Blog Archives
Book Trailer Blitz – Healing Depression
About the Book
Title: Healing Depression
Author: C. Daley
Healing Depression is your go-to guide for dealing with a negative mindset and depression. Utilizing strategies designed to help readers shift their mindset and enjoy the benefits of mental and emotional wellbeing, this handbook arms readers with the knowledge they need to take charge of their own happiness and build a happier, healthier future.
By providing an in-depth and honest look at depression and the science behind it, along with an exploration of the common myths and misconceptions concerning these topics, readers will discover how to improve their lives: by setting obtainable goals, learning time management, and by preventing relapse using several tried and tested methods.
Healing Depression is a must read for anyone searching for a way to improve their mental health.
Buy the Book on Amazon
Author
Author C. Daley has battled with depression for many years. Through her battle with depression, she’s discovered a wealth of strategies for overcoming a negative mindset, maintaining emotional wellbeing, and learning to enjoy life. Now, she hopes to share her story with readers and to help other sufferers of depression reclaim control of their lives and build a happier future.
Website: CDPUBLISHING.NET
Release Blitz – The Reality, Mythology and Fantasies of Unicorns
About the Book
Title: The Reality, Mythology and Fantasies of Unicorns
Author: W.B.J. Williams
Genre: Historical
The Hunt for a Unicorn.
The belief in unicorns as magical creatures is one that is rooted deeply in human history. They are featured in myths, legends, and folk tales from multiple cultures across the globe. In this volume, W.B.J. Williams, the author of the historical unicorn-themed fantasy “The Garden at the Roof of the World”, takes us on a journey through time to the dawn of civilization, for a fascinating take on the unicorn and its origins. Step into the worlds of magic, science, mythology, and the arts on your very own hunt for a unicorn.
Author Bio
W. B. J. Williams holds advanced degrees in anthropology and archeology. He is an avid historian, mystic, poet, and author who manages an information security program at a prominent New England start-up. He is noted for his bad puns, and willingness to argue from any perspective. He is endured by his beloved wife and two daughters, and lives in Sharon Massachusetts. When he is not at home or at his computer, he can often be found haunting the various used bookstores of Boston.
Links
Giveaway
Release Blitz: Seventeen Butterflies
About the Book
Title: Seventeen Butterflies
Author: Anna Katmore
Genre: Contemporary Teen Romance
The embarrassment of being the only unkissed girl in high school is something Sandy Cardington refuses to accept. The first kiss project is her foolproof plan to finally get rid of the status at her 17th birthday party, while her parents are out of town.
With several kissable boys on her guest list, this should be a walk in the park. But she didn’t count on her older brother returning from college and throwing a wrench into her plans. To make matters even more complicated, he has a friend in tow, and the cute hockey player stirs unexpected butterflies in her stomach every time their paths cross.
While Sandy moves heaven and earth to make her party and project come true, it looks as if Thane Griffyn has his own plans to teach her the real meaning of a first kiss…
Buy on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
Author Bio
The nitty-gritty:
I’ve been a storyteller all my life, building bridges into different worlds. Already in kindergarten, I’ve seen the most fantastical things and wanted to share them with everyone. My teacher called me a liar back then. Today, I call it the first real flash of my spiritual gift and the cornerstone of my writing career.
When I got older, I’ve had many visions of a perfect career, while writing has always been more of a hobby and kind of a therapy for me when the longing for more magic in this world once again caught up with me in a crushing way. When my first book was finished, I couldn’t even imagine sharing one of my stories with others, ever. In fact, I only got used to the idea while I wrote my second book and learned in a very miraculous way where the many stories in this world really come from.
It’s funny how, at that point, everyone told me I can’t possibly make a living with writing. They even warned me not to quit my job. But after my debut novella PLAY WITH ME came out and sales skyrocketed within the first week, I knew I could do anything I wanted if only I never stopped dreaming.
That’s also part of what I teach my students in writing and spiritual workshops today. Always dream big! If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.
Some personal stuff:
“I’m writing stories because I can’t breathe without.”
Disney is my attitude to life, and if I could I’d save the world from itself. My Patronus is a wolf, my wand the broken twig of an apple tree, 13 ¾ inches with a unicorn hair core. I can’t deny that on some days, I prefer my book characters over real people, but there’s not a single day going by where I wouldn’t try to find magic in reality. And when I’m alone, I love to listen to the many stories of the wind in a mystic mid-summer night.
So you see, I’m lucky enough to live in an enchanting world of my own. It’s peaceful there and full of magical things, fairies and wonders. You’re welcome to follow me there – if you’re ready to open up your mind and leave everything you learned about reality behind. But beware, if you dare to step through this door, you may never want to leave again…
Author Links
Website:
Facebook:
German: www.facebook.com/annakatmore
English (brand new) www.facebook.com/annakatmorebooks
VBT – Patches
About the Book
Title: Patches
Author: Valicity Elaine
Genre: YA Coming of Age
Michael Bull Jr. is best friends with the most popular guy in school, his father is a famous politician, and he’s just started his last year in high school. He is the perfect student with the perfect life … except for his face.When you’ve got a disease that changes the color of your skin, turns your hair grey, and threatens to blind you, high school can be tough. It also doesn’t help when your crush decides to blackmail you and expose your secret. But hey, what can you do except try to survive?
Author Bio
Valicity Elaine is the owner/creator of The Rebel Christian Publishing. She is an avid reader and loves to write just as much! She grew up in upstate New York in a beautiful Christian family and loves using her writing and illustrations to express her wonderful faith. When she isn’t writing, she is spending time with her family or helping out her church. Random fact; Valicity LOVES pasta, haha!
Links
vbt – Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Criticism
About the Book
Title: Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Criticism
Author: Tom Durwood
Genre: Supplemental Textbook, Literary Criticism
An award-winning teacher lays out the basic rules of literary criticism in this accessible guide.
Foreword by Todd Whitaker
Tom Durwood’s ebook on Kid Lit provides teachers and students with comprehensive information they can really use–definitions and clearly delineated explanations of the tropes of Kid Lit, scholarly essays and interviews that explore these ideas further, and classroom activities and exercises that allow students to relate what they’ve learned to works they’re familiar with and their own lives. Practical for teachers and accessible to a wide-range of students, the book also encourages readers to embark on further study through extensive reading and film lists included in the chapters. This book is an impressive and invaluable resource for any classroom exploration of Kid Lit.
— Sarah LaBarge, English Instructor, LaSalle College
***
Tom Durwood expertly breaks down and explains literary theory in an easy-to-understand way. This book makes sense of reading critically and guides students to producing their own explanations of literature.
— Christine E. Carlson, English Instructor, Cabrini University
***
Tom has a gift for making complex ideas understandable to his cadets. His lesson plans are amazing! He can turn a standard freshman composition class into a forum for collaborative learning and global thinking.
— Susan Ray, Ph.d, Arts & Humanities, Delaware County Community College
***
I enjoyed your book on Kid Lit and it fills a gap – I can think of several great intros to children’s literature (notably by Maria Nikolajeva and Roberta Seelinger Trites) but they are not exactly conversational.
I’d love to be in your class and the lesson plans look very fun.
— Lynley Stace, Writer and Illustrator (The Artifacts, Midnight Feast)
Author Bios
TOM DURWOOD is a teacher, writer and editor with an interest in history. Tom most recently taught English Composition and Empire and Literature at Valley Forge Military College, where he won the Teacher of the Year Award five times. Tom has taught Public Speaking and Basic Communications as guest lecturer for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group at the Dam’s Neck Annex of the Naval War College.
Tom’s ebook Empire and Literature matches global works of film and fiction to specific quadrants of empire, finding surprising parallels. Literature, film, art and architecture are viewed against the rise and fall of empire. In a foreword to Empire and Literature, postcolonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty of the University of Chicago calls it “imaginative and innovative.” Prof. Chakrabarty writes that “Durwood has given us a thought-provoking introduction to the humanities.” His subsequent book “Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Criticism” has been well-reviewed. “My favorite nonfiction book of the year,” writes The Literary Apothecary (Goodreads).
Early reader response to Tom’s historical fiction adventures has been promising. “A true pleasure … the richness of the layers of Tom’s novel is compelling,” writes Fatima Sharrafedine in her foreword to “The Illustrated Boatman’s Daughter.” The Midwest Book Review calls that same adventure “uniformly gripping and educational … pairing action and adventure with social issues.” Adds Prairie Review, “A deeply intriguing, ambitious historical fiction series.”
Tom briefly ran his own children’s book imprint, Calico Books (Contemporary Books, Chicago). Tom’s newspaper column “Shelter” appeared in the North County Times for seven years. Tom earned a Masters in English Literature in San Diego, where he also served as Executive Director of San Diego Habitat for Humanity.
***
TODD WHITAKER is a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is a leading presenter in the field of education and has written more than 40 books, including the national bestseller, What Great Teachers Do Differently. He regularly presents at conferences such as the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), the Academy of Management Learning and Education, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)
Links
Book Tour – Lost on a Page
About the Book
Title: Lost on a Page
Author: David E. Sharp
Genre: Fantasy / Science Fiction
Some genres were never meant to cross.
Joe Slade is a detective with a hot lead and a warm gun. He no longer believes in happy-ever-afters, but his faith in plot twists is devout. Good thing.
He is about to discover the biggest twist of all.
Joe Slade is not real.
He is a character in a series of mystery novels. And when he discovers all his pain has been in the name of book sales, there will be hell to pay. Vowing revenge on his author, he will set off for the World Where the Books Are Written. The road will take him through genres foreign and treacherous: High Fantasy, Bodice-Ripping Romance, Intergalactic Sci-Fi, and others even more awful and terrifying.
But what if this new life is about more than just living? And will Joe still come out on top when all the rules have changed?
Get the book today from:
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Page-David-Sharp-ebook/dp/B0922VWJPQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lost+on+a+page+david+e+sharp&qid=1624491838&sr=8-1
Black Rose Writing
https://www.blackrosewriting.com/scifi/lostonapage?fbclid=IwAR2qS4PAlsK2DHZX9H6G0poWBj5IsRZPWcePx6tPBtys_4oIlmajSf5k1KA
Author Bio
David E. Sharp is a noisy librarian. He is fond of theatre and got his start in writing by producing original plays in his hometown. He has also published short stories in various anthologies. David is a member of the Northern Colorado Writers and frequently contributes to their blog. He lives in Greeley, Colorado with his wife and family.
Find the author on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18040967.David_E_Sharp?from_search=true&from_srp=true
Find the author on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/davidsharp.writer
Lost on a Page won the 2021 Maxy Award for the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Category
http://www.maxyawards.com/past-winners-2021
Lost on a Page recently received a score of 4.6 on IndieReader.
https://indiereader.com/book_review/lost-on-a-page/#review
Book Excerpt
Lost on a Page
David E. Sharp
Excerpt
She leads me down an aisle of books. The aisles are short. I sneer at a tacky paperback entitled The Marquis’s Mistress by Lyla Birdsong that sits crooked on the shelf. The marquis, as pictured on the cover, seems to have difficulty buttoning his shirt all the way, and a perpetual breeze blows through his curly dark hair. The strawberry haired mistress hangs off him in a still frame of passion, her breasts barely contained by her bodice. As we walk, the woman in indigo whispers something under her breath.
“All worlds, connected by words
All words, connecting to worlds,
From the dawning of time
Through the end of all days,
Bring us to the Nexus of Words.”
I snort at the ridiculousness of it. It doesn’t even rhyme. Call me old fashioned, but when I hear ominous, occult mantras, I at least expect them to rhyme. I am jarred from my thoughts when we pass a copy of The Marquis’s Mistress by Lyla Birdsong sitting crooked on the shelf. Does the world truly need two copies?
The air is stale and soupy. Guess these old buildings don’t have much ventilation. I feel a tingling in the fillings of my teeth. An electric hum fills the air. My head throbs too, which shouldn’t surprise me since I got ambushed in an alley some hours ago. But there’s something odd about it. Like each throb propels lingering echoes through my skull.
Now I consider we have been walking long enough that we should have come to the end of this short aisle twice over, but we haven’t even made it halfway yet. I look behind me. The front of the bookstore seems farther away than it should be. I look in front of me again. The row of shelves goes on for about fifteen feet. We are still walking at a normal pace. After several steps, the row of shelves continues to stretch out about fifteen feet in front of us. I look to my left. The marquis’s mistress can barely contain her unbridled passion.
I stop. The air is hard to breathe. My head is reeling. The floor keeps changing directions on me. “Just give me a minute, fellas. I seem to be having a nervous breakdown.”
Release Blitz – Lost on a Page
About the Book
Title: Lost on a Page
Author: David E. Sharp
Genre: Fantasy / Science Fiction
Some genres were never meant to cross.
Joe Slade is a detective with a hot lead and a warm gun. He no longer believes in happy-ever-afters, but his faith in plot twists is devout. Good thing.
He is about to discover the biggest twist of all.
Joe Slade is not real.
He is a character in a series of mystery novels. And when he discovers all his pain has been in the name of book sales, there will be hell to pay. Vowing revenge on his author, he will set off for the World Where the Books Are Written. The road will take him through genres foreign and treacherous: High Fantasy, Bodice-Ripping Romance, Intergalactic Sci-Fi, and others even more awful and terrifying.
But what if this new life is about more than just living? And will Joe still come out on top when all the rules have changed?
Get the book today from:
Author Bio
David E. Sharp is a noisy librarian. He is fond of theatre and got his start in writing by producing original plays in his hometown. He has also published short stories in various anthologies. David is a member of the Northern Colorado Writers and frequently contributes to their blog. He lives in Greeley, Colorado with his wife and family.
Find the author on Goodreads
Find the author on Facebook
Lost on a Page won the 2021 Maxy Award for the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Category
Lost on a Page recently received a score of 4.6 on IndieReader.
VBT – Jay Got Married
About the Book
Title: Jay Got Married
Author: James Robinson Jr.
Genre: Non-Fiction Humor
Jay Got Married consists of 9 humorous and, at times, poignant essays chronicling the ironies of everyday life in word and picture. Take for example the lead essay, aptly titled, “Jay got Married,” where I find myself mired in a horrendous dream.
In the fantasy, my aging father–dressed in his favorite Champion t-shirt with stains covering the front–marries my wife and I like he did 42 years ago but, this time around, the my 92-year-old ex-clergy dad forgets his lines causing me to coach him through the event with hints like: “ask for the rings, ask for the rings.” All the while, my best man sings Sonny and Cher’s, “I Got You Babe.”
Finally married, my wife and I end the ceremony with a kiss. But as I turn to exit, my eyes catch a glimpse of the bridesmaid who is no longer my wife’s best friend but now Gal Gadot from Dell Comics and Wonder Woman Fame. She is dressed in full Wonder Women regalia and looks totally shocked by the whole affair.
My mother turns to my father (now in the audience) with a quizzical look and says, “Dad, look at that bridesmaid. Isn’t that Superman?” She doesn’t get out much.
As we exit the church, and the bubbles fill the air–no one uses rice anymore—my wife ignores the limo and takes off on a sleek motorcycle, leaving me in the lurch—hence the cover.
Sure, it’s sounds crazy. But, in truth, isn’t the world of marriage crazy these days? In my case, what would one do when faced with the prospect of losing their beloved wife after 42 years? At age 67, would they remarry? Would they even want to remarry? These and other marital tidbits are discussed with humor and as much reverence as I could muster.
P.S. The author pairs up with Wonder Woman again in a final bit of photo wizardry Why? How? How are tricky copyright infringement laws avoided? Read Jay Got Married and find out.
Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jjrobinsonjr_author/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesjr3?ref=bookmarks
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/James-Robinson-Jr/e/B0074O0QLI/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Get “Jay Got Married” from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1687046670/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
EXCERPT
CELEBRITY
Because We Need to Know
Who’s living with whom, who’s breaking up with whom, who’s having sex with whom? In the scheme of things, do we really need to know? Does the public really have the right to hear about the intimate details of the lives of the rich and famous? Well, guess what! You’re damned right, we do. It’s called celebrity. And they say that’s what famous people have signed up for. They may not have realized they were making a pact with the devil when they scribbled their name on the dotted line (You see, their eyes were all blurry with the prospect of fame and fortune.), but that’s what they did.
Had they read the small print, they would’ve seen the following:
“The public, including all the losers, bozos, Walmart dwellers…”
“…and sociopaths, whom I never would’ve come within ten feet of prior to success, will have all rights and privileges to my family, property, belongings, and garbage, should they choose to go through it.”
Translation: “Any member of the creepy public, as well as the paparazzi and my adoring fans, can get all in my shit any damn time they please, without so much as a Hello.”
I’ve never attained celebrity status, but I often wonder what it’s like. They say everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame, but frankly, that isn’t nearly enough. It could be wasted on some real bullshit. It could come when you happen to witness some “exciting” event. You may find yourself in the middle of a holdup or carjacking.
“Oh, look, there’s Sharon!” friends and family might say, as they watch the evening news. “They’re interviewing her about that drug bust over on Carson Street. Guess that was her 15 minutes. That’s it for her. Boy, that sucks.”
Sharon would reply, “Wait, that didn’t count! I want another chance!”
I’ve fantasized about my name being a household word. Remember when Kim Kardashian flashed that $4,000,000 ring on social media, alerting every criminal in the free world to the fact that it was there for the taking? Well, when she was gagged, tied up, and robbed in her French hotel room, celebrity status lost a bit of its luster for me. Kim thought her life was over and was shaken up for a long time. But it’s all a part of the superstar experience. And for me, the charm quickly reappeared when I found out that she is worth $100 million.
Sometimes I like the idea of fans approaching me and asking me for autographs or for photos with them. You know, these days, those in the cellphone generation ask celebrities for selfies. Such a request would make me feel good for the moment—the thought that these people like me enough to approach me and ask for my name on a piece of paper or to record my picture on an iPhone.
As an author, I have written my name on the inside covers of my books when asked, but it’s not the same thing. Being recognized and summoned for a signature is attention based on fame and notoriety, which is quite different.
Sometimes rock stars, rappers, and other music artists are asked by crazed female fans to sign their body parts. “Here,” a young girl might say, pulling down her top, “sign my breast.” I’ll never be asked to do that. But if it were to happen, and I did it, my wife would shove a dagger through my heart.
“James,” she would say. “Have you been signing women’s breasts?” I might gather the strength to nod. “I hate to do this, but…”
She would regret it afterwards.
