October Issue 3 Vol 1




Editor's Note:

Hello everyone,

The evenings are getting shorter, time to stay in with a good book. I'm just under half-way through Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy series, eleven books in it so far :)

I've been trying out the new amazon aStores, I have a US version here:
http://astore.amazon.com/annettegisby-20

and a UK version here:
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/annettegisby

Anyone with an amazon account can set one up and you don't need to know any programming. I can just about manage html, but other programming languages are a bit beyond me at the moment :)

Have a lovely month.

Annette

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Contents
Book Reviews
Featured Article
Offers/Contests
Featured Books/Sites
Quote of the Month
Very Bad Joke of the Month

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Book Reviews:

Bittersweet Crude
By Jay Bern
Author House, 2005
ISBN: 1420833650
Adult/Mystery
Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com

Mystery Meet

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, Tracings and The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't

It is rare that a novel is released in time to run head-on into the political traumas it portrays. After all, it takes some time to craft a novel and current events tend to be fickle. It turns out Bittersweet Crude by Jay Bern is ahead of its time.

Released last year by a subsidy house, this novel didn't find its groove easily. Given the oil-induced headaches governments are experiencing, that may be about to change. Here is an author who knows about the inner-workings of crude and the way it is inextricably braided into politics. He takes those truths and weaves them into a story that requires no effort from the reader to suspend disbelief.

Chris Horn is not the average quirky detective but a rather earnest youth who finds himself thrown into the intrigue of big business and Mid-Eastern politics. After he finds a body in the hold of a freighter that has experienced what could be the oil-world's equivalent of a nuclear meltdown, he is jockeyed into positions no young man should have to endure. In spite of his dealings with men (yes, a world of men -- for, after all, that's the way it apparently is) dealing with their demons to say nothing of cultural differences, politics and more, while their Texas wives mostly plan cocktail parties and pine for better things.

Yes, there is some romance in this novel -- a lovely thread I wouldn't want to have seen omitted, but it feels a little uncomfortable, as if the author suspects it is not essential to his story. It does give him the opportunity to introduce the lovely Eurasian Sarina, educated and brainy, into the mix.

Nevertheless, the real story here is the gritty one tinged with truths that may well be very close to what is going on behind the scenes in boardrooms, government offices and cushy palaces around the world. This is a timely and pertinent book. If it should get into the hands of George Clooney, he may be able to do a lot with it on the screen.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson?s first novel, This is the Place, the winner of eight awards, is also of current interest because of the recent arrest of FBI's most wanted Warren Jeff's, a latter-day Mormon cult leader. Her practical and detailed how-to book on promotion, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOU?RE PUBLISHER WON?T, won USA Book News' Best Professional Book award and the Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award. Learn more at: http://carolynhoward-johnson.com.

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A Maine Christmas Carol
by Phillip F. Harris
Novella

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Silent Screams and Shadows of the Rose.
http://www.annettegisby.n3.net

At thirteen Thomas Johnson, known as T.J. loses his father in Iraq just before Christmas, at fifteen his girlfriend commits suicide and by sixteen he has gone completely off the rails, taking drugs, hitting his younger brother and having no interest in anything except where his next fix is coming from. His mother is a social worker and T.J. is jealous of all the time she spends helping other people and feels she doesn't care about her own family at all. He has everything money can buy but money can't buy what he really wants, his mother's time and attention. He has no idea how to cope with the mess his life has become and Christmas is just another horrible day in his horrible life and he refuses to go with his mother and siblings to his uncle's house to celebrate.

Staying in the house on his own, he is visited by the ghost of his father, but T.J. thinks it's just the drugs he was taking. Then his is visited by three other spirits, of his past, present and future and nothing will be the same after that night.

A modern retelling of the Dickens' tale, I wasn't sure if I was going to like this one. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how much I did enjoy it. I'm normally not that keen on modernised versions of anything and I wasn't sure how I was going to relate to a character who was drug addict.

Although short, the book packs a punch and Thomas was more of a sympathetic character than I had anticipated. Considering all the terrible things that happened in his short life, you could almost understand why he turned to drugs in the first place as a way to cope or to avoid his problems.

Not a word is wasted and you are drawn into the story fairly quickly. The end of the book is a message of hope and it leaves you with a warm feeling that makes you want to hunt out the Christmas tree and curl up with a mug of hot chocolate, even if I did read it in October. T.J's. transformation from surly, disenfranchised youth to a more grown up and responsible young man is deftly handled and although the book ends just at the beginning of that transformation, you know that all will be well for the Johnsons from now on.

A great read.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by J K Rowling
Fantasy/YA

Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of the award winning Regs and other SF and mainstream novels.
http://www.geocities.com/nina_osier

The wizarding world's turmoil is spilling over into the Muggle universe as this sixth book in the Harry Potter series opens. Sixteen-year-old Harry and his friends return to Hogwarts nevertheless, with their OWL exams behind them and their sixth year of schooling ahead. They're old enough for romance, and Harry is old enough in Dumbledore's eyes to learn some truths that the headmaster has kept from him until now. That's fortunate, because Harry soon realizes that Dumbledore - the last parent-surrogate in the orphan wizard's young life - isn't a well man. Is it old age, which comes even to wizards some day? Or is Dumbledore's clandestine role in the war against He Who Must Not Be Named exacting a terrible toll?

Dark fantasy relieved by frequent jolts of Rowling humor. A bit of an overdose of adolescents making fools of themselves where the opposite gender's concerned (although I was pleased by Harry's choice of partner). A traumatic death, a dramatic betrayal, and lots of opportunities to spend time with characters we've come to love. While this book is more a setup for the final volume than a complete story by itself, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. My one complaint is that the closing pages - oddly enough - dragged. Instead of an attempt at denouement, I'd have preferred a simple: TO BE CONTINUED.

Four and a half stars rounded up to five. Dare I admit that I've read it twice already?



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The Trespass
by Barbara Ewing
Historical/Literary

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Silent Screams and Drowning Rapunzel

In the London cholera epidemic of 1849, MP Sir Charles Cooper is worried for his youngest daughter, seventeen year old Harriet, and resolves to send her away to the country until the danger has past. Harriet is pleased to get away from her father, but also worried that he won't send her elder sister, Mary, with her. Isn't she in danger from the cholera too? (More danger than either of them know, for Mary has been helping a doctor treat the cholera patients in the poorest parts of London.)

Harriet enjoys her stay in the country with her cousins, and wonders at the easy way the family has with each other, for there is a dark secret at her London home, one she has no words for, because how can a young lady speak of the unspeakable?

Harriet plans a daring escape to New Zealand, following in the footsteps of her cousin, for surely even her father's reach cannot get so far as New Zealand?

This book is excellent, with a little dash of history thrown in now and then, but without turning the novel into a history book. The main emphasis is on the characters, and what characters they were. So realisitic and evolved. I was on tenterhooks the whole time wondering if Harriet could ever escape.

At a time when women had no money of their own (unless they were lower class and could work), they were owned first by their fathers and then by their husbands, and were not even allowed to work, how could a young girl escape her terrible fate?

"Everything you say is yours, belongs to me, is provided by me, everything, every breath that you take belongs to me. I am your father. And as you well know you owe me absolute obedience."

I devoured this book in two days, you just have to keep reading to find out what happens next. With a wealth of historical detail and well drawn characters, it's one you'd want to read again.

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House Call to the Past
by Janet Elaine Smith
Paranormal Romance

Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of Rough Rider, Granite Island along with other SF and mainstream novels.
http://www.geocities.com/nina_osier

On one side of a Massachusetts field, it's 1992. On the other side it is 1713. John Hallett, desperate to find help for his pregnant daughter Maria, calls out across time - and obstetrician Angus McPherson answers. With no idea of just how far that walk across an innocent-looking field will take him, as he quickly learns why no midwife or physician from her time will help his new patient give birth.

Her fellow villagers in coastal Yarmouth believe that Maria Hallett is a witch. So as the unmarried girl struggles to bear the son of pirate Black Sam Bellamy (who of course is off at sea), no one but her shamed yet loving family wants to come near her.

Dr. Angus soon find himself in love with Maria, and offers her the protection that can only come from marriage. For her he willingly remains in the past, learns how to live there, and does his best to teach his bride to love him. But Maria, although she's grateful, has no intention of giving up on Black Sam Bellamy's promised return.

Not counting "Brigadoon," this was my first time travel romance. I've avoided the whole sub-genre because, to be honest, it sounded just plain silly to this lover of hard science fiction. I was agreeably surprised to find myself sitting up until all hours, reading this book straight through to its end, because I simply had to know what would happen to the characters!

If you enjoy a mildly spicy romance, with mystery woven into the plot and a touch of magic that's applied with a light hand (just enough to make the story work), you will like this one for sure.


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Featured Article:
Good Stories, Good Authors, Goodbye!
by: Cathy Macleod

GOOD stories, good authors, goodbye – victims of the book plague. Book plague? And why should good authors fear?

Because already too many good authors have lost their lustre, overpressed by their publishers and the marketers who control those publishers. There are too many bad books by good authors, a plague caused by global business. The good authors and their good stories are most prone to succumb.

Plague symptoms accelerate as we near the lucrative pre-Christmas buying spree, when brand-names swamp the bookstores.

Brand-names, get it? Many good authors have become just brand-names and nothing else, reclassified by the whizguys who manipulate the industry. A record one-million books got published last year, big-biz grabbing the biggest spoils.

Good stories and good authors still exist. Amazon has them hiding in its vast wilderness, and www.booktaste.com links to some goodies. Nevertheless the book plague rages on. Publishers caught in the global haggle cannot wait for their star scribblers to complete a new masterpiece. Hence the prized brand-name can appear on work ill-structured, unfinished, and often unreadable. Production gets sloppy, too. Count the misprints.

Hasty writing and skimped editing meets the deadline, but also destroys creativity. A manuscript that should be returned for a rewrite here and there is gleefully accepted and launched into bookstores incomplete, pimpled with errors, and likely to disappoint its buyers.

After paying to read a favourite brand-name, and regretting it, reader faith disappears and wallets tighten.

Why do publishers slaughter their golden geese? Because global business ranks marketers above editors.

Why don’t major reviewers expose this greed, this mediocrity offered as genius? Because the tsunami of brand-name titles drowns honest assessment.

Good stories and good authors are now a threatened species.

This from cathy.macleod@optusnet.com.au


About The Author

Cathy Macleod gives free publicity to worthy fiction of everlasting appeal, particularly from smallpress publishers.

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Offers/Contests:

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Cream City Review
Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry Contests
Deadline: December 1 (annual)
Fee: $10/story (no longer than 30 pages) or 3-5 poems, payable to Cream City Review
Prize: $100 plus publication.

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Silent Voices
Short Story Contest
Fee: $12
Deadline: December 10, 2006
Prize: $300 plus publication


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Crazyhorse
Crazyhorse Fiction Prize/ Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize
Deadline: December 16, 2006
Fee: $12 for previous entrants, $15 for new entrants
Prize: $2000 each and publication

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Roanoke Review
Fiction Contest
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Roanoke Review is given annually for a short story. All entries will be considered for publication. Submit a story of up to 8,000 words with a $15 entry fee, which includes a copy of the prize issue, by November 10. Send an SASE or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.
Roanoke Review, Fiction Contest, 221 College Lane, Salem, VA 24153. Paul Hanstedt, Editor.
www.roanoke.edu/roanokereview


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Featured Books/Sites

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http://www.scriptmag.com/

Has magazzines, articles, forums, contests etc. for the screenwriter and aspiring screenwriter. Some free content, some subsciber only.

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http://dramatica.stores.yahoo.net/freesoftware.html
Free software and trial downloads for writers including software for novels and screenplays.
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Black on Black (SF)
by by K.D. Wentworth
Dive into this action-adventure science fiction tale, told from a unique viewpoint, that will leave you breathless!
From the Baen Freee library

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Crusade by David Weber and Steve White (SF)
Free online book and download from the Baen Free library
Baen Freee Library
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Werehunter by Mercedes Lackey (SF)
free ebook download available from the Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/0671578057/0671578057.htm


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Slayer by Karen Koehler
free ebbok download available from the Baen Free Libraty (SF/Horror)
http://www.baen.com/library/

Welcome to the world of Slayer, a dark universe peopled by vampires, their lovers, allies and hunters. Here in this dark place nothing is as it seems and there is a bloody war for survival going on in the alleys and byways of our world.

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Quote of the Month

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. " - Oscar Wilde

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Bad Joke of the Month


Two fish were in a tank.

One said to the other, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"


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