Getting to Know Author Larry Landgraf! @riverrmann

Greetings, readers! Today, I am introducing you to Larry Landgraf, author of Tales from the Riverside, The Four Seasons Series, and many other great books. Larry writes in both fiction and non-fiction genres. So, without further ado, here’s Larry. . .

Bio:

 

Larry Landgraf is a rough and tough swamp dweller who lives along the middle Texas Gulf Coast. In seventy years, he has moved two miles to the other end of the same property. He can be found barefoot most of the time. Larry has nearly died so many times, he’s lost count. You’ll find some of the death-defying stories in Tales from the Riverside.

Larry is the father of three grown children who have given him eight grandchildren. Larry divorced in 2008 and brought his new love, Ellen, to the swamp to live in 2016. He teaches her the ways of the swamp while she teaches him more than he ever imagined. For an in depth view into Larry’s life, you won’t want to miss his videos:

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHAl2COVDWFIpDB_B8AkoRp3iiaXaKCaC

 

Larry is on his third career. After college, he began his commercial fishing profession. When that played out, he started his own general contracting business. After a serious on-the-job injury, he turned to writing. He currently has ten very unique, award-winning books on Amazon including four screenplays. Many have said his Four Seasons Series books would make great movies so he took it upon himself to write a screenplay for each. He is optimistic one or more will be made into movies. A Tempest in Texas, based on Into Autumn (book 1 of the series) made finalist in the New York Screenwriting Festival.

 

Amazon review snippets:

 

Tales from the Riverside

 

“Not only does Mr. Landgraf write about the dangers of the swamp, but also shows us its unique beauty.”

 

“The stories are delivered without pretensions or artifice, exactly as you might hear them from Landgraf’s very lips should you visit.”

 

“I felt like I was sitting on Mr. Landgraf’s back porch enjoying a conversation filled with his wit and wisdom.”

 

Four Seasons Series – Into Autumn, Into Spring, Into Winter, and Into Summer

 

“I recommend this series for those who enjoy an end of world scenarios, romance, family, survival skills and human nature.”

 

“I was eager to begin reading “Into Spring” having read and enjoyed the first book in this series so much. There are times when the next book in a series can let me down. This is NOT one of those times.”

 

“Rarely has the first and second book of a new series been so enjoyable, riveting and compelling as Into Autumn and Into Spring.”

 

How to Be a Smart SOB Like Me

 

“The book was rude at times, but I guess that is what it takes to make people change.”

 

“A genial, enjoyable and insightful work by a quite terrific writer.”

 

“If your feelings get hurt easily or you can’t handle the truth very well then do yourself a favor and read the book anyway, it ain’t going to hurt.”

You can find all of Larry’s books on Amazon here:

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=larry+landgraf&sprefix=Larry+Landgraf%2Caps%2C806&crid=2SC9416D5H8CY

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HISTORYTELLER Scavenger Hunt!

***THE HUNT IS OVER! CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNER, CHRIS KEMP-PHILIP!***

Welcome to Historytellers Scavenger Hunt! This is a hunt dedicated to novels historically set in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, where all genre are welcome. You’ll get the opportunity to discover new authors, new stories, and to meet and talk to other readers who love this time period—not to mention that you’ll have the opportunity to win the grand prize. What is the grand prize, you ask? This includes digital copies of all the novels participating in the hunt.

The hunt will be online, today only, 17 March 2019, from 00:00 to 23:59 EST.

Go to the Historytellers Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. 

  

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the Historytellers Scavenger Hunt page.

 

***THE SCAVENGER HUNT***

Directions: I’ve included my lucky number on this post (You will spot it!). All my fellow authors participating in the hunt will include a lucky number on their posts. Collect the these numbers and add them up.

Entry Form: When you have that lucky total number, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Anyone can take part. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday 17 March 23:59 EST. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

LET THE HUNT BEGIN!

***Greetings! I am Beem Weeks***

Beem Weeks here. Born and raised in Michigan, USA. I’m an indie author, blogger, blog talk radio host, Social Media Director for Fresh Ink Group, and reviews coordinator/Rave Waves producer for Rave Reviews Book Club. I have written many short stories, essays, poems, and the historical fiction/coming-of-age novel Jazz Baby. I have also released Slivers of Life: A Collection of Short Stories and Strange Hwy: Short Stories. My current work-in-progress is a novel entitled The Secret Collector, set in 1910. I live to create with the written word.

 

 

WEBSITE

AMAZON

GOODREADS

***JAZZ BABY***

While all of Mississippi bakes in the scorching summer of 1925, sudden orphanhood wraps its icy embrace around Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten, a young, pretty teen.

Taken in by an aunt bent on ridding herself of this unexpected burden, Baby Teegarten plots her escape using the only means at her disposal: a voice that brings church ladies to righteous tears, and makes both angels and devils take notice. “I’m going to New York City to sing jazz,” she brags to anybody who’ll listen. But the Big Apple—well, it’s an awful long way from that dry patch of earth she’d always called home.

So when the smoky stages of New Orleans speakeasies give a whistle, offering all sorts of shortcuts, Emily Ann soon learns it’s the whorehouses and opium dens that can sidetrack a girl and dim a spotlight…and knowing the wrong people can snuff it out.

Jazz Baby just wants to sing—not fight to stay alive.

BUY LINKS:

A few words about Jazz Baby.

Jazz Baby is set in the summer of 1925. The locations drift between a little town in Mississippi called Rayford, and New Orleans, Louisiana. The story is told from the point of view of a young teenage girl named Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten. Emily has been blessed with an incredible voice for a young white girl—she sounds like a soulful black woman when she belts out church spirituals. But Baby doesn’t want to sing just spirituals. It’s jazz that gets her motor running. When both parents are taken from her early in the story, all she has left in this world is an aunt who really isn’t up to raising a rebellious teenager, and her talent as a singer. This talent—as well as her beauty—catches the eyes of those who might help her as well as those who would hurt her.

The idea for this story came from multiple sources. There are elements that came about through stories my grandfather told when I was a child. His stories didn’t make it into the book, but the era and the environment were certainly influenced by his tales. The main character is based on a composite of three girls I knew in my teenage years. These girls were eager to live life, reckless in their pursuits, and often foolish where common sense would have been better served.

Emily is a curious girl. She’s curious about people, and about the world in which she resides. And she’s curious about sex and the power of her budding sexuality, and the various taboos attached to such forbidden fruit. But sex, to her understanding, isn’t about relationships or commitment. It’s about urges, and about moments in an afternoon or an evening. While traversing the seedy underbelly of New Orleans, Emily comes to understand that sex is often a currency. It can be used to bribe the wills of others, or it can be a means to put a few dollars in a girl’s pocket. And while Emily personally rejects such ideas, New Orleans is full of people with ideas of their own—ideas she may or may not be able to resist.

I sought to create a character that is at once fierce, independent, and determined, yet vulnerable, naïve, and dependent on others for her very survival. I want readers to come away with mixed feelings for this character—caring for the girl, while shaking their heads at her dangerous—even stupid—endeavors. I want her to be real. And to be real, there must be flaws. Judging by many of the reviews, I believe I’ve accomplished this goal.

My lucky number is 3. You need to add it to all the other lucky numbers.

Add up all the lucky numbers and you’ll have the secret code to enter for the grand prize!

***CONTINUE THE HUNT***

To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author, Jennifer Lamont Leo!

GOOD LUCK!!

LINKS YOU’LL NEED!

This is number: 3
The link to the BLOG NEXT IN LINE: http://jenniferlamontleo.com/blog/
Link to HOW TO HUNT: https://sarahzama.theoldshelter.com/historytellers-how-to-hunt/
Link to the AUTHORS PAGE: https://sarahzama.theoldshelter.com/historytellers-scavenger-hunt-the-authors/
Link to the ENTRY FORM: https://gleam.io/gH08g/historytellers-scavenger-hunt

 

 

HISTORYTELLERS Scavenger Hunt Begins on Sunday!

Greetings to one and all. Just a short piece here in preparation of the HISTORYTELLERS Scavenger Hunt that is slated to begin on Sunday. And guess what? You’re all invited to play along. The hunt features twelve authors in the historical fiction genre (1910s, 1920s, 1930s) . These authors have joined together to offer a bundle of their books to a lucky reader—which just might be you!

Click HERE to get more details!

If you’re game, why not help us to spread the word?

SHARE THIS TWEET:  Are you a reader of #historicalfiction set in the first decades of the 1900s? Then we are on the same page! Join the #Historytellers scavenger hunt for a chance to win 12 novels set in your favourite period! http://sumo.ly/12u1T #historicalfiction #amreading #freeebooks

Now, to my fellow authors involved. We’re testing the circuit to make sure that everything will go smoothly on Sunday. Clues and the form to enter will be up only on Sunday. Not before and not after.

TO MY FELLOW AUTHORS

This is the link to the blog next to me in the hunt http://jenniferlamontleo.com/blog/

 

Welcome to the “WORLD UNKNOWN” Blog Tour! @Jinlobify

Today, I am privileged and honored to host Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko here on The Indie Spot. Joy is one of the most supportive members in the RRBC community. It’s time to return the love and show some support for her today. 

Take it away, Joy. . .

Day 5:

 This is the fifth day of my ten days tour.

Fear of writing was not the only thing that dogged me. I had also the fear of rejection. You see, the first ever books I published were commissioned. I was in Italy, and this young publisher wanted to create a sensation with publishing a book by a black African woman. I had written a film script which this young publisher thought would be a film hit. It was not! And the second book following that was not a hit either.

Many years later when I wrote my first book in the English language, trusting my past writing experience, I boldly sent my manuscript to traditional publishers and waited. One after the other rejections rolled in. I waited two years before I tried again. I revised and sent out more manuscripts to publishers. But after more rejections I decided to go it alone. This is where we are today! An Indie author was born. Every disappointment is a blessing! Believe me, this saying is true.

The Rules:

I have randomly chosen a short snippet from a story in my book for you to read each day of my tour.

I will choose only three winners from the correct matches. The winner with nine correct matches will be gifted with a $15 Amazon gift card and an eBook copy of your choice from any of my books. The second with eight correct matches will be gifted with a $10 Amazon gift card and an eBook copy of your choice from my books. The third winner with seven correct matches will be with gifted a $5. Amazon gift card and an eBook copy of your choice from my books.

Now the catch! If you follow the tour and read the snippets, I would hope that you would buy and read the complete stories and leave a review of the book after the tour.

This tour is supported by another of my books; Pregnant Future. If you want to read that one too, that will be great. However, the focus will be on Vagaries of Life: And Girls’ Talk. Good reading!

Vagaries of Life: And Girls’ Talk

The Book Cover

Snippet 5:

“You are a good man, Doctor Joe. In spite of my apparent unhappiness throughout this marriage, you still treated me well. I can never thank you enough, but I deserve to experience some happiness—the kind you experienced with me; the kind that made you ignore every bad thing I did, and you still smiled and treated me and everyone else with kindness. I’m not a bad person. Life just threw me a bad curve. I can’t even blame my father anymore. Only God will judge him.” She turned to us as if to plead. “Kids, I hope you will understand.”

“Your mother was treated very badly,” Papa said. “And I was instrumental in it. I thought that if I loved her as hard as I did, she would forgive me for snatching her away. It was I who bribed your father to behave as he did. You must forgive him. The fact that I was a doctor, and Obinna was just a fledgling young man looking to find his feet, sealed the deal.” He looked at Ma. “I stole you right from under his nose. I thought that marrying you was my victory, but I didn’t win. I had no idea how deeply you two felt for each other …. and for that, I am sorry.”

Obinna had said nothing all this while. He quietly listened to Papa confessing his sins. In the end, Mama wished us well and left with Obinna.

About the Author

Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko

 Joy has written and published extensively on national and international scholarly                     journals, magazines, and newspapers. 

Her first short story I Come from Utopia was published in African Voices, Spring/                        Summer, 2007, pg. 18. Since then, she has published numerous others in RAVE SOUP FOR THE WRITER’S SOUL Anthology, Vols. 1 & 2.

Mirror of Our Lives: Voices of Four Igbo Women was published in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Contest in 2012. She has also two books published in the Italian language. The First titled: Io Odio, Tu Odi, & Cinema E Africa Nera, are both by Edizione, Tindalo.

The Legend of the Walking Dead: Igbo Mythologies, is a journey into the mysteries of life and death of the Igbos of Nigeria was published in 2014

In Pregnant Future: No One Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring, her latest Novel, Justina is the story of every young woman who found herself alone in the world to fend for herself. It is the story of the pitfalls that await such a woman. It is the story of survival

Her latest book, A collection of Short Stories, titled: Vagaries of Life: And Girls’ Talk was published in December, 2018.

Pregnant Future – Blurb

 Justina was a fighter. And, although it seemed the world was against her and her future was destined for failure …she persevered in the face of it all.

The future that was being thrown in her face, was not the one she had dreams of …and if she wanted to get her feet on the right path, she was going to have to show the world her strength. But, does she?

Will she have the will to make it to the end, unscarred?

What would you do if you knew what the future had in store for you?

Would you run towards it with open arms, or would you run away and never look back?

Justina must make a choice …before life chooses for her.

 

Links to my Social Network:

 My Web Site

 FaceBook

 Goodreads

 Twitter

 LinkedIn

 

To follow along with the rest of the tour, please visit the author’s tour page on the 4WillsPublishing site.  If you’d like to book your own blog tour and have your book promoted in similar grand fashion, please click HERE.  

Lastly, Joy is a member of the best book club ever – RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB {#RRBC}! If you’re looking for amazing support as an author, or if you simply love books, JOIN US! We’d love to have you!

Thanks for supporting this author and her work!

 

Welcome to “FINDING BILLY BATTLES TRILOGY” Blog Tour! @JHawker69

Today, I have the honor and pleasure of hosting author, fellow Blog Talk Radio host, RRBC member, and friend Ronald E. Yates here on The Indie Spot. Please give a warm welcome to Ron by leaving a comment below and sharing his post.

Take it away, Ron. . .

Finding Billy Battles
Excerpt from the Prologue

My first meeting with William Fitzroy Raglan Battles was on a warm June afternoon in 1958. We sat on the veranda of a red-brick dormitory building on the grounds of the Wadsworth old soldiers’ home in Leavenworth, Kansas. Battles was really old, and the truth be known, he kind of frightened me, though I didn’t let on that he did. I was only twelve at the time, and I didn’t even want to be there.
Chances are you have never heard of William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, and there is no reason why you should have. I know I hadn’t—until that humid afternoon in the waning days of the Eisenhower era. Today, I often wonder how I could not have known about Battles, how a life as full and audacious as his could have gone unnoticed for so many generations. God, how I wish I could have known him better. But his life—as was no doubt the case with that of millions of other anonymous participants in history—was simply lost, crushed underfoot in the unrelenting stride of time.
Of course, there was no way I could know at the time that this meeting would trigger a series of events that would lead me on an extraordinary journey into the past and change my life in ways I could never imagine. When I look back on that first meeting, I wonder why I was so fearful. William Fitzroy Raglan Battles was not a particularly menacing man. But there was a definite hardness to him—the kind of stern, leathery countenance that you get from taking, and perhaps giving, too much punishment over a lifetime. I particularly recall his eyes. They were the color of pale slate, and almost as hard.
Maybe that was what frightened me—those eyes and the way they cut into you.
It was my grandmother who had insisted that I meet the man with those flinty gray eyes and that gristly exterior. One day she simply announced that we were going to drive to Leavenworth, to meet her father—my great-grandfather. That winter, my father had suffered a fatal heart attack, and my mother thought it would be a good idea if I spent the summer with my cousins on their farm near Troy, Kansas. Most of the time, I roamed the hills by myself, riding horses and occasionally helping out with the chores. I wasn’t thrilled about spending an hour in the car with my grandmother driving the forty-five miles to Leavenworth. First, she drove really slowly; and second, I didn’t even know I had a great-grandfather.
Nobody, including my grandmother, had ever really spoken about him—at least not in my presence. Why this was the case I was to learn much later when I was older and could “understand such things,” as my grandmother put it.
The only explanation for this visit that I was able to extract at the time from my grandmother was that she wanted me to go with her because the home was commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, and my great-grandfather and several thousand other Kansans had played a significant role in it.
Big deal. The Spanish-American War. Who cares? I thought as my grandmother maneuvered her pastel-blue 1957 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham south down State Highway 7 through the undulating farmland of northeast Kansas and into Leavenworth. The Spanish-American War was ancient history. And besides, being around so many old people made me nervous. Death had taken on a new meaning for me. It was no longer some abstract event that happened to others. I had seen and felt its uncompromising manifestation when the emergency crew carried my father from our home several months before. And now I would be in the presence of someone who could die at any time.
Those were the kinds of self-indulgent thoughts that pranced through my adolescent brain that day. Today I know a lot more about my great-grandfather. The biggest regret of my life is that I was too young and too obtuse to understand what kind of human history database my great-grandfather was. I would only learn that many years later when, as a journalism student at the University of Kansas, I began to appreciate the value of personal narratives from people who could speak firsthand about events I could only read about.
That’s the way it is when we become absorbed with history. We discover that the events and people of antiquity are not ghosts, or simply lifeless words on a page, or fading sepia images. They have an essence we can touch and hear and even speak to if only we have the right medium—someone who has experienced the past with passion and perceptiveness and has the keen senses with which to make it come alive to those who, until that moment, could only fantasize about it.
In this case, that medium was a rare individual who lived during what might have been the most tumultuous years in American history. Luckily, my grandmother, intractable and single-minded as she was, made sure that I would not forget this event or my great-grandfather.

Ronald E. Yates is an award winning author of historical fiction and action/adventure novels, including the popular and highly-acclaimed Finding Billy Battles trilogy. His extraordinarily accurate books have captivated fans around the world who applaud his ability to blend fact and fiction.

 

Ron is a former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and Professor Emeritus of Journalism at the University of Illinois where he was also the Dean of the College of Media. His award-winning book, “The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles,” is the second in his Finding Billy Battles trilogy of novels and was published in June 2016. The first book in the trilogy, “Finding Billy Battles,” was published in 2014. Book #3 of the trilogy (The Lost Years of Billy Battles) was published in June 2018.

 

As a professional journalist, Ron lived and worked in Japan, Southeast Asia, and both Central and South America where he covered several history-making events including the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia; the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing; and wars and revolutions in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, among other places. His work resulted in multiple journalism awards, including three Pulitzer nominations and awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Inter-American Press Association, to name a few.

 

BOOK PURCHASE LINKS:

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KHDVZI/-/e/B00KQAYMA8/

TRILOGY LINK: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DNDWHH6/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

BARNES & NOBLE: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/finding%20billy%20battles/_/N-8q8

MY WEBSITE & BLOG:  https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ronaldyatesbooks/

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/jhawker69

PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/bookmarketingglobalnetwork/author-ronald-e-yates-books/

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronyates/

To follow along with the rest of the tour, please visit the author’s tour page on

the 4WillsPublishing site.  If you’d like to book your own blog tour and have your book

promoted in similar grand fashion, please click HERE.  

Lastly, Ron is a member of the best book club ever – RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB {#RRBC}! If

you’re looking for amazing support as an author, or if you simply love books, JOIN US! We’d

love to have you!

Thanks for supporting this author and his work!