Gary N. Heilbronn's Blog, page 2

75 years ago: Who Remembers “La Retirada”?

As I sit here today overlooking the dazzling waters of the western Mediterranean Sea at Banyuls-sur-Mer – or Banyuls de la Marenda as it it called in Catalan – on the edge of the moutainous border of France and Spain, it’s near impossible to imagine the mixture of suffering, hadship and hope that thousands and thousands of refugees from the Spanish Civil War were feeling as they passed through here just 75 years ago.

In an era of 24 hour news and the internet, refugees in their thousands, lost...

A gripping sci-fi thriller romance and a great read

“A Lifetime to Wait” is the fast-paced and exciting second novel in “The Darkest Series” by Jackie Mae. That’s a name you’re sure to remember and the author’s very original fusion of a sci-fi thriller and romance is sure to be a hit with these big reader- markets . You’ll find it on Amazon

“The Ones” is the first book in the series and introduces a violent and seemingly sociopathic breed of extraterrestrial outcasts living almost unnoticeably amongst us on earth; and they make a chilling re-ap...

Edgy, fast-moving crime mystery at its best

I just finished reading Dorothy Johnston’s fourth novel in her “Mystery Quartet” The Fourth Season and I almost couldn’t put it down. And it’s accumulating 5 star reviews on Amazon. I haven’t read the three earlier novels in the series, The Trojan Dog, The White Tower and Eden but I can see why they were so well-received and they are now right at the top of my ‘to-read’ list. They are all published by Wakefield Press in Australia. Crime mysteries have been one of my favourites for I don’t kn...

The World of Spies and Traffickers: A review of John Reinhard Dizon’s “WOLF MAN” and “TIARA”

I have just finished reading two gripping crime thrillers by John Reinhard Dizon, WOLFMAN and TIARA. Having read the two of them in quick succession, I really feel that I have begun to come to grips with the ‘war-spy-crime-thriller’ genre and the character of an author whose background as a musician, pro-wrestler and writer must be a “front” for a past career as a spy, soldier of fortune or undercover police operative – though we’ll never know this for sure. Everything h...

Want to Give E_books as a Christmas Present?

With Christmas almost upon us, I started to think about how I can give an e_book as a present (more specifically one of my own eg BEGINNINGS: Where A Life Begins). Of course it does help to know whether the intended recipient of your book has a Kindle (which reads .mobi formatted book files) … or … an iPad,Kobo, Nook or Sony e_Reader (which all usually use .ePub formatted book files)

Now of course you can go to Amazon and buy a Gift Certificate for any Amazon product including for e_books. Or...

Revising and Editing: something to avoid

I’ve done many months ofrevising and editing – and they are not exactly the same – of my latest historical novel BEGINNINGS: Where A Life Begins! This is perhaps crazy but I thought I’d just make what seems to me to be one important point… Revising and editing can create NEW errors and typo’s! This I think I did … and that was a mistake! Sometimes I think that half … or certainly a substantial amount … of the time spent on revising and editing has been to correct additional little errors that...

An Update on Self-Publishing: the Untold Story

Very late one night, just a couple of days ago, I spat out a little post entitled “Self Publishing: the Untold Story“, on the various tiny, but frustrating issues that can arise when uploading our little masterpieces to the big distributor/retailer actors in the field like Amazon, IBooks and Smashwords. I didn’t even mention Barnes & Noble who I can’t deal directly with as I’m not a US resident with a US Bank account even though I’ve jumped through the hoops of getting a US tax identity and n...

Self Publishing: the Untold Story

The last few weeks have been hectic. Days have been spent on ” silly stuff”. I’ve been thousand of miles from home and still working on my books. I published the 6 instalments of BEGINNINGS in its serialized version. They were uploaded to Amazon and all that went pretty easily (see below) until I wanted to do some slight updating to the text of one of them … and that proved problematic.I still haven’t sorted out what went wrong. Perhaps its not Amazon’s fault but something to do with the crea...

Serialized Version of “BEGINNINGS” now available – First Instalment FREE HERE

The serialized version of BEGINNINGS: Where A Life Begins …. Tales of Survival and Revenge…. is now available on AMAZON and on LeLivroBeta in 6 (six) instalments. EACH INSTALMENT IS A STAND-ALONE SHORT NOVEL.

Click here toGET THE FIRST INSTALMENT FREE !!!!! from LelivroBeta. So only if you like it do you move on to the next instalments!!!

BEGINNINGS : Where A Life Begins …………………..An epic action-packed novel set around the escape of a talented but troubled young...