Sunday, March 4, 2012

In My Mailbox (16)



In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren. To see this weeks list of participants go here.

I had a great week, here is what I received in the mail:



Capitol Murders by Phillip Margolin
from the publisher (Harper)

Private investigator Dana Cutler and attorney Brad Miller have overcome more than a few daunting challenges and powerful enemies to see justice done. Against tremendous odds, they successfully unmasked an American president's involvement in a chain of murders. They also saved the life of a Supreme Court justice while foiling a conspiracy by rogue members of the CIA to fix a case headed for the court.

Now wicked threats old and new are about to bring them together once again. Convicted serial killer Clarence Little has escaped from death row in Oregon, and Brad receives threatening messages in D.C., where he is working for Senator Jack Carson, a high-ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A dead body, murdered according to Little's M.O., is found in the senator's Georgetown home, and Carson has disappeared. While Dana is in Oregon digging into Carson's shady background, a terrorist cell is poised to destroy a packed professional football stadium in one of the biggest attacks on American soil. As the senator's personal life begins to dovetail with the cell's evil plan, Brad and Dana will risk it all again to uncover the truth and save their country.

Phillip Margolin proves once more that he is a true master of suspense, delivering another high-octane thriller set in Washington's legendary corridors of power. Capitol Murder's breathtaking pace and electrifying twists will have old fans and newcomers racing to the final, stunning page.



Heroes for My Daughter by Brad Meltzer
from the publisher (Harper)

In Heroes for My Daughter, the New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer brings together the stories of fifty-five remarkable people, from Marie Curie and Rosa Parks to Stevie Wonder and Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci and Sally Ride to Jane Goodall and Billie Jean King--a collection of inspirational heroes from whom his daughter, and yours, can learn to lead an inspired and good life.

Heroes for My Daughter highlights a diverse set of individuals from across time and from all walks of life: artists and inventors, presidents and athletes, teachers and spiritual leaders, and scientists and explorers who have helped to make our lives better. Whether it's Helen Keller or Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank or Judy Blume, Theodore Roosevelt or the Three Stooges, Thurgood Marshall or the passengers on United Flight 93, their lives offer lessons to guide our daughters on their journey to adulthood--lessons sure to inspire them as they make their place as citizens in our society and the world.  Beautifully packaged for gift-giving, this charming collection includes short vignettes, quotations, and black-and-white photographs of each person featured.


The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks
from the publisher (St. Martin's Press)

Reading his own newspaper’s obituaries, veteran reporter Carter Ross comes across that of a woman named Nancy Marino, who was the victim of a hit-and-run while she was on the job delivering copies of that very paper, the Eagle-Examiner. Struck by the opportunity to write a heroic piece about an everyday woman killed too young, he heads to her wake to gather tributes and anecdotes. It’s the last place Ross expects to find controversy—which is exactly what happens when one of Nancy’s sisters convinces him that the accident might not have been accidental at all.

It turns out that the kind and generous Nancy may have made a few enemies, starting with her boss at the diner where she was a part-time waitress, and even including the publisher of the Eagle-Examiner. Carter’s investigation of this seemingly simple story soon has him in big trouble with his full-time editor and sometime girlfriend, Tina Thompson, not to mention the rest of his bosses at the paper, but he can’t let it go—the story is just too good, and it keeps getting better. But will his nose for trouble finally take him too far?

Brad Parks’s smart-mouthed, quick-witted reporter returns in The Girl Next Door—another action-packed entry in his award-winning series, written with an unforgettable mix of humor and suspense.



Fever by Joan Swan
from Good Choice Reading ARC Tours

When Dr. Alyssa Foster is taken hostage by a prison inmate, she knows she's in deep trouble. Not just because Teague Creek is desperate for freedom, but because the moment his fingers brush against her skin, Alyssa feels a razor-sharp pang of need...

A man with a life sentence has nothing to lose. At least Teague doesn't, until his escape plan develops a fatal flaw: Alyssa. On the run from both the law and deadly undercover operatives, he can only give her lies, but every heated kiss tells him the fire between them could be just as devastating as the flames that changed him forever...



True Blue by Jane Smiley
won from Carrie at Sweet Southern Home during the RAK Giveaway Hop

True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable--was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue, how are you?" he  whinnies back.

But sometimes True Blue seems...spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something. Or someone. Abby starts to wonder about True Blue's owner. What was she like? What did she look like? One moonlit night, Abby could swear she hears a whisper in her ear: "He's still my horse." Filled with riding scenes and horse details, this newest middle-grade novel from a Pulitzer Prize-winner offers a mysterious and suspenseful almost-ghost story.


And I received these from Netgalley and Edelweiss this week:





 How was your week, leave me a link and I'd love to see what you received in your mailbox!





Friday, March 2, 2012

Feature & Follow Friday (2)


This is my secpnd Friday joining in Feature & Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read. You can find out more about the hop by checking in at either of the blogs and signing up:  Feature & Follow Friday on Parajunkee's View or Feature and Follow Friday at Alison Can Read


Q: What book would you love to see made into a movie or television show and do you have actors/actresses in mind to play the main characters?

I finished Partials by Dan Wells last weekend and would love to see it made into a movie.  However I am not up on my young actors and actresses so I can't cast it very well, so if you have some suggestions, please feel free to leave them.  I still need to review Partials, but it is coming in a very close second to Cinder as my favorite YA book of the year so far.  It was amazing, complex and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

So what do you want to see as a movie?  I would love to visit your blog if you have posted so leave a comment and I'll come visit over the weekend.




Book Review: Chase Against Time by Steve Reifman

Chase Against Time by Steve Reifman
Publisher: Brown Books
Publish Date: March 15, 2012
Hardcover, 140 pages 
Fiction, Middle Grades, Mystery
 Chase Manning Mysteries #1






My Review:
What a fun book and perfect for the age group that Mr. Reifman intends it for.  I can see reading Chase Against Time to my almost 7-year-old who is an advanced reader and he would enjoy it and I can see my 11-year-old enjoying it on his own.  And the nice thing is I can see both girls and boys enjoying this one.  Yes the main character is a boy (which is nice for this mom of boys), but I'm a girl and I really enjoyed it.  Chase's best friend is a girl, and while she doesn't have a huge role, she is still important and I think that lends a credence to the novel for girls as well as boys.

Chase Against Time has a great mystery plot.  As an adult, I was even trying to figure it out for a time.  Mr. Reifman does a great job presenting numerous what-if situations for Chase to investigate.  I also found that Chase is just an ordinary fifth-grader.  No super-powers and no extraordinary investigation skills beyond what he has seen on tv, which gave me a good laugh.  He just uses his head and that's what kids reading the book will do, they will reason out what they have seen in the book to try and figure out who did it and why.  I also liked the music angle.  Chase and his friends are trying to save the music program, which is something that seems important to the whole school.  And while it wasn't something I could relate to personally, the love of the program from the kids came off of the pages and I felt for them.  So I can see boys that love sports even liking this book and empathizing with these kids.  Mr. Reifman really seems to understand kids and how to portray them in fiction in a very believable way.

The characters are interesting, the plot is interesting and the length is perfect for this age group.  Yes your more advanced readers can read longer books, I can too, but sometimes this type of book is just what a kid is looking for.  It grabs their attention, they can read it, understand it and it just might be the type of book that endears them towards reading for life.  That's why I love this book.  I think it fulfills a niche that needs to be fulfilled, it's hip enough for this age group, it has a good mystery and it's a quick and easy read without being too easy to insult their intelligence.  It's just perfect.  Mr. Reifman has scored a home run with this one.  I look forward to more books in this series, so get out there, recommend this one, get a copy for a child you know and there will be more in the series to come!

My Rating: 5.0/5.0

Parental guidance: It's for middle grade, ages 8-12, very clean as expected.

About the Book:
In a last-ditch effort to save Apple Valley Elementary’s award-winning music program from looming budget cuts, the PTA plans to auction off a recently-donated, handcrafted cello at the school’s annual fund-raising dinner. Confidence is high – until the cello turns up missing the morning of the event. The school principal charges Chase Manning, a fifth grader who has dreamed of playing in the Sixth Grade Honors Orchestra his whole life, with finding the cello by three o’clock. Each hour of the school day involves surprising and suspense-filled plot turns as Chase pursues the elusive cello. This single-day, real-time mystery thriller truly is a Chase against time!

About the Author (from Goodreads.com): 
I am a National Board Certified elementary school teacher, writer, and speaker in Santa Monica, CA. I am the author of several resource books for educators, including Eight Essentials for Empowered Teaching and Learning, K-8. I am also the creator of the Chase Manning Mystery Series for kids 8-12. Each book in the series features a single-day, real-time thriller that occurs on an elementary school campus. For tips and strategies on teaching the whole child, visit http://stevereifman.com

Website
Twitter
Facebook
Blog

FTC Information: I received this book from the author for an honest review.  




Guest Blog: 7 Ways to Encourage Reluctant Readers by Steve Reifman

Today I welcome author Steve Reifman back to My Reading Room, today with his middle grade fiction offering, Chase Against Time which I will review later today.  First up is a wonderful guest post from Steve on encouraging reluctant readers.

7 Ways to Encourage Reluctant Readers

by Steve Reifman

Reading is a tremendously appealing, satisfying activity, and children will become hooked once the adults in their lives consistently build it into their daily schedules. The key is getting children started. The following seven strategies will help even the most reluctant reader become more enthusiastic about the endeavor. By employing the strategies described below, reading will become something that students do willingly, even eagerly, and the adults in their lives will not have to resort to trickery, bribery, manipulation, or any other tactic that will, at best, lead to temporary compliance. After all, we’re striving to make reading a joyous lifelong habit.
 
1.   Start with the child’s passions.  Children will be more excited about reading when they can choose books or magazines related to their interests. This suggestion is far and away the most powerful one when it comes to encouraging those who are reluctant to read. When kids own the choice of what they will read, motivation increases significantly.
2.   Make reading a social experience.  Children who don’t enjoy reading alone often enjoy reading with somebody else.  Children can read with their parents, siblings, other relatives, and friends.  Some children even start mini-book clubs and discuss books related to their common interests.  Asking children to read to their younger siblings and cousins can powerfully impact their own motivation to read.
3.   Read aloud to children.  Many parents regularly read aloud to their children when they are very young, yet stop this activity as the kids get older.  Parents should read aloud to children throughout the elementary grades.  Doing so makes reading more enjoyable, improves listening skills, builds comprehension, lengthens attention spans, and grows the imagination.
4.   Take advantage of new technology.  Children who may not find books interesting may enjoy reading the same texts on smart phones, computers, and electronic readers, such as the iPad or Kindle.  Technology makes everything seem cooler and more engaging to children, and we should capitalize on this fact when it comes to reading.
5.   Be a role model to children.  When children see their parents reading frequently, discussing what they have read, and carrying books around, they will value reading to a greater extent.  The power of modeling cannot be underestimated.
6.   Camouflage reading.  Parents can increase the amount of time their children spend reading by subtly building the activity into other, seemingly unrelated activities.  Examples include reading menus at restaurants, reading the directions to board games, and looking at various websites together. Children who may not yet enjoy reading for its own sake may enjoy it tremendously when it’s incorporated into other engaging pastimes.
7.   Be sure children read books that are appropriately challenging.  Many times kids don’t want to read simply because the books they encounter are too difficult.  This seemingly obvious point is frequently forgotten. None of us want to encounter frustration, and we will go to great lengths to avoid experiences that make us feel this way. Appropriately challenging books are those in which students can fluently read approximately 95% of the words. Encountering a small number of difficult words can help children grow in their reading skills, but encountering too many of these words can interfere with fluency and lead to discouragement.

Commit to trying one or more these ideas to help your child become a more enthusiastic reader. Teaching the whole child means that we focus on developing children’s academic skills, but just as important, we focus on children’s attitudes about these skills. We want to raise children who read well and read because they want to do it, not because they have to do it.

About Chase Against Time
In a last-ditch effort to save Apple Valley Elementary’s award-winning music program from looming budget cuts, the PTA plans to auction off a recently-donated, handcrafted cello at the school’s annual fund-raising dinner. Confidence is high – until the cello turns up missing the morning of the event. The school principal charges Chase Manning, a fifth grader who has dreamed of playing in the Sixth Grade Honors Orchestra his whole life, with finding the cello by three o’clock. Each hour of the school day involves surprising and suspense-filled plot turns as Chase pursues the elusive cello. This single-day, real-time mystery thriller truly is a Chase against time!



Thursday, March 1, 2012

Guest Blog: The Top 10 Wedding Bloopers by Shadonna Richards



THE TOP 10 WEDDING BLOOPERS

Hi, everyone!

I’m Shadonna, author of An Unexpected Bride, a romantic comedy about Emma Wiggins who is about to marry her heart-stopping, gorgeous boss, CEO Evan Fletcher in seven days. Only he doesn’t know about it yet! Since An Unexpected Bride centers around the theme of weddings, I thought I’d make a fun list, based on research and funny wedding videos I’ve seen. Here’s an unofficial list of the Top 10 Wedding Bloopers. Of course, Emma has the number one spot. Check this list out:

10. The minister forgot to show up
9. The groom forgot the bride’s name
8. The bride forgot the groom’s name
7. The ring bearer disappeared with the ring
6. The bride fainted
5. The groom fainted
4. The minister fainted
3. The bride fell into the pool (the wedding was by the poolside)
2. The dog stole the show
And the number one spot goes to Emma Wiggins from An Unexpected Bride
1.     The bride forgot to tell the groom they were getting married


Hope you enjoyed the list. I thought I’d leave you with a synopsis of An Unexpected Bride. Enjoy.

Desperate to fulfill her ailing grandfather’s last wish to see her settle down and get married, Emma Wiggins, a 30-year-old, career-focused executive tells him a little white lie on his deathbed that she is in fact engaged--to her boss, deliciously handsome and emotionally unavailable, Evan Fletcher. 

The situation takes an unexpected turn when her grandfather's condition improves slightly and to her shock, he goes ahead and arranges a wedding ceremony at his hospital bedside before he passes on. Now, all Emma has to do is convince unsuspecting, commitment-phobic Evan to tie the knot with her in seven days. Can love blossom in the most unlikely situation?

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Book Feature: The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies


The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies
Publisher: Potatoworks Press
Publish Date: February 14, 2012
Paperback, 242 pages
ISBN: 978-0984901814

About the Book:
Hattie Cross knows what you're thinking: Zombie sex? Ewwwww. But she also knows that since a virus turned 99.9999 percent of human males into zombies, it's statistically impossible to meet--let alone date--the remaining 0.00001 percent. So she writes "The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies" to help her fellow single women navigate the zombie-relationship waters.

Her practical how-to impresses the CEO of the largest drug company in the world, and before she knows it, Hattie, a reporter for a downmarket tabloid that specializes in conspiracy theories, is sitting down with the woman who single-handedly invented the zombie-behavioral-modification market. Granted access to the inner sanctum of zombaceuticals, she meets an actual, living, breathing M-A-N.

Now Hattie, the consummate professional, is acting like a single girl at the end of the twentieth century: self-conscious, klutzy and unable to form a coherent sentence without babbling. Worst of all, the human male appears to have impaired her ability to think clearly. Because all of a sudden she's convinced a conspiracy is afoot at the drug company and it seems to go all the way to the top!


About the Author:
Lynn Messina is the author of six novels, including Little Vampire Women andFashionistas, which has been translated into 15 languages and is in development as a feature film. She attended Washington University in St. Louis where she studied English Literature. Her writing has also appeared in Self and Modern Bride, among other publications. She lives in New York City with her husband and sons. Connect with Lynn on her website, blog, Twitter or GoodReads.


Novel Publicity Blog Tour Notes:

Get The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies on Amazon or Barnes & Noble – you know you want to!

And please vote for my blog in the traffic-breaker poll for this tour. The blogger with the most votes wins a free promotional twitterview and a special winner’s badge. I want that to be me! You can vote in the poll by visiting the official Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies blog tour page and scrolling all the way to the bottom.

Be sure to enter for your chance to win an autographed copy of The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies : ENTER HERE.

Check out this amazing book trailer!




Join us for a live twitterview with the author on Saturday, March 10th at 4 PM EST. Search #emlyn on Twitter, and bring your questions for this lively chat.


Guest Blog: Gatekeepers and Validators by Mark Chisnell



Today I welcome March Chisnell, author of The Defector which I reviewed a week ago.  Today he's sharing with us a guest blog on ebook self-publishing.  He also has a free book he's sharing with everyone today.  Information for obtaining the free ebook is at the bottom of this post.  Enjoy the guest blog and enjoy your free ebook.
 
Gatekeepers and Validators

by Mark Chisnell


The USA has brought many new things to the world – rock and roll, cable tv and franchise hamburgers spring to mind. One of the latest is the eReader and eBooks, currently sweeping through a country near you – particularly if you live in Europe.  If you live in the US, the transition from print has been underway for a while and although I was a little slow to that game, in Britain I count as an early adopter.

So just before Christmas, a writer’s group in the English south coast city of Portsmouth kindly invited me to talk to them about my experiences with the self- or indie-publishing programs, Kindle Direct and Smashwords.com.

There were a couple of traditionally published authors in the audience, and one of  the topics in a lively Q&A discussion was the loss of the publisher in this straight-to-the-reader process. The point was that it’s all very well to self- or indie-publish a novel, but how does the potential reader then know if it’s any good? After all, if the writer hasn’t been permitted to pass into the hallowed, sunlight uplands of publication by an editor-cum-gatekeeper, then isn’t it just vanity publishing? And if it’s vanity publishing then it can’t be any good.

It was an argument that I had a lot of sympathy for until very recently. My first two novels (The Defector and The Wrecking Crew) were published by Random House and HarperCollins. The endorsement meant a lot to me at the time - as did the fancy Soho lunches with my editor - but all that is quickly being eroded by the simple fact that those two books have subsequently sold much better as self-published titles.

This vanishing sense of the importance of the gatekeepers is matched by plenty of evidence that ‘vanity-published’ books are every bit as good as what’s coming out of the major London and New York publishing houses. Recent news from the indie scene includes Joe Konrath (if he keeps up his January rate of sales) on target to make over a million dollars ‘vanity-publishing’ in 2012. While Darcie Chan - author of vanity-published The Mill River Recluse - hit number one in the Apple store early in the New Year.

It seems that while endorsement by a major publishing house still matters to some writers, many readers are long past caring. So what’s going on here, why were we all so wrong, for so long, about vanity publishing?

John Locke, one of the original self-published Kindle superstars has an interesting take on the notion of vanity publishing in his book, ‘How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!’ Here’s a little of what he has to say:

'What they’re saying [is that] when an author believes in his abilities to the extent he’s willing to invest his own money to publish a novel, he’s writing purely for his vanity!'

‘I have to give credit to the geniuses that came up with this hogwash, because publishing is the only business in the world that has managed to make such a ridiculous notion seem plausible.'

‘When I invested my own money to start my insurance agency no one accused me of making a vanity investment.... When Bill Gates and Paul Allen invested their time and money into developing code for the Altair computer, no one accused them of writing vanity code.’

Locke’s argument is that the notion of vanity publishing is just a means of controlling access to the market. It was just smart business for the publishers to convince writers and readers that the only route from one to the other was through them. Follow the money.

And when you look at the money, it’s easy to see that the business model of the author is way out of kilter with the publishers. How many books a year does a big New York publisher put into the shops? And how many of those need to be a success for them to have a profitable year? I don’t know the answers, but I do know that it’s a lot less than a hundred percent.

I finish maybe one book every year or two, and if it doesn’t succeed you can stick a fork in me. I’m done.

No one needs a book to succeed anywhere near as badly as its author. And yet, once the book is written and delivered to a traditional publisher, all control over every aspect of the subsequent process is taken over by the people who have the least stake in its success.

Make any sense to you?

It’s because this traditional business model didn’t make any sense to the writers that the coming of Kindle-Direct, Smashwords and PubIt led to such a complete revolution and the rise of indie publishing. Many authors could see the system was broken from their point of view, and when they were offered an alternative they grabbed it. The people with the biggest stake in a book were back in control of its destiny.

We’ve all seen how books now flow into the hands of readers in a way that was unimaginable five years ago. The gatekeepers are gone and the doors have been blown wide open - the slush-pile has moved from the in-tray of editors and agents, got itself a cover and a blurb and is now available online for the princely sum of 99c a pop. Or it’s free.

Unfortunately, even if the notion of validation by the traditional gatekeepers was just smart business by big corporations, it still leaves us with the original problem. How do we decide what’s worth reading? It was hard enough when there was just the books laid out for us on the front tables of the big stores by the big publishers, but who validates our choices now...?

The new validators are the people who should have had the job in the first place – the readers. Perhaps that’s why we are all fast ceasing to care about books getting the imprimatur of a publisher’s imprint. An endorsement of quality no longer needs to come from an editor in New York or London; it can come from five stars on My Reading Room. It can come when a complete stranger living several thousand miles away takes the trouble to write and post a four paragraph, five star review of your book on Amazon or B&N.com.

Personally, I’m very comfortable with that shift. I’m no longer looking for approval from New York or London. However, after the talk in Portsmouth, I have to recognise that some writers still feel it’s important. The beauty of the current situation is that writers and readers have a choice – validation? Find it where you look for it.

Mark Chisnell is the author of the Kindle chart-topping thrillers - The Defector and The Wrecking Crew - as well as award-winning works of non-fiction. He's a sometime professional racing sailor and also works as a broadcaster and journalist, writing for some of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers, including Esquire and the Guardian.



Free ebook - Today only
Mark is giving away his newest book, The Fulcrum Files for free today.  Here is more information on the book:

The young Ben Clayton was one of Britain’s brightest boxing prospects, until the day he slammed a left hook into a fragile chin. Sickened by the consequences he turned away from the ring, found solace in the arms of the beautiful Lucy Kirk and looked for new challenges.

On the 7th March 1936, after almost two decades of peace in Europe, Hitler ordered the German Army back into the Rhineland. It was a direct challenge to Britain and France. Still unnerved by the toll of the Great War, the politicians dithered. The French Army stayed in its barracks, while the aristocratic British elite looked on from their country retreats.

History teetered on a knife edge, but the spymasters were busy.

Just one man could make the difference between war and peace, victory or defeat. And that man was Ben Clayton. Thrown into the maelstrom of plot and counter-plot, Ben must battle not just to survive, but to protect all that he loves and holds most dear.

Mark Chisnell’s thrillers include The Defector - a top download in the UK Kindle free eBook chart for over two weeks, subsequently charting in the Top 100 paid list. The Wrecking Crew was the sequel, and both books are regulars in the UK Spy Thriller charts.

Find it today on Amazon for free:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Fulcrum-Files-ebook/dp/B0074HGO4S/