A FREE EBOOK GIVEAWAY!

Religious Satire Novel Launches with E-book Giveaway

Novelist and Tokyo Denizen Jasper Grawl celebrates the Release of Political and Religious Satire THE GATES OF VALHALLA with Worldwide Multi-date E-book Giveaway.

 

Publisher Fresh Ink Group (FIG) proudly announces the print and e-book editions of Jasper Grawl’s THE GATES OF VALHALLA, a journey through space, time, and life that brings one soul-searching man to renovate his church into a bar that gives people what they really want: the recipe for Salvation–on tap. FIG and Jasper Grawl are partnering to offer free e-book downloads through Amazon.com on December 30, 2014 through January 3, 2015.

From our primitive invention of Time, through the distant future when countless souls populate vast swaths of empty space, VALHALLA shows us what really becomes of mankind because we let politicians run the show. With farce as the Universe’s unifying principle, where the only requirement for faster-than-light travel is proper footwear, when a cheap catchphrase and colorful brochures pass for religion, Stan has the audacity to peddle his soul-saving elixir in frosty mugs. Meanwhile, crotchety Gumballs finds himself trying to navigate the mindnumbing bureaucracy of afterlife, his “sin-surance” policy wholly inadequate, the specter of eternal Hell looming every bit as wretchedly as an afternoon of C-SPAN.

VALHALLA tackles such trivialities as life and death, heaven and hell, sin and redemption, Earth’s corned beef claim to galactic fame, and the very survival of mankind. Jasper Grawl’s side-splitting novel leads readers straight to the gates and dares everybody to step through.

An English Teacher and copy writer in Tokyo, Japan, Jasper Grawl is a Badger from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in The Art of Making Mountains Out of Molehills, otherwise known as “Political Science.” He considers Valhalla to be “a thoughtful examination of why society is crumbling like bad meatloaf, a witty expose written with literary flair,” but he admits some might find it “factious, uppity, and lewd–its appeal limited to those with the slightest interest in religion, politics, money, or knockin’ boots. Or jokes.”

Novelist Stephen Geez calls it the best send-up on societal foibles he’s read in a long time. “Start with the comic-cultural satire of Chris Buckley and Carl Hiassen, then add the expansive imagination of an absurdist madman, and you have Grawl’s compelling skewer of human nature. We laugh knowingly at these people, especially as we realize he’s making fun of us all.”

Published by Fresh Ink Group, THE GATES OF VALHALLA (ISBN: 978-1-936442-18-8) 244-page perfect-bound trade paper edition is cover-priced at $12.85. E-book editions are available on all major platforms for $3.99. Free downloads are available through Amazon.com on December 30, 2014, through January 3, 2015.

Fresh Ink Group is a multi-media publisher and collective of authors, artists, and content experts who work together to help enhance, produce, and promote each other’s best work. Contact Fresh Ink Group at (817) 488-1448; info@FreshInkGroup.com: or P.O. Box 525, Roanoke, TX 76262. Follow Jasper Grawl on Facebook: Twitter: @JasperGrawl; or at JasperGrawl.com.

Rave Soup for the Writer’s Soul

Have you heard the news? Rave Reviews Book Club has released their first-ever anthology of short stories by amazing indie authors from across the globe. The book is entitled Rave Soup for the Writer’s Soul, and is currently available through Amazon.

This collection contains dozens of short stories and poems from some of the brightest talents in the indie world. Names like Beth Hale, Bruce A. Borders, Gwendoline Plano, Harmony Kent, Jan Hawke, Nonnie Jules, and others grace these pages. A wide array of genres is represented between the covers, offering something of interest for every reader.

Rave Soup for the Writer’s Soul presents authors from The United States, The United Kingdom, Canada, Greece, and other points on the globe. If you are a fan of incredible short fiction and poetry, this is one book you’ll want to add to your library.

Get your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/RAVE-SOUP-WRITERS-SOUL-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00QVOGEHC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1419281950&sr=1-1&keywords=rave+soup+for+the+writer%27s+soul

Introducing Author Jeffrey Von Glahn

​Hello, bloggers! I would like to introduce a very special guest today. Please welcome Jeffrey Von Glahn, author of the book Jessica: The Autobiography of an Infant.

​

Background: 
​

Jessica had always been haunted by the fear that the unthinkable had happened when she had been “made-up.” For as far back as she could remember, she had no sense of a Self. Her mother thought of her as the “perfect infant” because “she never wanted anything and she never needed anything.” As a child, just thinking of saying “I need” or “I want” left her feeling like an empty shell and that her mind was about to spin out of control. Terrified of who––or what––she was, she lived in constant dread over being found guilty of impersonating a human being.

Jeffrey Von Glahn, Ph.D., an experienced therapist with an unshakable belief in the healing powers of the human spirit, and Jessica blaze a trail into this unexplored territory. As if she has, in fact, become an infant again, Jessica remembers in extraordinary detail events from the earliest days of her life––events that threatened to twist her embryonic humanness from its natural course of development. Her recollections are like listening to an infant who could talk describe every psychologically dramatic moment of its life as it was happening.

When Dr. Von Glahn met Jessica, she was 23. Everyone regarded her as a responsible, caring person – except that she never drove and she stayed at her mother’s when her husband worked nights.

For many months, Jessica’s therapy was stuck in an impasse. Dr. Von Glahn had absolutely no idea that she was so terrified over simply talking about herself. In hopes of breakthrough, she boldly asked for four hours of therapy a day, for three days a week, for six weeks. The mystery that was Jessica cracked open in dramatic fashion, and in a way that Dr. Von Glahn could never have imagined. Then she asked for four days a week – and for however long it took. In the following months, her electrifying journey into her mystifying past brought her ever closer to a final confrontation with the events that had threatened to forever strip her of her basic humanness.

​Twitter Handle:  @JeffreyVonGlahn
Website:  http://jeffreyvonglahn.com

Purchase Link for book:  http://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Autobiography-Jeffrey-Von-Glahn-ebook/dp/B00IUCKOD8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418530951&sr=1-1&keywords=JESSICA+by+jeffrey+von+glahn​

 

BLOG POST:
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This excerpt is Jessica’s request for multiple-hour sessions in hopes of achieving (which it did) the breakthrough that both of us were working so diligently at trying to create. At this point, we had been meeting for over two years.

Jessica entered my office with an unfamiliar resolve in her step. She sat down smartly, pressed her knees together, and promptly folded her hands in her lap. When I engaged her attention, she did not have (much to my immense relief)​,​ her habitual expression of waiting for me to start the session. Her voice, instead of mine, now filled the air.

She locked her eyes onto mine and confidently asked, “Can we meet for four hours a day, three days a week for six weeks?”

Her tone was more a statement of what we were going to do than a question seeking my agreement. Her hands remained folded in her lap as she continued to stare expectantly at me.

“I would like to meet at my house. It will be quieter than it is here…and more comfortable.”

Obviously, she had given this request a great deal of thought. While my brain quickly calculated that she was asking for an astronomical seventy-two hours of therapy in six weeks, more than someone would get in nearly a year-and-a-half at once a week, my head instinctively nodded in spirited agreement. Even before the words had crystallized in my mind, an enthusiastic “Of course!” quickly came from my mouth.

How could I possibly say no? How could I dismiss such fierce determination and faith in me as her therapist, when I knew full well that, if the truth were told, I had been of virtually no help to her in all the time I had been seeing her. Despite some promising leads, and the fact that neither one of us had ever missed or even been late for a session, it seemed I had only piled one frustrating, unproductive session on top of another. Plus, for most of that time, I had been displaying my incompetence at the rate of twice a week.

 

 

Meet Spotlight Author Rochelle Carter!

 

Hello, Bloggers! I am excited to host this month’s Rave Reviews Book Club Spotlight Author Rochelle Carter on her current blog tour.

Authorpreneurship Unleashed

 

Becoming an entrepreneur

I am a Human Resources Project Manager. I have over ten years of experience, and yet I did not love my job. I loved helping people. I loved the idea of creating something new for the business, but my job and I had a casual relationship that I felt was good enough. When the economy started crashing and those around me started losing their jobs, however, I had to wonder if it was really good enough. What stability did I have? Why am I breaking my neck each day, if in the end “corporate” wouldn’t hesitate to ax my peers or even me so they could maintain large profit margins?

It was time for a change, but I did not know where to begin. I was still working full time, so when would I even be able to think about options. I have always been an avid reader and a writer, but when I considered life in publishing after reading a particularly terrible book, a small voice inside of me told me I should monetize my skills as a Publisher instead. While I loved writing, reading, and learning about authorship, I was much more confident in my organization and project management skills. I decided in that moment to become an entrepreneur-while-working. I quickly determined that my first priority was to “do publishing right”, and that I would learn what that meant.

I named my company Ellechor Media dba Ellechor Publishing House, found my team of professionals, put together our business plan, created an awesome website and found our first authors almost immediately. I was ready to go, and this was the perfect timing because my life was stable enough to support a business… or so I thought!

We waited a year before starting to release any books, hoping to get a good head start on the process, vet the appropriate contractors, and have time to edit, re-edit and proof everything. The best laid plans don’t factor in real life. I ended up with severe pre-eclampsia in the hospital just six months into my first pregnancy and four months before our first three books launched. This was where having a reliable Super Group paid off. With me out of commission, my team carried on with my plans to launch our first books and manage our preparation for the next season of book releases. I was now officially an Entrepreneur with products available to the public.

Going through the early years of the business had its ups and downs, but in the end it continues to be a life-changing experience. We have won various awards and nominations, I learned a lot, I continue to learn, and I am always seeking ways to share with others. As my author list grew, however, I quickly discovered that authors did not just need their books published. While that is their immediate goal, the true necessary tool for EVERY author is knowledge. Knowledge about the publishing process, the industry, and how to navigate those confusing waters. Once again, that still small voice was speaking to me.

Becoming an authorpreneur

I am a Publisher. I have over ten years of project management experience and five years of experience in book publishing, and I love

my job. I love helping authors take their work from a manuscript to a physical, tangible book they can hug and love. In building Ellechor Publishing House, I was building a legacy that I hope will endure for a long time, and yet I still felt there was something missing. My authors, while happy to be published, had so many questions about the business that at one point I was spending hours a day just answering emails. It took me a while, but it finally hit me: despite there being so much information available on publishing a book, there was still a missing component.

I went looking for a resource I could recommend to new authors to help them understand the business side of writing, but what I found was disappointing. Every book had its own agenda, focusing on writing, marketing, self-publishing or becoming a full-time publisher. What my authors needed, and what many other authors need as well, is a book that takes them through the entire process of publishing a book from the author perspective. That is when the still small voice started yelling! I had to be the one to make it happen, because if not me then who? One year later and I am releasing my book, The 7-Step Guide to Authorpreneurship (May 19, 2014, EverFaith Press), which educates writers on how to understand the business of writing and become successful authors.

Writing The 7-Step Guide to Authorpreneurship is just the beginning for me. The endorsements and support I have gotten so far have solidified in my mind that this book was the right thing for me to do. I am taking the book further by developing online training (coming soon!) for authors who want a hands on experience with the steps in my book, and with the launch of my first joint venture, The Authorpreneurship Project with Sharon Jenkins. We will be focusing our work on educating authors on the business of writing, providing the tools and resources they need to become Independent, Innovative, and Iconic 21st Century authors. This work, in addition to book packaging for aspiring authors with my self-publishing imprint EverFaith Press, has me in my professional sweet spot and I love every minute of it!

You know you are doing the right thing when, despite things falling apart they also seem to pull things together. It’s a challenge I have accepted, along with higher accountability to my authors and publishing team. I am not perfect, but I will always get back up again and try harder. As I journey into the world of author education I realize that God is pushing me in this direction so that everything I do can revolve around the things I love and cherish. In wearing my own shoes, I am not just taking the easy street. Rather, I am living, learning and growing in what I am passionate about and what I believe I was called to do.

 

Follow Rochelle online!
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Website

Amazon

 

The Religion, Rage & w(R)iting Blog Tour

Hi, and welcome to The Religion, Rage & w(R)iting Blog Tour for Authors Shirley-Harris Slaughter, Rhani D’Chae and Harmony Kent.

These three authors are wonderful clients of 4WillsPublishing, a publishing House dedicated to helping authors put out the best written, and marketing products for their literary work, possible.

This tour is a surprise tour, which means the authors knew nothing about it until it started!  This is our gift to them to show our appreciation of their work, their dedication to putting out the great written word, and also a big THANK YOU for allowing us to showcase and promote them.

This is a 3 Author/7 Day/40 Blog Tour!  Yes, for 7 days, The Religion, Rage & w(R)iting Blog Tour will sit on 40 blogs!  And for 7 days, on 40 blogs, you will get a tiny tid-bit of something related to Religion, so that you never forget OUR LADY OF VICTORY, the rage of people, such as that displayed in SHADOW OF THE DRILL, and w(R)iting tips to help you POLISH YOUR PROSE! (Click on each book title to find out more about it)

This will be a fun tour, an inspirational tour, a delightful tour which has been designed to enlighten you, entertain you and help you overcome those feelings which bind us daily and keeps us from growing from point A to point B.  Each day as you stop by each blog to find out what bit of inspiration is being shared, we ask that you take the time to leave a comment for the authors, visit their blogs, Follow them on Twitter and FB, and last but not least, please PICK UP A COPY OF THEIR BOOKS!  They are all 5 star reads!  And this tour wouldn’t be complete, if you didn’t check out The Religion, Rage & w(R)iting Book Trailer!  (Please note:  these bits and quotes were not taken from the author’s books).

On this stop, we want you to dwell on this:

 ​​”Novels begin not on the page, but in meditation and daydreaming – in thinking, not writing.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates​

Have You Discovered Indie Author John Howell?

I am thrilled to host indie author John Howell on his current blog tour! I invite you to meet this talented writer in his own words. Take it away, John!

This is the Seventh stop on what has been a fantastic tour as a Rave Reviews Spotlight Author. If you would like to be chosen for this honor you need to be a member. To find out how go to the website http://ravereviewsbynonniejules.wordpress.com/ and read all about it. You can also see all my tour stops listed under Spotlight Authors.

We authors make some conscious choices regarding how we want our stories to be constructed. We may not plan every feature, but we certainly have a rough idea of where we want the story to go. We also make conscious decisions on how the conventions of storytelling are to be handled. We choose the voice and the tense. We decide the use and role of dialog and prose. In short all the decisions that go into the story are usually made prior to the first opening line. From there, the entire story will take on the attributes given by the author.

As I indicated my POV of choice is the first person. I couple this with the present tense.  As you can imagine I spend many hours of editing making sure all the tenses match up. Any time there is a flashback I have to make sure the tense reflects the past. Sometimes is would be fun to do a prolonged flashback in the present tense but, unfortunately, such an experiment would confuse the reader to the point of distraction. The net result would be a frustrated reader which we all want to avoid. So I have not done that kind of experiment but sometimes the past tense creeps into the present unconsciously. It takes a sharp eye to find those little whoopsies and so editing becomes critical.

The other choice I make is how to handle dialog tags. I prefer to use the word “say or says” almost exclusively on those occasions where I feel I need to clarify who is talking. I avoid the long drawn out tags that tend to become examples of overwriting. Let me give you an example. “Say Donnie I think you ought to give that toy back to Marie,” I indicate while holding the ironing board against the wall. As you can see the discussion now has some stage work connected to it? I would do this example this way. “Say Donnie you ought to give that toy back to Marie,” I say. Leaning against the ironing board, I’m hoping my words have some effect of the little tyke. Although not perfect the dialog is a separate entity from the action.

In addition I don’t try to place modifiers on dialog tags to express anger or other emotions. I prefer to write the scene in such a way so the reader can sense how the characters are interacting.

So here is another excerpt which will give you a better idea. This is another part of Chapter one of My GRL

Excerpt:

After about five minutes discussion with the doctor, I now understand I had been hit on the head by a soft object specifically designed to knock someone out, but not cause serious contusions or brain damage. The term “blackjack” was mentioned. Even though the doctor is still talking, I am hardly listening since I have a big question brewing. I want to ask why the hell someone would want to knock me out when my mind is flooded by a flash of memory. Shit, my inner self is talking. I was walking with Gerry when a couple of guys came up to us. I don’t really know what happened next. I’m sure we were approached by the two guys, but that’s all I remember. I need to ask the doctor a bigger question than whom or why would someone want to knock me out.

“Where’s Gerry?”

Dr. Samuels stops talking and looks at me as if I had just fallen through a hole in the roof on the end of a repelling line, dressed in a Ninja outfit.

I ignore his petrified look and continue, “I was with Gerry . . . Gerry Starnes last night, and I just remembered she was there when the two guys came up to us.” I know I am beginning to ramble. I need to know where she is. “She will be able to tell me what happened.”

Dr. Samuels looks down at the chart on his lap and I immediately know something is wrong.

“What’s the problem?” I ask softly.

Dr. Samuels looks up with a crinkled brow. His mouth opens a couple of times before he says anything. He finally allows the words to escape, “I am very sorry to tell you that Gerry was shot and did not make it. She was shot outside the Sandbar.”

I cannot process what the doctor just said and ask him to please repeat what he told me. He is very embarrassed and again tells me Gerry has been killed. I cannot believe my ears. I am trying to understand, but can’t put together why anyone would want to kill Gerry. She is . . . was a really sweet person, and we met a month ago while I was looking to buy a boat when I first arrived on the Island.

 

My GRL can be found:

US –  http://www.amazon.com/John-W.-Howell/e/B00HMRWO6C

Canada –  http://www.amazon.ca/My-GRL-John-W-Howell-ebook/dp/B00HV3QECW/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1406542498&sr=1-2

UK –  http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-W.-Howell/e/B00HMRWO6C

Australia –   http://www.amazon.com.au/My-GRL-John-W-Howell-ebook/dp/B00HV3QECW/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1406542498&sr=1-2

Barnes and Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-grl-john-w-howell/1118199518?ean=9781625530592

iBooks – https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/my-grl/id803503649?mt=11

Kobo – http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/my-grl

Martin Sisters Publishing http://www.martinsisterspublishing.com

I can be reached:

Web: http://www.johnwhowell.com

E-mail: Johnhowell.wave@gmail.com