s tale.

James’ rejection spurred Paul to hike the Roman highways of the Mediterranean world to proclaim the truth of Damascus, over and over again, if not for James’ approval, then for his own. Had he not been healed at Damascus? And then there was the stinging thorn in his flesh that kept the guilty wound on his soul festering.

Journey to the first century world of the Roman empire. Here you will encounter emperors and slaves, Jews and Greeks, and men and women lifted from the pages of the New Testament as they stumble forward following the death of Jesus, unwitting midwives to the birth of Christianity. Follow Paul and James as they contend for the soul of the newborn Jesus movement; their struggle is the story of Christian origins.

RW “Obie” Holmen has deep midwestern roots in Scandinavian Lutheranism. Raised in Upsala, Minnesota, in the heart of Lake Wobegon country, he participated in many activities in his small K-12 school.

In the fall of ’66, he matriculated at Dartmouth College. In ’69-70 he served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam, receiving a pair of bronze stars for valor in combat. After discharge, he returned to Dartmouth and obtained his BA degree in ’72 with distinction as a history major, summa cum laude for his senior year.

Then, it was back to Minnesota and law school. Holmen received a JD degree from the University of Minnesota in ’75, and entered the private practice of law in St. Cloud, Minnesota as a civil trial attorney for the next twenty four years, retiring in ’99 to pursue a business opportunity in Caribbean tourism. In the early 90′s, he spent a couple of years, part-time, as a graduate student with the Benedictines of St John’s School of Theology in nearby Collegeville, Minnesota. It was then that Holmen first considered a novel about Paul, and the idea festered until he finally put pen to paper a few years ago, resulting in the publication of “A Wretched Man” in 2010. More recently, his Vietnam experiences served as grist for the series of short stories that appear in “Prowl.”

Obie has been married to Lynn for over forty years, and they have three adult children and one grandchild. Lynn and Obie are lifelong Lutherans with involvement on the progressive side of ELCA political skirmishes.

Cathedral of Lies by John Pye has gone live on www.FirstChapters.net

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cathedral-of-Lies-ebook/dp/B00BZ8IN7S

Exeter Crown Court – 1986 – a multimillion pound drugs trial. The blast from a powerful handgun brings a halt to proceedings. Three days and two hundred miles separate the finding of a mutilated corpse in a Staffordshire beauty spot – there seems no connection. Interesting police work and pathology establish a shocking and unexpected history to the corpse and then another body is discovered. Detective inspector Doug Taylor knows that plenty of long days lie ahead. Sinister characters from different walks of life emerge as tales of rape, murder, corruption and horrific torture develop. A vigilante chase crosses the North Sea. Peril and intrigue loiter at every corner as the struggle to determine the criminal mastermind’s objectives intensifies with terrifying events in two different countries. Matters become all the more curious when a bizarre secret held by a cathedral and a church appear pivotal to the core of the affair – it is a secret surrounded by lies, a secret which stretches back decades and one which the main players will go to any lengths to obtain. The story will reveal an amazing, true and unsolved crime. Once you have read the book you will be able to go to the book’s website http://www.cathedraloflies.com and unlock secret pages for a guided tour of some of the truths within the story. You will also be able to look at the intricacies of the actual monumental felony… perhaps you could solve the crime yourself!

Curve Day by L R Currell has gone live on www.firstchapters.net

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Curve-Day-ebook/dp/B00D0HWKQM

Would you survive a day where killing was legal?

Do you know someone that for whatever reason you wouldn’t be particularly bothered if they were no longer with us? 

Welcome to Curve Day.

In the near future, desperate times call for desperate measures.

The Earth’s population is now so out of control that the Government has enforced one day of the year where murder acts as a form of population control. 

Sure, it wasn’t always that easy to get people to accept this idea and in truth 

there is still an element of resistance to it. As time ticks on though, with

each passing Curve Day the American people gradually accept and adapt

to the notion of citizen on citizen killing. 

Our story takes us to the eve of the eleventh Curve Day following an eclectic bunch of individuals as they each prepare and execute the fight of their lives. 

Characters include a German ex paratrooper, a French foreign exchange student, a homeless academic who suffered a midlife crisis, a woman who is a victim of spousal abuse, a female police officer and a marine who has lost faith in his Government. 

Who will survive the annual slaughter?

L.R. Currell is an Australian author who currently has around fifty works in progress. His writing spreads over a variety of genres including but not limited to crime fiction, historical fiction, dystopia, horror, paranormal, action, post apocalyptic, science fiction and fantasy.

Currell served in the Australian Army for five years deploying twice during that time. He enjoys street art, good food, reading, film, krav maga, kali and of course his main passion, writing. He is an avid traveler having spent time in more than 60 countries. It is L.R’s dream to one day see at least one of his books on the screen.

https://www.facebook.com/LRCurrell