"MOTHERLESS SOUL"

WE ARE PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE OF "MOTHERLESS SOUL" BY STEVE LINDAHL!

Emily Vinson's entire life was impacted by the loss of her mother when she was 2years old. At 82 Emily contacts a hypnotist hoping to draw out hidden memories and discover as much as possible about the short time she spent with the woman who gave her life. Glen Wiley, the hypnotist, teaches her more about herself than she had expected. He helps her bring out memories of many past lives, including an experience that took place on a smoke filled battlefield. All of Emily's lives have had the same tragic outcome, the loss of her mother at a young age. Her soul is caught in what Glen calls circularity, meaning that the tragedy will occur again and again unless she can break the pattern. She and Glen must revisit her past lives and use what they learn to find the other souls who are part of the circle. They must use the past to change the future. Emily's stubborn desire to know her mother is realized in intricate and unsettling ways no one could have imagined possible.

About the author:
Steve Lindahl has published short fiction in Space and Time, The Alaska Quarterly, The Wisconsin Review, Eclipse, Ellipsis and Red Wheelbarrow. He served for five years as an associate editor on the staff of The Crescent Review, a literary magazine he co-founded. His Theater Arts background has helped nurture a love for intricate characters in complex situations that is evident in his writing. Steve and his wife Toni live and work together outside of Greensboro, North Carolina. They have two adult children: Nicole and Erik. Motherless Soul is Steve Lindahl's debut novel.

You can purchase this great new book at, http://allthingsthatmatterpress.com

GEMINI'S BLOOD

WE ARE PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE SECOND BOOK BY MICHAEL BURNS!
NOW AT http://allthingsthatmatterpress.com

Gemini's Blood
By Michael Burns

Jack Scanlon, at the threshold of his sixtieth year, finds himself in an uncomfortable recliner in the corridor of Day Surgery at a local hospital, hooked up to an IV tube. He is receiving three units of blood, a process that will take the better part of eight hours. He has all but convinced himself that he is a terminal case, a victim of colon cancer. If a drowning man is capable of witnessing the sum of his entire life before his eyes at the instant before he goes under for the last time, Jack Scanlon has the luxury of witnessing his at his leisure, and in chronological order. His meditations focus largely on his early childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, which covers roughly the years 1944 through 1961, with a few brief detours into more recent history, a history that involves the deaths of his younger half-brother Keith, and his mother, as well as a short description of his own recent medical struggles.

About the author:
Michael Burns was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His family moved to New Hampshire in 1950 where he attended high school, graduating in 1957. He deferred entrance to college to serve in the U.S. Navy for four years, seeing duty in Southeast Asia in the early days of the Vietnam War. After mustering out of the Navy, Burns returned to New Hampshire where he met and married his wife, and matriculated at the University of New Hampshire.

Encouraged by his freshman English teacher, Burns first became interested in writing fiction in 1963. He continued writing after being inspired by the late Thomas Williams, National Book Award-winning author and mentor to many young writers, among them John Irving.

In 1971, Burns joined the faculty of St. Paul's School, a college preparatory boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire. He retired from that school in 2004 after 33 years of teaching chemistry, life science, and creative writing. At present, Burns is living with his wife in rural New Hampshire where he is at work on his fourth novel. Gemini, his first novel, was published by Poncha Press in 2001, and will be republished by All Things That Matter Press in 2009. Where You Are, Burns' second novel, was published by All Things That Matter Press in 2009.

Gemini's Blood

SHADES OF LUZ

JUST RELEASED, "SHADES OF LUZ" BY JOHN GORMAN.

Shades of Luz is a modern day Don Quixote, a picaresque rich in characters searching for love and meaning in an otherwise manic-paced world. Grad School dropout Benny Fluke goes from stuffed animal peddler to thumb-wrestling champ.He is a monkey trainer, philosopher, wine snob, and a strip club connoisseur. Above and beyond all that he is a romantic at heart and is desperate to win the love of Luz the hot-blooded, ambitious beauty who keeps boomeranging into his life. Something from Luz's past inextricably bonds them together and Benny will not stop until she is his. Their delightful repartee is crisp, witty, and sumptuously engaging.


John Gorman's stories have been published in Mississippi Review, The Shore, Nexus, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, The Rose and Thorn, Word Riot, Monkey Bicycle, and elsewhere. He won the 2003 NYInt'l Indie Film and Video Festival screenplay competition with For the Love of Auntie. He lives in New York City.

Widow's Walk Blog Tour

Widow's Walk Blog Tour

with Author Kenneth Weene Widow's Walk Blog Tour

September 1-30

Join author, Kenneth Weene, on his blog book tour September 1-30 and learn more about him and his novel Widow’s Walk, a story of good people's struggle – sometimes successfully and often not – to deal with the challenges in their lives. The novel reflects how family, friendship, love, faith, and character affect that struggle. Take the time to leave comments along the way and you'll be entered in a drawing with a chance to win two different prizes.


* The first giveaway is Kenneth Weene's poetry book which will go to a few different commenters.
* The second giveaway is a copy of his book Widow's Walk to one lucky commenter


About Widow's Walk

Widow’s Walk is a story of faith and its effects on already flawed characters. Set in Boston in the 1980s, it is the story of Mary Flanagan and her children, Sean and Kathleen. Mary’s husband, Sean, Sr., died at the wheel of his M.T.A. bus. Her son, Sean, Jr. is a quadriplegic, injured on his way to a brothel in Vietnam; Kathleen, divorced and unable to have children, works and lives at a hospice that primarily serves AIDS patients; there she lives a mechanistically faithful life, but one devoid of belief. This unhappy family structure is erected on the bedrock stoicism of Mary’s Irish Catholicism. It is that faith which is tested, changed, and strangely reaffirmed over the course of the tale.

Two events upend Mary’s world. The first is her friend, Lois’s, move to Florida. The second is Sean’s decision to seek rehabilitation in a center in Minnesota – a decision initiated by Jem, a home health aide whose own life reflects a faith of care and service.

Mary finds herself looking for new meaning and direction in her life. In the process she meets two unexpected people, Arnie Berger, a college professor, an agnostic or perhaps deistic Jew, and love interest, and Pat Michaels, a minister, whose view of a joyous faith is much at odds with Mary’s rigid theology. She also moves into a housing share and becomes friends with Amelia Callaghan, the misanthropic house owner.

Sean’s life, too, is dramatically changed because he falls in love with and marries one of the aides at the rehab center. He returns to Boston married, employed and expecting their first child.

Given the remarkable changes in her mother’s and brother’s lives and influenced by Max, one of her dying patients and a man whose story and faith are powerful and unique, Kathleen also seeks love. She meets Danny, a young man tied to his overprotective mother and unable to deal with his own feelings of inadequacy.

Sadly, Kathleen and Danny’s relationship ends in disaster, rape, and abuse. Danny flees. In her own way, Kathleen does too; she becomes catatonic and dependent.

Mary unable to come to terms with her sense of guilt and responsibility towards her daughter – is powerless to keep those feelings from coming between her and Arnie.

In the end, Mary can not live with her unhappiness and dies of “the pain of her soul,” a diagnosis provided by the caregiver, Jem, who had originally encouraged Sean to make his momentous move. Mary’s death creates a strange psychological space in which Kathleen takes on her mother’s place in the world.

If you haven't already read Widow's Walk, be sure to pick your copy up at Kenneth Weene’s Author Website - http://widows-walk.webs.com/.



Widow's Walk Blog Tour

with Author Kenneth Weene Widow's Walk Blog Tour

September 1-30

We are currently booking tour stops. If you are interested in taking part int this tour email us at virturalblogtours@yahoo.com


September 2 - Writers in the Sky http://yvonneperry.blogspot.com/2009/09/widows-walk-by-kenneth-weene.html – Interview

September 4 – Ascroft, eh? http://dianneascroft.wordpress.com/ - Guest Post and Excerpt

September 7 – New Book Review http://thenewbookreview.blogspot.com/ - Review

September 9 – Künati http://www.kunati.com/ - Review

September 11 – Katie Hines – Walking on Water - http://katiehines.blogspot.com - Interview

September 14 - Xanga blog http://cce613.xanga.com/ – Interview

September 16 – Marilyn's Musings http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ - Review

September 18 – The Nurse Mommy - www.thenursemommy.com - Guest Post
September 21 – The Book Connection http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/ - Guest Post

September 23 – Books and Authors http://joyce-anthony.blogspot.com/

September 24 -- Books and Authors http://joyce-anthony.blogspot.com/

September 25 -- Books and Authors http://joyce-anthony.blogspot.com/

September 26 – Books and Authors http://joyce-anthony.blogspot.com/

September 28 – Stories that Read You http://stevenbradley.blogspot.com/

September 29 – Across the Pond Blog Talk Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Across-the-Pond - 6:30 pm - Interview – The call in number is (347) 237-5398

September 30 -- Pending

Book Trailer: TRANSCENDENCE by Gabriel Horn and Amy-Krout-Horn

A great new Trailer by E. Joyce Moore for the book "Transcendence." This is a truly inspiring book that is being used by St. Petersberg College in Florida for a course this Fall.

INCREASE YOUR PRESENCE ON AMAZON

Please review the following information as it can be beneficial to your Amazon sales. At the bottom of this page there is a link to AuthorCentral. I would advise that you sign up-it is free!

If you go to http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JOVPOG you will see my personal page at Amazon. Click any book, and if you scroll down-you will see my photo and a link to my bio. All of these things are picked up by Google and increases your internet presence and this is what this tool is all about-increased presence and sales!

Subject: Amazon.com Author Central Update - August 18, 2009
Hello,

We are excited to let you to know about a simple but important change that will help many more Amazon customers find Author Pages and Author Blogs and learn more about you and your work.

In short: We now link to Author Pages from book detail pages on Amazon. A new feature called “More About the Author” can be found right under the Product Details section on book detail pages. Examples below:

http://www.amazon.com/Skeletons-at-Feast-Chris-Bohjalian/dp/0307394964/

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Man-Elinor-Lipman/dp/0618644660

http://www.amazon.com/Goth-Girl-Rising-Barry-Lyga/dp/0547076649

This is a simple and perhaps obvious feature. But it’s also one that many authors asked us about, so we wanted to tell you the good news as we rolled it out. We thought it also might be a good opportunity to share a bit about what we’ve been doing with Author Central and what to expect from us in the coming weeks and months.

At Amazon, we’ve made our goal to give authors a more prominent “customer-facing” role within our store. This will not only be helpful and fun for Amazon customers, but we love the idea of enabling authors to better promote themselves and their work and to reach both fans and new readers. In pursuit of this goal, we think Author Pages is a great new feature. They are further improved by the data you contribute via Author Central. So why wait to launch “More About the Author”? And what about features like Author Blogs?

When we build something new at Amazon, we often introduce it in a “soft” way at first, allowing us time to work out some kinks before we increase its prominence within our store. Over the past few weeks, we’ve had the chance to find and fix any number of bugs, many of which you told us about (We’re not done, of course, so please keep the feedback coming!)

As we’ve improved Author Pages, we’ve steadily made it easier to find them. For example, a few weeks ago we made them easier to find in search. We also added a link from author names on detail pages (take a look right under the book title on a detail page – hovering over a hyperlinked author name will yield a link to the relevant Author Page). “More About the Author” is another step forward as we methodically increase the prominence of author information across our store.

Of course, there’s still so much to do – we have many new features in the works, including improvements to what you see already. For example, we want to allow customers to navigate from Kindle detail pages to Author Pages the same way they do from detail pages for physical books. Also, the current “More About the Author” feature is extremely simple -- it doesn’t yet do “smart” things like link directly to fresh Author Blog content. We expect to add both of these features in the coming weeks. (If you’re wondering about the change from the “old” Author Blog feature, the simple explanation is that the previous implementation proved a relatively inefficient use of detail page space. We want those pages to be as tuned as possible to selling your books –we think our new implementation will not detract from that goal while still exposing your Author Blog content for interested customers.)

So stay tuned and thanks for your patience and support while we keep improving the beta version of Author Central. Contact us any time at: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us.


Best regards,

The Amazon Author Central Team
http://authorcentral.amazon.com

THE HEROES AND OTHER STORIES

JUST RELEASED BY ATTMPRESS, THE HEROES AND OTHER STORIES BY KAT HAUSLER

Set against the colorful, yet sometimes strangely cold, backdrop of Manhattan, the stories in this collection are peopled with a very particular breed of heroes, not quite what they're fighting for. Here you will find characters in progress, people still getting to who they are: a self-conscious student who feels incomplete without a partner, a talented artist blind to the beauty of his own work, a couple who can't bring their love of an idealized past into the present, and an unstable woman whose breakdown causes those around her to realize their own frailty. These everyday heroes all have their own flaws and failings, all fall short time and time again, but struggle on, after worthy but elusive ideals: a sense of self, and a connection to the world around them.

About the author:
Kat Hausler is the youngest of four siblings, and grew up in Northern Virginia. She spent several years in and around Greenwich Village while studying German and Creative Writing at New York University, but since 2008 resides in Berlin, where she writes, teaches English, and is studying to become a certified translator.