Cold Glory - A review

During the surrender at Appomattox, Grant and Lee were left alone for a short period,Anderson surmises what might have happened in that moment and introduces the reader to a secret treaty that the two generals agreed upon.
When this sought after treaty is unearthed with a clad of civil war-era weapons in southern Oklahoma, Nick Journey, a small college professor and amateur historian, inspects the findings and is
attacked by a secret society, the Glory Warriors, in an attempt to recover this forgotten treaty in an effort to overthrow our government, home-grown terrorists.
When the key political figures are assassinated, RIO—a small investigative branch of Homeland Security—takes the threats seriously, but not knowing who to trust on the inside agent Meg Tolman and
Nick Journey have to put their trust in each other as they race to save the life of the President. The race takes them on a wild chase, with the Glory Warriors operatives hot on their trail.
With well-built and engaging characters, Anderson throws in a part-time concert pianist as a Federal agent and a protagonist with a severely autistic child that allows converging relationships to develop and sets up the reader for the sequel: the next adventure.
In a tale rife with intrigue and suspicion, this debut novel from Anderson has something for conspiracy theorists, history buffs,Civil War aficionados, and mystery readers alike and is a fast-paced page turner down to the final twist.

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As a self-published author writing the novel was only half the problem. Once I had figured out it was going to take longer to find an agent than it had taken the write the book – three years carved out of my life – I decided to rush print and go with a Print-On Demand house, InfinityPublishing, and get my first book out to my adoring public. After all I had another book to write and that was more pressing than getting an agent at that precise moment; finish and move on.

As all self-marketers realize, and I now became a salesman more than an author, I had to find a way for the public to discover me and while Facebook and Twitter are wonderful avenues it takes more than that. I had spent a lot of time researching publishing choices and so now my time was used in finding promotional ways to get Blood on His Hands discovered and at the lowest possible cost, I am the proverbial starving artist.

John Kremer has a great book out ‘1001 Ways to Market YourBooks’. Not all of the described ways where appropriate or possible but many were and I religiously went bout following his suggestions.

One of the most important ideas is to build a website. I had the ideas but not the knowhow and so I roped in my good friend James, who put together a spectacular site for me. I had studied other authors professionally done sites and using what I considered the best ingredients and my photography (along with a couple of video’s to enhance the effect) we concocted my site. Now people could get a visual before buying, and something other than just the Amazon page.

You do however need to now promote not just you and you book but your website too. As one of the many choices out there I turned to WORLDINACLICK, specialists in developing website internationally and at recession-pricing, definitely something with in my budget. They have put together a site designed for product marketing at Portal3W. Designed to promote you internationally, to offer exposure in over 20 languages their professionally prepared websites provide unlimited pages using your own specification and design. I urge you to check out their professional website and consider giving your product and website the opportunity to be promoted by these specialists so you can get on with your next project and put the marketing in the hands of the specialists.

The Writing Life - a review

As a writer with only one published novel I am always looking to learn more about the writing life, looking to hone my skills, to improve. I had hoped to glean some rare look into how to write skilfully from Dillard's writing. This 111 page book took me three days to read (normally I would have finished in 30 minutes) however I wanted to absorb each gem of knowledge, and so kept reading intently, taking breaks hoping it would get better the next time I picked it up. Most writers seem to spend an inordinate amount of time doing anything to avoid writing Dillard seemed to spend most of her time avoiding writing about writing, and if that was not annoying enough - I wanted the good stuff - the time she did spend on the writing life was so depressing that if I was reading this book in hopes of becoming a writer I'd have probably gone a slit my wrists. What a complete waste of time this book was.

The Leopard - a review

Inspector Harry Hole is at it again, resigning that is. After the last traumatic episode his wife and stepson have left him and Hole finds his way to the opium dens of Hong Kong to wallow in self-pity and disappear from the real world.

He is dragged from the viper’s pit when two young women are found, brutally murdered with another unique method that Nesbo seems to relish in bringing to the unsuspecting public, along with a third suspected of the same murderer. Hole is Norway’s expert at catching serial killers. The news that Hole’s father is on his death-bed has more reason for him to return. He is done with police work, just ask him.

In a wild chase that leads us through the ski slopes and lakes of Norway to the outer regions of the Congo on Africa’s western plains Hole traces the suspect, now of several other bizarre murders as he tries to find the common link that brings all these hapless soles into the path of the killer.

When State run authorities impede his progress Hole strikes out alone, as usual, with all the skills of a modern-day Colombo, to unmask the culprit in his own style. Talking of style, for those of you that have had the pleasure of reading Nesbo’s other US published novels I started to complain to myself when I discovered a pattern in his work only to have that shattered in a matter of pages, almost like Nesbo set a trap. Don’t try and get into his or Hole’s head; he will shred you.

The Leopard is a work of pure genius, a skillfully woven mystery with enough action and gore to thrill the regular suspense lover in you. Nesbo has done it again; brilliant.

The Hypnotist - a review

The most exciting book that I have read all year! This pulsating medical thriller pores on the adrenaline fuel chase in this sensational Scandinavian crime thriller like nothing since the Stieg Larsson trilogy.

When Stockholm’s eminent psychologist, Dr. Erik Maria Bark, is called in to assist in a gruesome triple homicide, he has to place a teenage boy, the only witness to his families devastating annihilation and in a semi-coma with a multitude of life-threatening stab wounds, under hypnosis. The results of his action let lose a plague on his family as if the horsemen of the apocalypse had ridden into town.

With the help of detective Joona Linna the author takes us forward, through a series of flashbacks on a chase to rescue Bark’s teenage son, kidnapped by unknown forces, and to find the murdered families eldest daughter before she took is wiped from the earth. The police suspect the two cases are linked but the how and why will rock you to the core.

Not for the faint of heart the journey exposes story-lines of incest, torture, and sex-crimes that delve into the past of all concerned and produces a liturgy of sins and repentance, exposing human deeds we only dare see in nightmares. This is a barnstormer of a novel that, in the end, casts a hypnotic spell on its readers through to the very end.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250007585/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img

Into the Silence - a review

The sub-title to this tome is The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, all three complex subjects that could be described in separate volumes but that Davis has combined a 580 page story that reads like a fantastic yarn of British school-boy adventures.

We are treated to a history of England’s elite young men, the poets and dreamers of the public-school variety as they interact in Britain’s schools, until they are called up and led away to the slaughter of World War I; the best and brightest left dead and dying in the mud of the battlefields in France and Germany defending their hearth and home. The great detail that Davis delves into on the dreadful spectacle of battle in the trenches shoes his aptitude for history, a  s does the fact finding he went to in procuring the intricate backgrounds of the climbers that where sent on the mission to be the first to conquer Everest.

In 1921 this elite group of men joined forces in India and trekked through the country, sometimes on foot, horse or yak and led a British unit of climbers assembled on a mission not just to climb Everest but to explore, chart the geography of unknown regions of the world and to explore and bring back samples of fauna and flora from the entire region on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society.

As we read we ravel with this noble group as they discover and describe the complications of a trek of this nature and learn the pitfalls that will befall this and any subsequent mission. Mallory the lead climber, who ultimately perishes upon the slopes of the grand giant of a mountain he helps popularize for the world, is a complex character unto himself and thanks be to all the historical notes and letters he and his fellow climbers on the expedition wrote we can find out now all the intrepid adventures and people they discovered on the way to the world’s greatest adventure.

A fine story told in a masterfully readable way Into the Silence shows how the British were the backbone of the world during the time of the Empire.

Outsourced - A review

The modern day scourge of the middle-aged man is being laid-off and replaced by younger hires, willing to work for less money. To top of the humiliation when the company sends those same jobs overseas and outsources them to workers in Asia or Central America then the felling on worthlessness is complete. In fact it makes you want to do something to stick it to the man!

Dan was luckier than most. At least he had managed to scrape together a three-month contract building a security system for a local bank but was summarily dismissed when an Indian firm was given the chance to implement his system. When a mistake closed the security window from twenty-eight seconds to twenty-eight minutes each day Dan didn’t point it out to the bank‘s president. Stick it to the man. In fact when he was unable to find another job in the tech industry he decided to take advantage of that twenty eight minute daily window and with another laid-off tech buddy, Shrini, devised an unstoppable plan to rob the bank.

Enrolling two other laid-off over-the hill geeks, one with a penchant for guns, the other for women they went about their plan. Nothing could go wrong. When the group emerged from the bank, no longer ‘thicker-than –thieves’ the plan starts to unravel. Not only are the police now involved because they shot a bank customer, but the safety deposit boxes they hit where the property of local Russian mafia big shot Petrenko.

With the merry band disappearing one by one, a harpy of a wife chapping his ass, the Russians and the police closing in and his failing eyesight threatening to make him completely blind, Dan has to make his move, one that will surprise you.

Although the story took its time unwinding the twists it takes at every opportunity leads for a fine well-plotted story and an unforgettable finale.