It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This will be my final “It’s Monday! What are you reading?” post. I’ve decided to dedicate my time to some new topics. I’m adding “Tombstone Tuesdays” and “Writer’s Corner” on Wednesdays. Please stop by on those days if the topics interest you. I’ll still be doing “52 Ancestors” on Thursdays and “Saturday Snippets” for the rest of 2015.

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This is a bit different than the books I usually post, but this week I read:

50 Ways to Build your Email Marketing List” by Pam Neely

If you run a business, whether a brick-and-mortar location or online, there is tons of information in this book to help you grow your email marketing list. If you don’t yet have an email marketing list, this is the place to start.

Being an indie author, I have a small list of subscribers who I email quarterly about my life, my books, and my job as an author. I admit I haven’t put that much energy into it, but others swear by email lists, so I thought I’d ramp mine up a bit.

51GjRkvew2L._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_This book contains detailed information on adding your sign-up prompt to every page of your website, every newsletter, every email. It also explains how to add a custom tab to your Facebook page and how to use prompts on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, and SlideShare, placing a Call to Action on all of your online sites. Next, it offers tips on engaging customers in offline marketing including prompts for postcards, speaking engagements, phone, and letting your employees do the work for you.

The one thing that really stuck out to me was creating a QR code that you can use on all of your printed material. It’s got my creative juices flowing about all the places I can put a QR code. I think it’s time to create some new business cards…gotta run.

If you find this topic up your alley, you can pick up Ms. Neely’s book at Amazon HERE.

On my end of the marketing/email spectrum, I always give away literary freebies in my quarterly newsletter. The next one is coming out in September. You can win! Sign up at http://eepurl.com/GHJ7D.

 

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read a book called “Twelve Years a Slave” by Solomon Northup.

71BGwovWcaLIf you missed the movie a few years ago, this is the true story of a free black man, kidnapped in New York in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana for twelve years. The movie was stunning and won many awards. The book is the same breathtaking story.

From a storytelling standpoint, it is told in narrative form, and as an author, I find it very fascinating. From a story standpoint, it is so absorbing, you can’t put the thing down. What happens to this poor man is beyond horrifying, but his strength of spirit throughout his struggle is a lesson for us all. His humanity toward his friends is beautiful, his intelligence toward his situation is inspiring. I imagine his descendants are very proud of him, and I for one, and awed by his bravery and his unyielding hope for his future.

As usual, true stories are the best stories.

It’s available HERE on Amazon.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read “Cades Cove: The Curse of Allie Mae” by Aiden James.

One of my favorite places on Earth is the Smoky Mountains, and sitting in a hollow in the mountains is Cades Cove. I’ve been there many times and was excited by the sheer name of this book.

51P1FVNRxPLCades Cove: The Curse of Allie Mae is a ghost story written in current times with bits of history, tradition, and ancestry thrown in.

David and Miriam Hobbs venture to a secret place in Cades Cove that is reportedly the 1800’s version of Lover’s Lane. They see hearts and names carved on the old trees, and one of the names is Allie. Later they find an old treasure bag with Allie’s name embroidered on it. David takes the bag home to Denver and the ghost story begins. Allie turns out to be a hateful poltergeist that terrorizes David’s family. Of course you’ll keep reading to find out how they get rid of her and who she is. The family connection at the end between Allie and David is intriguing.

When the family can’t take any more of Allie’s deadly mischief, David takes Allie’s bag back to Cades Cove and enlists the help of a Cherokee Indian guide and his shaman daughter to get rid of Allie. After intense spells and a flashback to Allie’s gruesome death, the story ends, and all is well.

At that point, I would have given the book lots of stars for the good plot, but it doesn’t end there. Once David returns to Denver, he receives a letter from the Indian stating they have exhumed Allie’s remains and given her a proper burial. I wish the book would have ended there, but at that point Allie reappears in the family home, making the dog bark and making me feel like I just wasted two days of my life reading a book about how they got rid of her. The story apparently segues into a sequel.

If you like ghost stories, this one is for you!

Check it out on Amazon HERE and take a peak at Aiden James’s website HERE.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read the thriller “Seven Unholy Days” by Jerry Hatchett.

81qe5Xi64JLSeven Unholy Days is about the collapse of the modern-day world at the hands of a mad man. It follows Matthew Becker, the contractor for America’s electrical grid, and an unknown adversary who is taunting him, shutting down the power across the country, crashing the financial markets around the world, kidnapping a young woman, and murdering thousands of people. Slowly, we find out that the perpetrator believes he is the anti-christ, setting into motion the apocalypse, and the catastrophes happening around the world are following the seven seals in the book of Revelations.

The writing bounces back and forth between third person and first person, which is a little distracting, but the story is well worth the effort. It is weaved and plotted exquisitely, with well-crafted characters and a storyline straight out of a million-dollar movie.

It has lots and lots of tech jargon, so if you’re geeky at all, you’ll love it!

Check it out HERE on Amazon.

Also check out Jerry Hatchett’s website HERE.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read “One Giant Leap” by J.T. Sterling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

imagesThis story takes place in modern times and is the tale of party-boy Harlan Jasper who suddenly becomes the patriarch of the powerful Jasper family. We learn through very, very lengthy history lessons that the Jasper family has been around for thousands of years, and between the fictitious House of Jasper, the Plantagenets, the Iscariots (as in Judas from the Bible), and the Pope, they pretty much run the whole world. Looks like our party-boy is going to have to lay off the coke to be able to lead a family with this kind of power. I found the story to be a lot of fun—a mixture of genealogy, world history, and “The Da Vinci Code.”

From a creative standpoint, the book is full of grammatical errors such as “you’re” instead of “your” and “fowl play” instead of “foul play,” but the story moves pretty fast so you’ll skip right over most of them. One jarring thing is that the point of view changes on a dime, so you’ll abruptly find yourself in the head of a character on the other side of the parking lot.

If you like world history and conspiracy theories, you will love this book. It’s chocked full of them!

If you’re interested, check it out here on Amazon.

It’s Monday! What are you reading? Cover Reveal!

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

I’ve been reading “John Culpepper the Merchant” by Lori Crane. LOL!

It’s my book, so I guess I’m cheating a little bit on posting it for this blog, but if I don’t make sure it’s error free before release, someone will lose their marbles, and we don’t want that to happen. So…I’ve been in final edit, proofread, flip-flop mode, wavering between thinking it’s-not-ready-for-release and it’s-the-best-book-ever. Truthfully, it’s probably somewhere in the middle, but as all my author friends know, that’s what we do. Flip-flopping is our most time-consuming hobby. 🙂

The Merchant ebookI’d also like to show off the new cover. Isn’t it so cool? My cover designer is amazing!

The book will be out in a few days and I’m tickled pink!

Blurb

For hundreds of years, the Culpepper family backed the monarchy, but when King Charles disbanded Parliament, married a Catholic princess, and appointed an archbishop who was a Catholic supporter, the royalist Culpeppers found themselves at odds with their friends and neighbors.

Years earlier, against his family’s wishes, John had purchased a merchant ship, sailed to Virginia, and spent most of his time there. While on American soil, he received word of the uprisings that followed the king’s actions.

When civil war began, John feared for the safety of his family in England. He was horrified when the king was captured, convicted of high treason, and beheaded. Would John’s family be next? The only way to rescue them would be with his ship, under the cloak of darkness. Would he succeed, or would they all be caught and tried as traitors?

John Culpepper the Merchant is the second book in the Culpepper saga and is the story of the progenitor of the modern-day American Culpeppers. He was the author’s tenth great-grandfather.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2It’s Monday! What are you Reading?

 

 

This week I read “Behind the Bar” by PC Zick.

 

 

 

81G7RBonO5L._SL1500_The first thing that came to mind while reading this story was the movie “The Breakfast Club” –except ten years later. The relationships are intricate and sometimes painful as there tends to be a lot of psychological baggage carried from teenage years into adulthood, especially when done in a group like these characters. Sometimes one must forgive and forget to move on, but in the case of Susie Williams, one must remember in the first place. Susie is a young woman who has blocked out a majority of her abusive childhood, until her friends help her piece the puzzle back together.

I absolutely loved these characters, especially Sally Jean, and the final conversation between Susie and Sally Jean literally brought tears to my eyes.

“Behind the Bar” is the second book in the “Behind the Love Trilogy.” If you start with this book, you’ll find the first few chapters move pretty fast, and you’ll have to figure out who everyone is, which I’m sure is explained in more detail in the first book. That being said, you can start with this book and catch up quickly, not feeling as if you’ve missed anything because this is a stand-alone story. I guarantee you will love this group of misfits and find yourself going back to the first in the series “Behind the Altar.” The third in the series, “Behind the Curtain,” will be released soon, and I can’t wait!

For those sensitive to adult language and situations, there is a little bit in this book, but not enough to curl your hair.

088eb14324190ad8956eff.L._V146807737_SX200_Check it out at Amazon!

Visit Ms. Zick’s website!

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

 

 

I just finished “Roanoke: The Lost Colony” by Angela Hunt.

 

 

 

910gx90keKL._SL1500_Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this book. As you can see, the cover is absolutely stunning, but it has nothing to do with the story, not even a little bit. As the title indicates, the story is about the missing colonists of Roanoke, and I always enjoy seeing personalities put to historical figures. While I sincerely appreciate the time and energy that went into researching the documents and the history, the characters in this story weren’t very likeable. Reverend Thomas Colman was pretty much a jerk, and his wife Jocelyn starts as a sassy woman who speaks her mind but becomes weak and spineless as the story progresses. The book is touted as a romance, and the two finally get together in the last pages of the book, but it was too little too late and completely out of character for him, seeing as he had been a jerk for the first 98% of the book. The other characters were hit or miss, most disappearing before you even got a chance to know them. The one thing that kept me reading was to find out the author’s impression of what happened to the colonists, but nope, we didn’t. Not even a theory. Nothing. The book just ended.

There were a couple things that drove me to drink. There were no upholstered chairs in the 1500s and certainly no tea in the colonies. Historical inaccuracies like that make me wonder how true the rest of the history-part of the story was. Also, I understand the characters speaking with ‘twas and ‘tis, but it really didn’t need to be ongoing ad nauseum throughout the narrative. ‘Twould be better if it ‘twas written without all the ‘tis and ‘twas. ‘Twouldn’t it?

In general, I wanted to like it, but I really, really wanted an ending.

Amazon link

Ms. Hunt’s website

 

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2I admit it. I went left. I took a turn off some road in downtown Lollypop Land and got lost in some weird place, and I hated every minute of it. This week, I read the original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum.

I’ll say up front that you can get lots and lots of these classic tales for free on Amazon. Well, that’s where it all started.

I’ll also say that I don’t understand how the hell this was ever transformed into such an amazing classic film. The book is atrocious. I’m not going to say anything more. If you haven’t read it, pick it for yourself, and let me know what you think.

Here’s the Amazon link – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

81D76H7lqqL._SL1500_

 

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

2a2This week, I read Sisters in Love by Melissa Foster. It is the first in the Snow Sisters series. I enjoyed Lovers at Heart, the first in the Braden series, so I thought I’d give another of her books a read.

 

81bwpEZY1vL._SL1500_Sisters in Love is the story of Danica Snow, an uptight therapist, and Blake Carter, a player, who after the sudden death of his friend decides he needs to become a better person. He makes an appointment with Danica and…well, you can already see where this is going. There are also a handful of other characters: Danica’s whorish younger sister, a young goth girl with too many issues to count who Danica is playing ‘big sister’ to, the young girl’s grandmother and alcoholic mother, the dead friend’s angry wife and moody son, and the dead friend’s old girlfriend and illegitimate son who no one knew about. See where I’m going with this? The characters all have heavy, dark sides which is not the light, romance novel I was anticipating. There was also a moment when Danica spoke with the alcoholic woman’s therapist, who gave Danica tons of private information about the alcoholic woman. That moment was so wrong from an ethical standpoint, yet I could have overlooked it if Danica hadn’t spent the whole book telling herself she couldn’t fall for Blake because it would be unethical. For someone so concerned with ethics, she must think they apply only to her, yet she spends the entire story explaining how she’s the smart one of her family. Not too smart, if you ask me.

Ms. Foster’s writing is awesome, and I read the whole book, waiting for the payoff of Danica and Blake getting together, but it came way at the end of the book and there were no fireworks. The issues with the plot and the host of dark, dreary characters didn’t make for good romance. In the end, none of the issues were resolved except for Danica and Blake ending up in bed. She’s needy, he’s a jerk. I’ll give ’em six months.

I think I’ll go back to the Braden series, where the men are super hot, and there are no medical ethics to muck up the relationships.

If you want to give it a shot, you can pick it up here – Sisters in Love on Amazon.