The Bookcast

Characters in crisis, situations right out of today’s news – Teresa Kennedy‘s short story collection “In The Country of No Compassion” offers literary fiction with a spiritual twist. A young amputee and Iraq war veteran struggles for a definition of heroism in “Times New Roman.” A recovered alcoholic frees himself from the past in “The Thirteenth Step.” Other stories in Kennedy’s collection focus on the controversy surrounding illegal immigration and the US-Mexican border. In “Undocumented” a rancher tries to save his land, but risks his soul in the process. Her book has been called a vision rich with humanity, the promise of redemption, and a timeless understanding. More below the media player. Listen to Teresa Kennedy Download audio file (teresakennedy.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life “How to Lose a Reader in Ten Pages or Less” How’s that for a headline? Teresa Kennedy blogged recently about the trouble an author invites with a poor opening – “why are so many novels doomed to the slush heap?” she asks. And then answers: Because most writers fail to understand one simple truth: You don’t [...] The post Is No One Left Who Knows Compassion Anymore? appeared first on The Bookcast.

A soldier is caught up in the middle of an interstellar war, tasked with rescuing the princess he loves and solving a two-thousand-year-old mystery that just might yield the secret to bringing peace to both sides of the galaxy. In Paul T. Harry‘s science fiction epic “The 5 Moons of Tiiana,” Captain Rez Cantor is commander of the Imperial Army’s Shadow Guard, and is the personal attache to Princess Leanna, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Emperor and sole heir to the throne. On the eve of a treaty-signing to end the twelve-year war between the alien-hybrid Relcor and the Empire, Rez learns that the Imperial family has been marked for death. Under orders from his Queen, Rez is given his final command: save the Princess at all costs. And he appears to save her – until their escaping spacecraft is sent hurtling to the far reaches of the galaxy. More below the media player. Listen to Paul T. Harry Download audio file (paultharry.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Who were Paul T. Harry’s literary influences? Oh, you may have heard of [...] The post Five Moons Craving a Hero appeared first on The Bookcast.

Lime Prince is a green-eyed international supermodel of mixed Jamaican-Ethiopian heritage who lands the cover of Vogue, taking the New York fashion world by storm. But her sordid, violent past comes back to haunt her. Lime traces back to her painful coming of age in England and America while trying to break into modeling. As a child, Lime is abused and abandoned by her Ethiopian mother and forced to live with her Ethiopian grandparents, but finally rescued by her half-Jamaican father. In Melda Beaty‘s novel “Lime” .. she finds a modeling agent who siphons off her profits and is later coerced into a sex scandal by her ex-husband, a Jamaican trumpet player. Amidst the nonstop pressure of the fashion world and the painful memories of her upbringing, her one solace is her witty, no-nonsense best friend AJ. Yet AJ too becomes the victim of an atrocious act of violence What happens when the fantasies of beauty collide with the realities of domestic violence? More below the media player. Listen to Melda Beaty Download audio file (meldabeaty.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life [...] The post Sordid Past Haunts Supermodel appeared first on The Bookcast.

Fairy tales are no longer just hand-me-downs from long-ago generations in faraway places. From Michael Mullin, author of “8: The Previously Untold Story of the Previously Unknown 8th Dwarf” now comes another original fairy tale, called “The Plight and Plot of Princess Penny” Penny Lemieux is a fifteen-year-old princess, deep into high school cliques, who desires revenge on a “mean girl” at school named Darcy. Then Penny stumbles on an ad with the strange headline, “Got Enemies?” placed by the witch from “The Frog Prince,” promising help in getting what she wants — and Penny hatches a diabolical idea. But a troll she meets along the way thinks it’s a very bad idea… More below the media player. Listen to Michael Mullin Download audio file (michaelmullin.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Indie authors learn early on that their path to success, however they define success, is often a bit non-traditional. For Michael Mullin, it includes a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to publish a hardcover collection of stories: I’ve self-published 2 short eBooks for YA-and-up readers, both of which have [...] The post A (Princess) Penny’s Worth of Trouble appeared first on The Bookcast.

We didn’t even have the term “midlife crisis” before 1965. It’s supposed to be the time when adults realize they’re mortal, after all. Not everyone has one. Debbianne DeRose has turned hers into a saucy memoir that is the oh-so-honest and humorous account of her personal journey through a string of compelling adventures and ideologies of the woo-woo kind. Her story begins with confusion and discontentment that catalyzes bold life changes and sends her roaming in search of magic, miracles, and a deeper grasp of the metaphysical nature of reality. In a word, woo-woo. In a unique style akin to confessional reporting, she shares her keen insights into human behavior as you meet a plethora of colorful characters and occasional charlatans. It becomes an inadvertent healing pilgrimage full of expansive revelations, and through the process of en-lightening up she emerges clear-headed and self-empowered with inspiration to spare. Her book is called “What I Did On My Midlife Crisis Vacation.” More below the media player. Listen to Debbianne DeRose Download audio file (debbiannederose.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Woo you want, woo [...] The post Make Me One With the Woo-Woo appeared first on The Bookcast.

“National security” seems to be a nebulous, amorphous term in the world that Adam Spence inhabits. All about him there is infrastructure collapse, massive unemployment, riots, bombings, environmental disasters – and special enforcement squads, torture, and disappearances. In the new thriller “No Away” by Jim Wygant, someone is pursuing Adam Spence, a band of men, the new protectors of “national security,” maybe working for the government, maybe not. His pursuers regard him as a grave threat, part of some conspiracy of which he knows nothing. He’s just a war veteran trying to live out of the back of a stolen pickup truck. And then disease strikes, a robust, lethal form of flu that wipes out entire populations .. and things take a really bad turn. More below the media player. Listen to Jim Wygant Download audio file (jimwygant.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Jim Wygant has been a licensed polygraph examiner for decades. He describes his nonfiction book “Confessions of a Lie Detector” as a “true crime memoir that draws upon thirty years of working with people accused of crimes.” From [...] The post Who’s Really Chasing This Killer? And Are They the Bad Guys? appeared first on The Bookcast.

When Michael Herne’s high school girlfriend Melissa commits suicide, he makes the fateful decision to go home for her funeral. Michael hasn’t been back to his Catskills hometown since he left it, and a college football scholarship, behind more than a dozen years ago to join the Army. And Michael quickly learns that his hometown has changed, as he is soon pulled into a web of mystery and corruption surrounding Melissa’s death. There’s an abusive ex-boyfriend, a town sheriff with mixed motives — and a ruthless Russian gang at the heart of it all. Michael will be forced to choose between two paths — the desk-working, college-educated intelligence analyst he has become, or the Tier I Army Operator he once was. This all takes place in the thriller, “Operator,” the first in a new series by David Vinjamuri. More below the media player. Listen to David Vinjamuri Download audio file (davidvinjamuri.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life What does Michael Herne, the protagnoist of David Vinjamuri’s thriller “Operator,” drive? According to David’s Facebook fan page, it’s “a black Pontiac G8 GXP – [...] The post A Suicide, A Homecoming, and Terror appeared first on The Bookcast.

If you could tell just one small story that would capture your mother’s character, and keep her spirit alive, what would it be? That simple question is at the heart of a project that has, for years, inspired hundreds of daughters and sons to rediscover their mothers – or, perhaps, discover them for the first time. Lynn Cook Henriksen discovered this profound way to keep our mothers’ spirits alive after witnessing Alzheimer’s disease ravage her own mother’s mind. Now in her book “TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir” Henriksen guides you through what she calls the Five Acts in a bold, new take on the art and craft of writing memoir. More below the media player. Listen to Lynn Cook Henriksen Download audio file (lynncookhenriksen.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Rhubarb pie? That was my mother’s domain. Mom would go out to the backyard, choose several red stalks growing next to our toolshed, shear off those ginormous leaves, and bring the fresh rhubarb to the kitchen. Lynn Cook Henriksen has her own rhubarb pie memory. I believe this rhubarb pie recipe, [...] The post How to Write Mom’s Story appeared first on The Bookcast.

A revolution has begun. And it’s being led by a man known simply as Max. His weapon? Words. Powerful words, projected to a nation knocked flat by the ultimate battle between haves and have-nots. As Eric Thomas‘s book “Fall of the Citizens” begins, a pharmaceutical company has obtained a lucrative government contract for a vaccine that the entire U.S. population craves. The company prices the vaccine at $60,000 per shot, effectively denying it to all but the wealthiest Americans. The situation creates a class warfare powderkeg that only needs one thing to set it off – the words of a man named Max. More below the media player. Listen to Eric Thomas Download audio file (ericthomas.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life How much is too much? I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is squeamish. So says Marie Drake on her blog “Marie Reads and Reviews.” But she also says she likes Fall of the Citizens… It kept me turning pages from the beginning and it was very difficult to put down. The story was interesting, and it felt like something [...] The post Are They Evil? Or Do They Just Not Understand? appeared first on The Bookcast.

Henry Melken is a widower. His daughter Chandra was just 13 when her mother, Ava, died. That was 16 years ago, and Henry and Chandra are stuck, as Lovelyn Bettison‘s novel “Flying Lessons” opens. Now haunted by the past, they sleepwalk through life – until unexpected relationships shake up their perceptions of reality. Henry’s new friendship with a neighbor blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead, and Chandra starts to see possibilities she’s never noticed before. Can it be that grief and hopea are two sides of the same coin? More below the media player. Listen to Lovelyn Bettison Download audio file (lovelynbettison.mp3) Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.   The Indie Author Life Flying Lessons is Lovelyn Bettison’s second novel, and she’s working on a third. Months before Sue Grafton’s rant about indie authors, Bettison presciently pre-empted the Grafton remarks on her own blog, as Flying Lessons was just about to be released: Some people imply that self-publishing is taking the easy way out. They think that because you didn’t try to get a New York publisher you must not be that serious about [...] The post Unexpected Relationships Transform Two Lives appeared first on The Bookcast.

Strap Yourself In and Meet “A Greater Monster”

Chasing a Serial Killer Takes a Deadly Turn

This Girl Is One Elf You Don’t Wanna Mess With

The Open, Terrifying Road After College

If You’re Dead And You Know It, Clap Your Hands