Alice Will by Ashley Chappell @AshleyNChappell

With her leaky powers and premature smiting problem, fourteen year-old Trotter was still just trying to get the hang of the demi-godding business when the apocalypse began. In a world where the gods have withdrawn from humanity, leaving mortals bitter toward magic, she finds herself torn between the human and the goddess in her as the world begins to fade away and she becomes the prime suspect. When her search to determine the cause and prove her innocence ends up revolving around a mysterious little girl named Alice, she discovers that not all of the gods had been as distant as they seemed… Now, with everyone against her and the gods fighting amongst themselves, Trotter is on her own to save her world and stop a spiteful god from using Alice to destroy everything.

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Genre – YA Fantasy

Rating – PG

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Connect with Ashley Chappell on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.ashleychappellbooks.com/

An Honest Man (the Donkey and the Wall) @J_L_Lawson

2

It's an Art

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” 

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Are you getting all this?” asked the stranger after the lingering pause and he straightened his legs. The cat leapt down and padded off after her own business.

“Yes, thank you,” answered the young man promptly, glad that the silence was broken at last and anxious to shift the topic a bit. “So the beginning was when George and Belle had Harry?” the host ventured, still scribbling.

“You missed it by a bit. This story began when Wang Fu Kong, George, committed himself to the journey to a new world, then the trek into the wilderness, and when he finally surrendered to the harsh beauty and rewarding wonder of the natural world in which he found himself.”

“Wait. Are you saying little Harry and his son, or daughter, or whatever, all the way down to Fred Livingson, whenever he lived, is all the same story? So, no one person had an individual beginning or end? That doesn't sound quite fair or right somehow.”

The guest stood up and walked to the door. He looked out into haze of the growing Texas day and the harvested hay fields across the pond, then he thought aloud, “You know, that's an interesting point... like 'What is the tree to the forest?' or, 'Is the story of the river in the melting ice and snow of the mountain?' or...”

“Well, yeah, or 'the chicken and the egg',” added the young man, “But how can you say: 'It begins here!' and not here, or here, or here?” Then he groaned in exasperation at his infirm grasp of what the stranger was getting at.

“The simplest way to answer that is to remind you that humans have the unique capacity to dream and to choose, which stands them in contrast to the rest of the life on this planet. Yet even with that great birthright, so few people develop the ability or make the attempt to swerve even a bit from the whims of the winds of fate or of cause and effect.” He paused, assessed the effect of this last on the young man and continued. “So when on that rare occasion someone commits to a decision made of his own understanding and aspiration, acts on that commitment, and affects the lives of others in a positive way which would not have occurred otherwise... That is a beginning.”

“And it doesn't seem to be ending...” muttered the host not so silently while sharpening his pencil for another round.

“It ends; its life however is mapped, not measured,” offered the guest, “Shall we proceed with your map?” The stranger sat down, and picked up the tale again with a conversation between George and White Feathers.

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Genre - Metaphysical/Fantasy/Action Adventure

Rating – G

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Connect with J.L. Lawson on Facebook

Website http://voyagerpress.org/

The right and wrong way to promote your books online. – James Shipman

The right and wrong way to promote your books online.

Marketing a book is almost more work than writing and editing the book itself.  Not only is it critical to consistently market your book, particularly online, but it is also critical to do so in an appropriate manner, otherwise you are wasting your time.

Appropriate marketing online involves reasonable direct marketing with a full measure of relationship and audience building in between.  I recommend building Twitter, Facebook and Goodread audiences (there are others but these are the ones I use).  This can be done overtime if you are consistent and within a year or two you will have a very good group of people you are interacting with.  You are probably not going to just publish a book and have a ton of fans (if you do sell one of those books that goes crazy, congratulations, and you don’t need my advice).  Probably your list of contacts will include personal family and friends and then many other authors and some readers.  As you are building this audience start communicating with them.  Certainly post about your book or upcoming book (or sale, event, etc.), but also post about things going on in your life.  Let people get to know you.  Also ask questions, make requests, tell people what you are working on next.  Evidence shows the more you engage your readers the more they will be invested in you as a writer.  Additionally, build relationships with other authors.  Like their pages, accept their friend requests, follow them and tweet about them.  People like reciprocity.

The don’ts are all about selfishness.  You will get nowhere incessantly spamming about your book and then refusing all interaction with other people.  If people follow you and you don’t follow them, they will notice. They will drop you, they will not support you.  If all you do on Facebook is advertise your book over and over, or if you post your book on other people’s pages or personally message them for the very first time with an ad about your book, you are going to anger people and you will get nowhere.

Again, if you get an agent, a major publishing deal, and you sell five million books, you won’t have to do all of this.  You can follow 12 people and have millions of followers.  For most people it is going to take more time and more effort.  Online marketing is about relationships, and about caring about other people’s work as much as you care about your own.  Best of luck to all of you.

In 1453 Constantinople is the impregnable jewel of the East. It has stood as the greatest Christian city for a millennium as hordes have crashed fruitlessly against its walls.

But Mehmet II, the youthful Sultan of the Ottoman Turks, has besieged the city. His opponent is Constantine XI, the wise and capable ruler of the crumbling Eastern Roman Empire. Mehmet, distrusted by his people and hated by his Grand Vizer, must accomplish what all those before him have failed to do: capture Constantinople. To prove that he deserves the throne that his father once took from him, Mehmet, against all advice, storms the city. If he fails, he will not only have failed himself and his people, but he will surely lose his life.

On the other side of the city walls, the emperor Constantine must find a way to stop the greatest army in the medieval world. To finance his defenses, he becomes a beggar to the Pope, the Italian city-states, and the Hungarians. But the price for aid is high: The Pope demands the Greeks reunite the Eastern and Western churches and accept the Latin faith. If Constantine wants aid for his people he must choose between their lives and their souls.

Two leaders, two peoples, two faiths battle for their future before the mighty walls of Constantinople.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG

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Connect with  James Shipman on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://james-shipman.com