Multi-media indie publisher Fresh Ink Group is running a half-price sale on their video book trailers. Regularly $198, get yours now for just $99. Fresh Ink Group can customize a video to your specifications and needs. Voice overs, music, live action video, and animation! Fresh Ink Group does it all.
Stop by and see what Fresh Ink Group can do for you!
Now, The Starchild Trilogy by Robert G. Williscroft is complete! In book one, Slingshot, three scientist/engineers reach for the stars as they blend their skills with a host of skilled colleagues to create the world’s first Space Launch-Loop. A team of young eco-terrorists will go to any length to halt the project. One woman is determined to scoop the story, reporting events to a watching world.
Slingshot ranges from Seattle’s financial district, to the ocean bottom off Baker Island, to the edge of space, and across the vast panorama of an Equatorial Pacific.
It’s a love story, a gender-bender, and a mystery about a missing aviatrix, a conspiracy, and a true-believer. It’s about high finance, intrigue, heroism, fanaticism, betrayal…and humanity’s surge into outer space.
In book two, The Starchild Compact, an international team ventures to Saturn’s moon Iapetus to verify it really is a derelict starship. They discover the Founders, descendants of the starship’s builders who arrived in our Solar System 150,000 years ago. Together with the Founders, the explorers advance Founder science with momentous implications for the entire Solar System, paving the way for a joint push to the distant reaches of the Galaxy. But, a Persian Caliphate stowaway sabotages the mission, hoping to destroy science that he believes violates Islam.
The Starchild Compact blends tomorrow’s science with human foibles, fears, beliefs, and political intrigue, speculating on how civilization might develop while traveling on a generational starship, and how modern humans might interact with remnants of that civilization.
In book three, The Iapetus Federation, besieged Israelis on Earth make their way to Mars as the Federation expands throughout the Solar System. While global Jihad rages on Earth, putting millions to the sword, the Starchild Institute develops wormhole transportation. But will this new technology be ready in time to rescue all that is left of the United States, the beleaguered Lone Star Conservancy, and remnants of other cultures around the globe?
From hand-to-hand combat in the oceans, to battles on Earth’s surface, to struggles in interplanetary space, our heroes fight to survive and expand to the far reaches of the universe.
Robert G. Williscroft is an adventurer, polar explorer, deep-sea diver, nuclear submariner, scientist, and bestselling, award-winning author. His stories portray the accurate science and precise engineering that appeals to hard science-fiction buffs, but The Starchild Trilogy is for everyone who loves an epic tale, a grand journey by men and women who loom larger than life as they work, play, and love.
Make The Starchild Trilogy your own, with individual hardcover, softcover, audiobook, and all major ebook editions worldwide – or collect the entire set for one epic journey.
By Robert G. Williscroft, The Starchild Trilogy!
I recently shared 7 Reasons for Using Videos in Your Social Marketing Campaigns. Many commented that it’s hard using YouTube effectively–a statement I agree with, as I’m pretty inexperienced in its use myself. Which is why I hope you find today’s guest post by Mahendra Bajiya useful! Mahendra is an entrepreneur and blogger who uses YouTube […]
via 4 Useful Tips to Promote a Book on YouTube More Effectively — Nicholas C. Rossis
Sliver of Life: A Collection of Short Stories is now available for just .99 on Kindle for a limited time. Grab a copy before it’s over!
“There is no time to lose when crafting a short story. In order to hook the reader, the author must instantly bring the narrator’s voice to life and create a compelling drama. In each of the Slivers, Beem Weeks plunges us into an intimate emotional encounter faster than Alice down the rabbit hole.” –S. Rose, author of Bridge Ices Before Road
These twenty short stories are a peek into individual lives caught up in spectacular moments in time. Children, teens, mothers, and the elderly each have stories to share. Readers witness tragedy and fulfillment, love and hate, loss and renewal. Historical events become backdrops in the lives of ordinary people, those souls forgotten with the passage of time. Beem Weeks tackles diverse issues running the gamut from Alzheimer’s disease to civil rights, abandonment to abuse, from young love to the death of a child. Long-hidden secrets and notions of revenge unfold at the promptings of rich and realistic characters; plot lines often lead readers into strange and dark corners. Within Slivers of Life, Weeks proves that everybody has a story to tell—and no two are ever exactly alike.
With the 2017 RRBC Holiday Train Book Trailer Block Party in full swing, today is one of my stops. All you have to do is follow the link to the video, leave a comment on YouTube, and you’ll be entered to win a signed copy Slivers of Life and a $10 iTunes gift card.
And don’t forget to follow the tour each day for great trailers and more chances to win fantastic prizes. Just click HERE to follow the tour!
To see the video on YouTube, click HERE!
Greetings to everybody stopping by. Today is one of my stops on the 2017 RRBC Holiday Train Book Trailer Block Party. Just follow the link to the video, post a comment on YouTube, and you’ll be in the running to win a signed paperback copy of Jazz Baby and a $10 iTunes gift card.
And don’t forget to follow the tour each day for great trailers and more chances to win fantastic prizes. Just click HERE to follow the tour!
To see the video on YouTube, Click HERE!
I decided to have a little fun with this post. In the years since Jazz Baby first saw publication, some readers have been curious as to what happened to Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten. Did she ever make it to New York? Were her dreams of singing jazz professionally ever realized? Did she find success? Well, presented here, is an interview with Baby Teegarten, which takes place ten years after the novel ends. This is meant to be a glimpse into the life our protagonist may have created for herself.
April 15, 1935
She chose the meeting place. I could lie and tell you readers that I arrived thirty minutes early just to get a feel for the room. But the truth of the matter is, I get a little nervous with this one. Most of you have been reading my column for the better part of 15 years. You know the names that have graced my page: Babe Ruth, Harry Houdini, Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd—even Charlie Chaplin agreed to a sit-down chat back in 1924.
Still, this one is different.
The she I’m referring to is popular jazz vocalist Baby Teegarten. They don’t come any bigger than Baby these days. Three consecutive years as the country’s highest-paid entertainer proves this fact.
I lock down a table at the rear of McSorley’s Tavern on East 7th Street—which also happens to hold a strict policy for not allowing women inside.
But Baby Teegarten, well, she’s not just any woman.
“This is her neighborhood,” the fellow tending bar tells me. “She has a swanky place overlooking Central Park. Bought it from Babe Ruth himself.”
It’s the Babe who introduced Baby to McSorley’s.
“Nobody bothers her in here,” the barkeep explains. “Besides, if she’s pals with the Babe, she’s all right by us.”
I knock back a Scotch and soda. It’s what steadies my nerves. Only Mae West ever had me taking a nip before an interview.
I’ve seen Baby perform a dozen times easily—this going back to those first shows she did at Swelby’s Joint. Two thousand patrons lined up every night just to witness the Baby. She’d been just shy of her fourteenth birthday back in those early shows. But any fool with eyes and ears could tell she was special.
Oh, sure, we all recall the backlash at allowing a mere child up on those club stages. But nobody could—or would—stand in that girl’s way. No, sir. She’d have busted any full-grown man in the chops, should one be so bold as to try.
Prompt, this one. She arrives at 3 o’clock sharp, with her entourage in tow. By entourage I mean her manager, Abe Horowitz, and Job Pritchett, husband of Baby.
Mr. Pritchett, he’s a large fellow, to be sure. Tall and wide, real sturdy; the sort of man who likely spent his youth throwing bales of hay around the farm, maybe even punching cows—literally. Hollywood handsome: blond hair worn messy, pale blue eyes, an easy laugh. He’s more threatening than threatened. Famous in his own right, he’s known the world over for his paintings and sculptures.
Baby is a true vision, greeting patrons by name up by the front door. She’s resplendent in a violet-colored summer dress that falls just below her knees. Diamonds sparkle on her fingers and wrists, her ears, at her delicate throat. There’s even a gold bracelet on her right ankle.
Eyes as green as emeralds track me down in my corner.
There’s a subtle sweetness in her scent.
Lilacs.
“Hey, there,” she says. “I’m supposed to talk with you today?”
I’m lost for words in this moment, so I just nod like a mute fool.
“You don’t mind it here, do you?” Her accent is rich, wrapping her every word in a southern twang thicker than molasses—and just as sweet.
My voice carries a slight tremble, but I manage a quick, “No, ma’am.”
Baby Teegarten settles on a bar stool next to mine. “This is Mister Pritchett, my husband,” she says.
Job Pritchett’s massive hand takes mine with a gentle squeeze. “Good to meet you,” he tells me in a boyish tone. A lucky fellow, this one.
Abe Horowitz needs no introduction: Club owner, manager of a handful of singers and musicians. Connected. He mined gold when he discovered Baby Teegarten.
Job’s lips brush Baby’s lips. His voice comes soft, almost a soothing thing. “Me and Abe will be up at the bar—if you need us.”
It passes there in the space between them: his subtle caress of her cheek, her gentle squeeze of his hand. These two are infatuated with one another.
“Lord a-mercy, I love that boy,” she says, once we’re alone. “We got our tenth anniversary coming this summer.” She waves her right hand in my face. “He just got me this one right here.”
She means the full five carat diamond set in white gold on her ring finger.
“What does it feel like to make more money than the president of the United States?” I ask, leading us into the interview.
Her petite shoulders give up a shrug. “Just means I can buy whatever I want—’Cept Jobie’s the one buys my jewelry. That boy makes nearly as much as me.”
She’s a tiny thing, maybe five foot two. I’m guessing it might take an extra big lunch to push her past a hundred pounds. And though she doesn’t mention it, this day is her twenty-third birthday.
I ask, “When did you first start singing?”
“Since I can recollect. Pastor Pritchett first had me up in front of the congregation when I was just five. That’s when I took to singing for other folks who ain’t just my kin.”
“Mississippi, right?”
Her head tips a short nod. “Down Rayford—up a piece from Biloxi.”
“A Delta girl, huh? You pick cotton down there?”
A silver cigarette case finds her hand. “Picked a bunch. Mister Kuiper used to pay me a dime for each sack I managed. I made a dollar a day most days.”
“Doesn’t sound like much.”
“It does to a little girl ain’t got much of nothin’.”
A Lucky Strike settles between her lips. Smoke rolls from her dainty nose.
Questions my editor suggested filter through the small talk. “You’re working a lot with George Gershwin. How’d that come about?”
“Georgie’s sweet,” she says, sending smoke rings chasing after her words. “His family knows Mister Horowitz’s family. He liked my voice and wrote some songs for me—’Cept I’m the one writes the words, since I’m the one has to sing ’em.”
Sales figures wedge their way into the conversation—nobody sells more phonograph records than Baby Teegarten.
“A million,” she offers. Says it as if she doesn’t really believe it herself. “I mean, a person can reach into his pocket, grab a hundred of something, and toss it on the floor and say, ‘Yep. That’s a hundred.’ But nobody can throw a million anything on the floor and count that.”
She’s had three of them reach that plateau in recent years.
“Where’s your favorite place to play?” I ask, scratching off another one from my editor.
“Paris is nice.” Her hand gives up an abbreviated wave, catching the barkeep’s attention. “What’s so amazing there is, those folks don’t speak no English, but they sure know all the words to my songs.”
A bottle arrives at our table. Not exactly what I expected.
“Co-cola,” she says, drawing a long pull. “Mister Horowitz don’t like for me to drink liquor while I’m gabbing with newspaper fellas. He says I just might talk too much.”
I feign shock. “Secrets?”
There’s an endearing sweetness in her giggle. “Oh, I got plenty of secrets.”
“Horowitz really looks after you, huh?”
“He’s the best. Like a second daddy. Doesn’t let anybody get close enough to take advantage.”
She spends a lot of time on the road, traveling by train, singing in places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Kansas City. Big theaters, is where she sings these days. Gone are the smoke-filled clubs with dance floors and drunken revelers.
“I like the theaters,” she says. “And I really like seeing different places. But I do miss the New York clubs. I could do two shows a night and be at home with Mister Pritchett by one in the morning. Now, I do one show for five thousand people—nobody drinking or dancing—a night at a hotel, then up before the devil and off to the train station and the next city.”
There’s a weary tone creeping into her answers. Well, maybe weary isn’t the right word. Cautious, perhaps.
“Do you ever take time off? Maybe stay home for a while?”
She does—but only because the men in her life force her to do so.
“Once Mister Pritchett and Mister Horowitz get together, they’re worse than two fathers.”
Baby Teegarten will soon add actress to her resume. She just this week signed to play a role in a new James Cagney movie.
“It’s only a small part,” she explains. “I play a singer in a jazz club. I’ll sing two new songs they wrote just for the film.”
“Any lines?”
Just one. But that’s fine by her. “I ain’t no movie star.”
No, she’s not. But that doesn’t stop the real movie stars from turning out wherever Baby Teegarten treads a stage. It’s fashionable to be seen at her shows.
“Jean Harlow got my autograph last summer in Chicago.” She says it like it’s a normal thing that happens to most people.
“How’d you come to be friendly with Babe Ruth?”
That shrug raises her shoulders again. “He came to my shows most nights he was in town—back when I still played the clubs. Once he decided to buy a house in the country, I bought his apartment.”
“I guess that makes you a Yankees fan, huh?”
It’s a playful thing, that sideways glance she throws at me. “Ain’t no self-respecting Mississippi girl gonna ever cheer on no Yankees.”
Abe Horowitz’s approach signals a wrap to our discussion. I’d been promised twenty minutes, Baby gave me thirty.
“Gotta get ready for the trip to Hollywood,” she says, gaining her feet.
She offers a handshake, which abruptly becomes a friendly hug.
Job Pritchett, arm around Baby’s shoulders, sweeps the girl away, following Abe Horowitz out the front door, into the crowd moving along 7th Street.
It takes a few moments for my head to clear itself of her scent, her voice, her very presence. It’s not a difficult thing to see why so many have fallen for this lovely young woman.
“She just has a way about her,” the barkeep says as I make my getaway.
She certainly does, I tell myself. She certainly does.
Once upon a time, authors, no matter the talent level, needed a big machine known as the publishing house, to get their work into the hands of readers across the globe. Publishing houses offered cash advances, secured shelf space in all the leading retail shops, and made sure the media received advance copies for the purpose of writing reviews of the project at hand.
Unfortunately, getting published by the big machine proved limited in potential for most writers. Your work wouldn’t even find its way to a publisher without first getting discovered by an agent. And even if you did manage to catch the eye of one of these middlemen, you still weren’t guaranteed that big advance, the prime spot on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, or the five star review from the New York Times. In fact, writing for 95% of those who fancied themselves authors was little more than a wishful fantasy.
But we are no longer living under the shadow of the big machine. If we want to write and be published, it’s an easy task. And that may not always be such a great thing. See, here’s the problem: Everybody is a writer today. That means the novel you spent months (or even years) writing is now in direct competition with two million other titles, all seeking the same readers.
While great opportunities are now within reach, the deep pockets of those large publishing houses are not. That means there likely won’t be a marketing team to plot our campaign for world domination. So we learn from one another. We find those things that work for us and mingle them with new ideas that may have worked for others. It’s the indie way.
One of the tools within our reach is the book trailer. Sure, YouTube seems flooded with videos touting this story or that one. But these sneak peeks work quite well for the movie industry. In fact, most of us determine the films we’ll pay to see based almost entirely on the trailers we watch. If done right, there is no reason book trailers can’t accomplish the very same results.
And how do we do it the right way? By making ours stand out from the million or so other clips already on social media. Offer the viewer something that’s visually appealing, that snags the attention and holds it until the very last frame. Even the music must be compelling, telling the story as much as the images do. But don’t just rely on simple music and still photos with blurbs splashed across them. Seek out that which is different.
Fresh Ink Group offers that which is different! We utilize video, animation, music, voice-overs, still photos, graphics unique to the project, and a large array of sound effects. If you want something more in your trailer, consider taking a look at Fresh Ink Group.
Location: Lansing, MI, USA
Daily Giveaways: Three (3) $10.00 iTunes gift cards. One to each of three winners.
Thank you so much for visiting my blog today! I am a participant in the Rave Reviews Book Club’s HOLIDAY TRAIN “BOOK TRAILER” BLOCK PARTY, which is running thru the entire month of November, 2016.
For my stop along this tour, I am giving away three prizes, and if you’d like a chance at winning one of them, please view my book trailer on YouTube right here: Slivers of Life. Then leave a comment! That’s all you have to do to have a chance at winning!!!
Winners will be announced daily here! Good luck to you and please, don’t forget to “LIKE” my trailer while you’re there, and also tweet it and share it on Facebook and your other social media forums before you leave. I’m so thankful to you in advance!
For more awesome chances to win daily prizes for the entire month of December, do check out the other stops along this tour here!
Greetings and welcome to Rave Reviews Book Club’s BACK-TO-SCHOOL BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY at The Indie Spot! Location: Lansing, Michigan, USA.
I invite you to check out my books and the book trailers that go with each title. I’ve included an excerpt of Jazz Baby and a short blurb for each book to help you become better acquainted with the stories!
722 Dauphine Street promised little in the way of excitement—from outward appearances. What once had been a Digby’s Department Store now went by the somewhat famous Crescent Club.
Revelers of every color, size, and persuasion lined the sidewalk out front, passing around flasks of bootleg hooch, eager for the doors to swing open so nighttime could finally begin.
Nobody paid us any mind as Tanyon and I split the crowd on our way down a side alley leading to the rear entrance.
Tanyon laid a coded knock against the heavy red door.
A fella’s chubby face filled the small peephole.
“I have Miss Teegarten with me,” said Tanyon to the man.
That door swung wide; entrance was granted.
Dozens of round tables lay scattered willy-nilly throughout the cavernous main room. A wide stage rose five feet above the floor. Four colored boys worked up a number I could sing in my sleep.
I said, “I’m ready,” drinking in a dream fixin’ to come true.
That chubby fella let go a laugh. “How’s about we open for business before you get started, huh?”
Waitresses lit candles and set ashtrays on each of those tables.
Tanyon snatched the one closest to the stage, and ordered a pint of bourbon from a dark-haired girl dressed out like a flapper.
“Tell me something,” I began to say.
’Cept Tanyon, he had an answer all lined up. “Your mama was not a whore—if that’s what you’re meaning to know.”
Fine enough by me.
Even if I really didn’t believe him.
Frank Rydekker himself brought Tanyon’s pint to our table. “So this is the little songbird,” said the short, stocky man, pulling me into a splash of orange glowing off a candle. “Can you sing any of these songs?”
My eyes tumbled down the list he presented. “I can sing ’em all,” I gladly admitted.
Rydekker nodded toward a big fella up near the bar and hollered, “Let ’em in, Bill!”
“Don’t be scared, Baby,” Tanyon said, handing me a go at that pint.
I raised the hooch to my lips, had a good pull. “Don’t call me Baby anymore.”
* * *
Cool blue dripped onto the stage from lights burning high above.
My body stood in its gathering puddle.
A boy on drums got us going with a slow shuffle that took up with the bass like a couple of long-time lovers knowing each other’s next move before it’s even been considered. Sullum Cass kissed his shiny saxophone with the breath of something painful and delicious, tossing delicate notes into the smoky air. When the boy on piano sprinkled all the right keys into the mixture, I eased my body against that skinny silver microphone stand, closed my eyes to the fractured night, and told all about that man done me wrong.
Everybody on that parquet dance floor caught on real quick. It’s me they stared at.
Me!
Emily Ann Teegarten.
And wasn’t a single one gave a tinker’s damn about my age or my station in life. Faces opened in welcoming smiles as wicked rhythms spun us all toward a whole new place—a place tucked up high as heaven.
Bodies shimmied and twirled at my feet.
One song blurred into another with nary enough time to breathe.
If I’d dropped dead then and there on that Big Easy stage, I’d have no real complaints. I reckon I’d tell the first angel I set eyes on I’d lived a full life.
I lived out my dream.
While all of Mississippi bakes in the scorching summer of 1925, sudden orphanhood wraps its icy embrace around pretty Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten, a young 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.
These twenty short stories are a peek into individual lives caught up in spectacular moments in time. Children, teens, mothers, and the elderly each have stories to share. Readers witness tragedy and fulfillment, love and hate, loss and renewal. Historical events become backdrops in the lives of ordinary people, those souls forgotten with the passage of time. Beem Weeks tackles diverse issues running the gamut from Alzheimer’s disease to civil rights, abandonment to abuse, from young love to the death of a child. Long-hidden secrets and notions of revenge unfold at the promptings of rich and realistic characters; plot lines often lead readers into strange and dark corners. Within Slivers of Life, Weeks proves that everybody has a story to tell—and no two are ever exactly alike.
Once again, thank you for stopping by. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and comments below. Good luck on winning my giveaways! I’ll see you at the next stop of this awesome BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY!
The Indie Spot! 