Emlyn Chand has always loved to hear and tell stories, having emerged from the womb with a fountain pen grasped firmly in her left hand (true story). When she’s not writing, she runs a large book club in Ann Arbor and is the president of author PR firm, Novel Publicity. Emlyn loves to connect with readers and is available throughout the social media interweb. Visit www.emlynchand.com for more info. Don’t forget to say “hi” to her sun conure Ducky!

Farsighted is her latest book.

Visit her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/emlynchand and Twitter at www.twitter.com/emlynchand!

About Farsighted

Alex Kosmitoras’s life has never been easy. The only other student who will talk to him is the school bully, his parents are dead-broke and insanely overprotective, and to complicate matters even more, he’s blind. Just when he thinks he’ll never have a shot at a normal life, a new girl from India moves into town. Simmi is smart, nice, and actually wants to be friends with Alex. Plus she smells like an Almond Joy bar. Yes, sophomore year might not be so bad after all.

Unfortunately, Alex is in store for another new arrival—an unexpected and often embarrassing ability to “see” the future. Try as he may, Alex is unable to ignore his visions, especially when they begin to suggest that Simmi is in danger. With the help of the mysterious psychic next door and new friends who come bearing gifts of their own, Alex must embark on a journey to change his future.

What is the first thing you did to promote your book once your publisher accepted your manuscript?

I knew very early in the writing process that I planned to self-publish. When I signed with my agent for my first (unpublished) novel, a condition of our contract was that I be allowed to go indie with the Farsighted series. I actually wrote a blog post explaining my decision (that’s here). Basically, the publishing industry is not only changing – it’s changed. I’m not really sure there is any benefit to being traditionally published anymore, especially if you’re an author who has the know-how and financial/time resources to A) professionally edit your books, B) get a stellar cover designed, and C) market your work. Another reason I’m all gaga for the self-pub world is because it’s what I preach through Novel Publicity. I spend all day trying to convince writers that the indie path can work for them. By choosing that route for myself, I am showing my belief in that statement; I am practicing what I preach to gain invaluable hands-on experience. If this works out for me; I’m pretty sure I’ll stay indie forever!

To answer your question more precisely, I started gearing up for promotion almost as soon as I started writing by building-up my social media platform. We also began production on my live action book trailer before the book was even half-written. Ditto on cover design. It’s never too early to start promoting!

After that, what happened?

After that, I continued to work on promotional techniques and prep for the long and arduous road of indie publishing. A road that also has an enjoyable scenic view when it’s not storming

What did your publisher do to promote your book?

Since I am indie, I am the author, publisher, and publicist. I did hire an outside editor and cover designer, but the rest has all fallen to me.

Besides blogging and using the social networks to promote your books, what other ways are you promoting your book?

Oh, man. Marketing Farsighted has been a full-time job on top of a full-time job. I’ve definitely devoted more man power into my campaign, because I have no limits. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time and energy recruiting bloggers for my launch. I’ve also hired 6 other blog tour companies (including Pump up Your Books, yay!) to tour my book over the next couple months—getting buzz early on is crucial. I’ve had a good amount of luck with GoodReads pay-per-click advertising and giveaways too (something I plan to blog in depth later for Novel Publicity).

What’s your opinion on blogging?  Do you see that it is helping sell your book or is it not making much difference in terms of sales?

Blogging is wonderful. Why would any writer choose not to blog? My business, Novel Publicity, has grown like it has because of our Free Advice Blog. We now get over 800 hits on an average day and have become a trusted source for social media book marketing advice. Since people trust us, they’re more likely to inquire in our service offerings. And business has been going great!

I cannot report the same blissful findings for my author blog, but I do get a few sales as part of my efforts. I’m sure of it. I plan to invest much more time in this site after the new year and will even be starting a vlog—video blog—to connect more personally with my readers, er, viewers.

I understand using the social networks to promote your books is also an effective marketing tool.  Do you find it is or isn’t?

Of course, it is. The wonderful thing about social media is that it can turn strangers from the other side of the world into best friends. These networking tools are also great ways to scout out and connect with your exact target audience. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard finding readers was in the days before the internet. Nor do I remember the days before the internet

If you had to pick just one book marketing tool that you’ve used to promote your book, which would you say has been the most effective?

Ahw, man! That’s like asking: “If you could only keep one of your bodily organs, which would it be?” I mean, all the marketing tools work together. They support one another and complete the entire organism. In this analogy, the so-called heart of marketing would be the reviewers. Get people talking about your book. Get people reading it. That is the best thing you can do for your little fledgling.

What are your experiences with offline promotions such as booksignings?

I haven’t done any offline promotion yet, other than sending out Farsighted-themed postcards via my website to anyone who requests them. I’ve also done a fair bit of internet radio. Once this hectic holiday season has passed, I plan on doing readings in libraries and book stores. I also have a speaking engagement booked with a middle school that I’m really looking forward to.

Thank you for this interview, Emlyn!  We wish you much success!

FARSIGHTED, by Emlyn Chand, Blue Crown Press, 226 pp., Kindle 99 cents.

Alex Kosmitoras’s life has never been easy. The only other student who will talk to him is the school bully, his parents are dead-broke and insanely overprotective, and to complicate matters even more, he’s blind. Just when he thinks he’ll never have a shot at a normal life, a new girl from India moves into town. Simmi is smart, nice, and actually wants to be friends with Alex. Plus she smells like an Almond Joy bar. Yes, sophomore year might not be so bad after all.

Unfortunately, Alex is in store for another new arrival—an unexpected and often embarrassing ability to “see” the future. Try as he may, Alex is unable to ignore his visions, especially when they begin to suggest that Simmi is in danger. With the help of the mysterious psychic next door and new friends who come bearing gifts of their own, Alex must embark on a journey to change his future.

Book Excerpt

Our hero is about to embark on a journey. Life as he knows it is quiet, boring, and predictable, but it’s also comforting and familiar. That will soon change.

Today is the last day of summer, but I’m not doing anything even remotely close to fun. I’m just lying here in Mom’s garden, running my hands over the spiky blades of grass—back and forth, back and forth until my fingertips go numb. Until everything goes numb. I sigh, but no one’s around to hear.

“Alex,” Dad yells from the kitchen window. “Dinner.”

Already? How long have I been out here? I spring up from the ground and the grass springs up with me, one blade at a time – boing, boink, boint. The sounds wouldbe imperceptible to any normal person, but they roar inside my ears. I picture an army of earthworms raising the blades as spears in their turf wars and smile to myself.

Dad opens the back door and calls out to me again. “C’mon, Alex. What’s taking you so long?”

Grabbing my cane, I shuffle over to the house, brushing past himas I squeeze inside. The kitchen reeks of fast food restaurants and movie theaters—butter and grease.That means it’sbreakfast for dinner. We do this every Sunday night, because Mom goes out to garden club and Dad doesn’t know how to cook anything else. Plus it’s cheap.

Breathing heavily, Dad plunks some food onto both our plates and collapses into his chair. He groans and asks me to pass the butter, or rather the “bud-dah.” He grew up in Boston and every once in a while the accent works itself into his speech.

I slide the tub to dad; he reaches out and stops it before it can glide clear off the table.

“What’s this?” Dad asks.

“Uh, the butter.Obviously.”

Dad’s voice raises an octave. “I know it’s the butter, so don’t get smart. Why’d you give it to me?”

“Uh, because you asked me to.”

“No, I didn’t.” He exhales as if the wind has been knocked out of him by an ill-timed punch to the stomach. “Guess you must’ve read my mind.” He chuckles to himselfand slides the cool metal knife into the butter and scrapes it across his toast.

Dad and I don’t usually talk to each other unless Mom is around, asking about our days, chatting on, working hard to create those warm and fuzzy family moments we don’t seem to create naturally. And even though Mom has reassured me a million times, I know that Dad resents me for being born blind.

I can tell he would have much rather had a son like Brady—the same guy who insists on making my high school experience as difficult as possible.Nothing’s worse than knowing that your own father thinks you’re a loser.

A DEATH FOR BEAUTY, by Alberto Rios Arias, Freedom River Books, Kindle Edition, $7.95.

Set during the Civil War, a troubled young woman struggles with her conscience after the suspicious death of her unfaithful husband. When her dreams of a new life seem hopeful, she ventures across the western plains with her sickly daughter in tow and an unscrupulous businessman who promises her a pot of gold. But the seeds of this dangerous venture—sown in blood—yield the unexpected and what she encounters along the fringes of the Oregon Trail in the dark corners of the prairies, will change her life forever.

BOOK EXCERPT:

THE SOUND RUMBLED THROUGH the air like a stampede of wild horses, warning what was yet to come. The winds echoed like an open wound—a wound so deep that only death could heal it.

She could feel the storm approaching from the east, the rising heat, the smell of rain. She saw the natural order of things gathering. Death comes like salvation, unexpectedly. But her life was slow and deliberate. A life bound by swirling untruths—dark, unanswered prayers.

Virginia Mae Mercy always dreamed of starting over somewhere else. Now that her husband died, everything else stood still too, and if she needed a little push to get on with her life, that’s when the whirlwinds seemed imbued with divine purpose.

She tried to lock down the storm shelter, but within seconds, she lay in a cornfield searching for her little girl. The storm tore off the shelter doors, snatching her and the girl in a flash. They landed acres away but somehow survived, almost falling together, bruised and hallucinating.

Two signs from above were enough.

Last month, the first sign had come in the unlikely form of a telegram. She felt it coming. Confederate soldiers killed her husband in battle, or so they thought. That shocker was still under investigation, and the disorienting malaise from this recent storm, was finally beginning to fade.

Virginia never understood life’s storms. Not hers. But if there was one defining moment in her mind that crystallized and spoke to her sensibilities, this was it. She wished she could understand eternal matters too, a lifetime of prayers that until recently had gone unanswered.

Yet it was the earthly things that often made her breathe a little heavier, made her heart beat a little faster. In reflection, she feared the sudden horror of dying alone, her childhood premonitions about a fragile life in Geneva, Kansas. How dangerous life really was.

– Excerpt from A Death for Beauty by Alberto Rios Arias.  Visit the author’s website at www.adeathforbeauty.com.

THE PUB ACROSS THE POND, by Mary Carter, Kensington, 336 pp., $10.95.

“Sometimes leaving home is the only way to find where you belong….”

Carlene Rivers is many things. Dutiful, reliable, kind. Lucky? Not so much. At thirty, she’s living a stifling existence in Cleveland, Ohio. Then one day, Carlene buys a raffle ticket. The prize: a pub on the west coast of Ireland. Carlene is stunned when she wins. Everyone else is stunned when she actually goes.

As soon as she arrives in Ballybeog, Carlene is smitten, not just by the town’s beguiling mix of ancient and modern but by the welcome she receives. In this small town near Galway Bay, strife is no stranger, strangers are family, and no one is ever too busy for a cup of tea or a pint. And though her new job presents challenges–from a meddling neighbor to the pub’s colorful regulars–there are compensations galore. Like the freedom to sing, joke, and tell stories and, in doing so, find her own voice. And in her flirtation with Ronan McBride, the pub’s charming, reckless former owner, she just may find the freedom to follow where impulse leads and trust her heart–and her luck–for the very first time.

BOOK EXCERPT:

Prologue
Declan
The Greatest Love Story Ever told in Ballybeog

It was the greatest love story ever told in Ballybeog when everyone was drunk, but nobody wanted to go home, and all other great love stories had been told.

Name’s Declan, but I’ll answer to most anything as long as yer thirsty and polite, and in that order. Ah, say nothin’ until you hear more. I’ve been a publican at Uncle Jimmy’s going on twenty years now. Most days it’s good ole craic, but sometimes when you’re a publican, you’ve gotta be a bags. I wasn’t sure Carlene Rivers, the Yankee Doodle Dandee who won the pub, had that in her. She had sweet written all over her, and I hate to say it, but girls like that always seem to attract the wrong kind of lads. I’ve seen many a sweet lass get the guy of their dreams, only to watch them turn into their worst nightmares. Over time their men belly up to the bar more than they do the bedroom. Because the Irishmen who “do”, usually don’t hang around here. And Ronan McBride was no exception.

Nobody thought the lad would ever settle down. There are three kinds of Irish men. Those who do, those who don’t, and those who say they might but probably won’t. Ronan McBride was the latter. He was thirty-three years of age but still hadn’t worked out his boyish ways. I don’t know why nature makes those marriage-phobic-men so alluring to the women, a course, no one would disagree that he was the best looking man in the family, and I’m not just saying that because he was the only man in the family. His father James McBride (or Uncle Jimmy as he was known around here), had passed, God rest his soul, leaving Ronan, his mother, and six sisters to run the McBride family pub. In heavenly retrospect, I bet James wishes he would’ve just left the pub to the girls; it would have been an insult to his only and eldest son all right, but as I said, sometimes when you’re a publican, you’ve gotta be a bags.

As the song goes, Ronan was a rambler and a gambler, although he was never a long way from home. I can’t tell you what it was that made the birds go absolutely mental over him, except he was over six feet and had all his hair. Let’s just say he had his pick of chickens in our little town, not to mention a hen or two who would’ve liked to sink their beaks into him.

But it was Carlene who got folks to whispering that maybe, just maybe, our terminal bachelor might mend his wayward ways. There was something in the air whenever those two were in the same room. A bit of a spark you might say, especially when they were arguing. Yep, things certainly hummed when they lit into each other, and for anyone watching it was great craic. Although we worried about Sally Collins, of course, she’d been absolutely lovesick over that boy her entire life. Still, it did me good to see that beautiful Yankee bird come into town and shake up his world, and my money was on her from the beginning.

But despite cheering the lass on, I understood Ronan’s terror. For some, there’s nothing more frightening than love, except maybe running out of ale. I was like him meself, one of the Irishman who don’t. And let me tell you, many are the nights when I’ve regretted it. Cold, long, rainy nights when I’m lying in bed and I close my eyes and some skirt that I chased when I was a younger lad comes skipping into my dream, all pretty, and bouncy, and smelling nice, only to start giving me shit for letting her go. Worse than the terrors, those dreams. I’ve known Ronan since he was a squaller, and I didn’t want him to make the same mistakes I did. I used to say, ‘What’s for you, won’t pass you’, but I know it’s a lie. I let them pass me. I always thought there’d be more time.

I’m in me seventies now, and it’s probably too late for me. I’m a scrawny looking thing with black wire glasses and I’ve a tuft of silver bird nest sitting on me head, but I’ve been told I still have a right nice smile, (even if they’re not all me original teeth), and believe it when I tell ye I got me share of tiddly-winks back in the day. I’m not much over 5’5 which I read in some touristy-type book is average for an Irishman. The average Irishman, according to this book, is 5’5, drinks four cups of tea a day, has 1.85 kids, and spends three euros a day on alcohol. I don’t know where the writer of these so-called facts was getting his information, but it sure t’wasn’t here, cuz some of our lads spend five euros an hour on the black stuff. That’s a pint of Guinness for you blow-ins.

To make a long story short, I’m just your average Joe Soap. I make up for it in other departments if you know what I mean. Ah, but this story isn’t about me or my regrets, so I hope you can put away all lurid thoughts of my national endowments. If you want to take that matter up on a one-to-one basis, and it goes without saying that you have to be a good-looking bird, then you can Facebook me. I didn’t join the fecking thing until the pub went up for raffle in America, but now that I’m on it, I reckon I might as well make the most of it. On that note, if anyone has an extra goat to give away, I’m on that farming game and I can’t seem to get a fecking goat no matter what I do, so send me one, so, if you please.
To make a long story short, we were a nice, quiet town until that fecking raffle went viral. That means a lot of people on the internet saw it. The tickets were sold in Irish festivals all over America, and they went for twenty-dollars apiece. Everyone and their mother wanted to win a pub in Ireland. And if Carlene’s mother looks anything like her daughter, I would’ve gone for a mother-daughter combo, but the Young Yank came on her own. And in the wink of an eye, our quiet little town weren’t so quiet n’more.

Situated on the West Coast of Ireland, we’re nestled on the edge of Galway Bay. We might be small, but we’re mighty. Close enough to Galway City we only need to follow the scent of heather and lager along the coast to lay our fingers on her thriving pulse, but tucked far enough away that until that fecking raffle, we didn’t get too many blow-ins.

We’ll call our little village, Ballybeog, or in Irish, Baile Béag, which means “Little Center”. I picked it because it sounds pleasant and Irish-y and because nobody in their right minds wants me to use its real name. Not out of shame, mind you, but for fear of being over-run by Americans like what happened in Dingle when the dolphin showed up. Nothing can ruin a sweet little village faster than a gaggle of Americans tracking down their “Irish roots” with their iPhones and dodgy laminated diagrams of supposed family trees.

Regardless, everyone will be treated as if they’re welcome at the McBride family pub. This is the place to be. Drink away your troubles, catch up with the locals, watch a horse race, listen to traditional Irish music, play a game of pool, or darts, or cards, and see how much better life treats ye after a nice pint. Or two. Or twelve. Nobody keeps count except the Americans. Right now the place is jammers. We’re waiting on a bride. So let me tend to my other customers now, but doncha worry. I’ll check back to see how you’re doing, or freshen your pint. And if you get half a mind to be neighborly, don’t forget to send me a fecking goat.

– Excerpt from The Pub Across the Pond by Mary Carter.  Visit the author’s website at www.marycarterbooks.com.

John Banks was born in Asheville, NC.  His storytelling is very much in the Southern tradition, with a special affinity for humorists such as Mark Twain and the Old Southwest school of writers.  Though entirely imaginary, much of the material in Glorify Each Day must have come from his many years as a teacher in the public schools and community colleges of his native state and from the three years he spent as an a community college administrator.

Visit his website at www.819publishing.com or his Facebook Fan Page here.

Welcome to Book Marketing Buzz, John.  Can we begin by having you tell us a little about your book?

In the broadest sense, it’s a novel about man’s capacity for violence – his tendency to lash out and hurt those people he loves the most and the effects his violence has on his own development as a person and on the people around him.  Specifically, I had an image in my head of two young boys, best friends, who get into one of those fights that young boys are always getting into that are usually over with quickly and are just as quickly forgotten.  But what if one of those typical quarrels took a really violent turn, perhaps accidentally or perhaps not so accidentally?  How would that affect the young perpetrator throughout his life?  What type of person would he have to be in order to do  such a thing?  I thought those were very interesting questions.  But at the same time, I was also writing some humorous pieces that had nothing really to do with violence or man’s inhumanity to man, so I ended up creating this main character who incorporated everything I was writing about so that he was actually rather funny and charming but also had this very dark side to him.  On the whole, I think it worked out very well.

What is the first thing you did to promote your book?

To get it reviewed by as many people as possible.  It’s gotten good reviews, so I’m hopeful that that will translate into sales.

After that, what happened?

Well, I haven’t really been too active in promoting my book.  I’m not a very good salesman, unfortunately.  Literary-minded fiction can be a tough sell, especially for first-time authors, and unless I want to spend thousands of dollars on a publicist, which I don’t, it would require a lot of hard work on my part to push my book, and frankly, I would rather spend my time and energy being a writer and working on my next project rather than spend all the time that would be necessary to publicize this book to a great extent.

What else have you done to promote your book?

I enjoyed setting up a website for the book and doing these blog posts are a lot of fun.  As long as it’s something that I enjoy that doesn’t force me to neglect my next project, then I’m game for it.  The “Look Inside This Book” feature at Amazon is really neat.  It gives you a chance to read the first chapter of Glorify, and the people who have read the book have all said that the first chapter was really gripping and worked to draw them further into the book.

What’s your opinion on blogging?  Do you see that it is helping sell your book or is it not making much difference in terms of sales?

Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?  I certainly see a great potential for blogging in terms of sales.  Anything that allows you to put your ideas before the public has to be a good thing, although I also see the beginnings of overkill, where you have so many outlets now for information there tends to be a dilution of everything.

I understand using the social networks to promote your books is also an effective marketing tool.  Do you find it is or isn’t?

Oh yeah, Facebook has been a great tool for me to get the word out.  Without a doubt.

If you had to pick just one book marketing tool that you’ve used to promote your book, which would you say has been the most effective?

Since my book has just been published, Facebook has been great at letting everyone I’m friends with learn more about the book.  Hopefully, as time moves on, the blogs and Amazon reviews will help expand my readership.

What are your experiences with offline promotions such as booksignings?

I haven’t done any book signings.  I think they might be more effective for me if the book can generate some online publicity.  The book is only being sold online, so that’s what my focus is on.

Thank you for this interview, John!  We wish you much success!

Join Mary Carter, author of the women’s fiction novel, The Pub Across the Pond (Kensington), as she virtually tours the blogosphere September 20 – November 11, 2011, on her second virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Mary Carter

MARY CARTER is a freelance writer and novelist. The Pub Across the Pond is her fifth novel with Kensington. Her other works include: My Sister’s Voice, Sunnyside Blues, She’ll Take It, and Accidentally Engaged. In addition to her novels she has written two novellas: A Very Maui Christmas in the best selling anthology Holiday Magic, and The Honeymoon House in the best selling anthology Almost Home. She is currently working on a new novel for Kensington.

Readers are welcome to visit her at www.marycarterbooks.com.

Visit her at Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Carter-Books/248226365259.

About The Pub Across the Pond

“Sometimes leaving home is the only way to find where you belong….”

Carlene Rivers is many things. Dutiful, reliable, kind. Lucky? Not so much. At thirty, she’s living a stifling existence in Cleveland, Ohio. Then one day, Carlene buys a raffle ticket. The prize: a pub on the west coast of Ireland. Carlene is stunned when she wins. Everyone else is stunned when she actually goes.

As soon as she arrives in Ballybeog, Carlene is smitten, not just by the town’s beguiling mix of ancient and modern but by the welcome she receives. In this small town near Galway Bay, strife is no stranger, strangers are family, and no one is ever too busy for a cup of tea or a pint. And though her new job presents challenges–from a meddling neighbor to the pub’s colorful regulars–there are compensations galore. Like the freedom to sing, joke, and tell stories and, in doing so, find her own voice. And in her flirtation with Ronan McBride, the pub’s charming, reckless former owner, she just may find the freedom to follow where impulse leads and trust her heart–and her luck–for the very first time.

Visit her official tour page here! If you would like to ask Mary a question, be sure to stop by Pump Up Your Book’s September Authors on Tour Chat/Book Giveaway starting at 8 p.m. eastern on Friday, September 30. She would love to meet you!

Pump Up Your Book is an innovative public relations agency specializing in online book publicity for authors looking for maximum online promotion to sell their books. Visit our website at www.pumpupyourbook.com to find out how we can take your book to the virtual level! Don’t forget to check out our December special!

Contact:

Dorothy Thompson, CEO/Founder Pump Up Your Book

Visit Pump Up Your Book at Twitter and Facebook

HOMECOMING – OSGUARDS:  GUARDIANS OF THE UNIVERSE, by Malcolm Petteway, Rage Books, 300 pp., $14.50.

For centuries the planets of Kulusk and Chaktun have battled in the heavens above Earth. In 1860, twin Chaktun princesses, Laurona and Nausona Osguard, fled to Earth and were beaten and raped as slaves in the United States’ antebellum south. Unbeknownst to the people of 21st century Earth, their descendants, the Osguards now govern a universal peacekeeping organization called the Universal Science, Security and Trade Association of Planets—USSTAP. The First Osguard, Michael Genesis leads the Osguards in protecting the 60 known galaxies of the universe from Kulusk tyranny. Now Earth has become an unwitting pawn in the Kulusk Empire’s thirst for revenge against the people of Chaktun, forcing Michael to prepare USSTAP, for the first time, to go on the offensive and wage an all out universal war. If he is successful, many people will die, and if he is not, Earth will be destroyed.

Malcolm Dylan Petteway is a senior military analyst, a retired military officer and a twenty-year veteran of the United States Air Force. He flew B-52’s as an Electronic Warfare Officer and has 3,000 flight hours and 300 combat hours. In his distinguished career, Malcolm has used his knowledge in the art of war, military weapons and combat defenses in planning over 400 combat sorties.  Besides his Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters and numerous other awards, Malcolm is the recipient of the U.S. Air Force Air Medal and the U.S. Air Force Air Achievement Medal for his actions during Operation Enduring Freedom. Malcolm Petteway is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and California State University.

His latest book is Homecoming – Osguards: Guardians of the Universe (Book 1).

You can visit Malcolm at http://www.ragebooks.net.

WHEN STARS ALIGN, by Carole Kosoff, Author House, 412 pp., $17.95.

In an excerpt from Carole Kosoff’s new book, When Stars Align, we get to read about a place and time where mixed-race relationships are both illegal and unacceptable.  The time is a crucial period in American history–the Civil War and the years of Reconstruction following it–and the characters are Thaddeus and Amy, who share a forbidden love that can get them both killed. For he is a mulatto ex-slave, and she is white. In the novel, whenever Amy asks if she and Thaddeus will ever be together, his answer is “When stars align.”

The place is Louisiana, where Moss Grove, a large Mississippi River cotton plantation, has thrived from the use of slave labor while its owners lived lives of comfort and privilege. Thaddeus, conceived from the rape of a young field slave by the heir to the plantation, is raised as a Moss Grove house servant. His continued presence remains a thorn in the side of the man who sired him.

Deepening divisiveness between North and South launches the Civil War and changes Moss Grove in ways no one could have anticipated. With the war swirling, we see the battles and carnage through Thaddeus’ eyes.

After the Civil War ends, the period of Reconstruction begins, and there is a glimmer of hope for the former slaves: black legislators are elected and help to pass new laws. With the help of Union soldiers, schools are established to educate those who were formerly prohibited from learning to read. Medical clinics are opened; businesses are established. Hope flourishes. Thaddeus returns to Moss Grove and to Amy, hoping to share their newly won freedoms. Perhaps the stars will now finally align for the young lovers…

In 1876, however, in the most contested election in American history, the ex-Confederate states barter the selection of President Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for removal of all Union troops from their soil. Within a decade, hopes are dashed as Jim Crow laws are passed, the Ku Klux Klan launches new violence, and black progress is crushed.

When Stars Align Book Excerpt

PrologueThe setting sun drifted across the rutted dirt road grooved from repeated attacks of rain, hooves and wagon wheels. Small huts lined one side erratically, grey plumes of smoke stretching skyward from them, anxious to leave the noxious odors and poverty that gave birth to their temporal existence. The main house, the Master’s home, Moss Grove, was another hundred yards away, concealing itself from the squalor that was so necessary for it to function.

Rose’s body ached as the small buggy lurched first one way, then another, seeking purchase from the mud and slurry that slowed its journey. Her strength still wasn’t up to the six hour trip so soon after giving birth. She nestled the unfamiliar tiny breathing mass in her arms…a baby boy, blue-eyed with soft downy mocha skin. She hadn’t stopped staring at him since she gave birth four days ago. Born from so much pain and shame it was almost as if God was apologizing for the anguish he’d bestowed on her. She wanted to hate that part of the child she recognized in the father, the long fingers, the arched strong eyebrows, but most of all those electric blue eyes that stared at her in an unnerving fashion from the first moment they opened and looked into her eyes. She would never forget being thrown onto the ground, her legs being pushed apart and staring into the icy blue eyes of Henry Rogers. Only a few years older than her, he was strong and arrogant, as he forced himself into her. He was also white. She tried to scream but he slapped her. Seconds later he let out a gasp, stood and smiled as he climbed back onto his horse. He left without a glance or a word while she lay there, crying at the pain and frightened by the blood and dirt spotting her thin cotton dress.

Rose had been away from Moss Grove for more than a month. Massa’ Rogers, Moss Grove’s patriarch, had ordered that she be sent away to have this child that was such an embarrassment. She would have preferred to stay in her small cabin in Moss Grove’s slave quarters. She’d be with people she knew but no one asked nor cared about her preferences. She had been put into a wagon and taken to the home of Massa’ Rogers’s kin near Baton Rouge to bear him a nigger grandchild, for Lord’s sake. The servants there had treated her kindly. They set her in a room of her own in the back of the house. It was clean and dry and even had a real glass window. It was more than she’d had her entire life and when it was time for the baby to come out they fussed over her as if she were their own kin.

As the small buggy and its cargo rode closer to the house it pulled to a stop. Two women waited at the side of the path. Rose recognized the slightly taller one. It was Sarah, Moss Grove’s house Mammy. The other, a slave woman that Rose had seen but never met, was a little shorter, a little more bent, stood next to her, head and shoulders cloaked in a shabby black wool shawl. Both women looked grim as their sad eyes tracked the buggy’s slow approach. The last embers of the day were the only light illuminating the scene.

“Rose! How you feelin’?” Sarah asked gently, moving closer.

“I be fine, I guess. I’m not sure what to do with this little package the Lord Jesus brung me.”

“Ain’t no need to worry, youngster. Hand him to me,” Sarah said, reaching her arms up.

“I don’t wanna let go of him. He a part of me. He look at me and he knows I is his mama.” Rose’s voice began to quake as words and tears mingled in her throat.

“Rose, just give me the baby. You too young to even produce milk for him. He need a strong teat and someone who know how to care for a new born.”

“I learn, Miss Sarah. I learn quick. You know ‘ah is bright.”

“You’ll have more. Big, strong ‘uns. When you’re older and you’ll have the baby’s daddy to help.”

“But I carried this un’. This ‘un is mine….mine,” Rose pleaded.

“Rose, go back to your cabin and forget this baby. Massa’ Jedidiah has other plans for him.”

Sarah nodded to the driver. The man stood and with a gentle firmness he took the baby from Rose’s grasp and passed him to Sarah. He hated being involved in these women’s troubles. All that cryin’. The infant began to wail at the events he shared but would never comprehend. Rose’s body shook, every nerve electric, unable to catch her breath. Her new son was being taken from her. She thought she might die giving birth and now she was almost sorry that she hadn’t.

Sarah stared back at the young black slave girl. She understood what Rose had gone through to bear this child but she had her instructions. She passed the baby to the woman who watched silently and would act as a mid-wife and surrogate mother and whose breasts would nourish the infant.

The wagon turned and headed back toward the slave’s quarters. Rose watched the two women trudge slowly away from her toward the house, holding her son against the evening’s chill and muffling the cries that grew more muted each step away from her.

A horned owl left its perch, disturbed by the noise below. As it soared over the trees seeking an evening meal, its mournful sounds blended into a plaintive duet with the infant’s sobs.

Soon the wagon stopped and the driver ordered Rose to get down. The young girl was inert, unable to move.

“Get’cha self down, ah has to get up early and head back to Baton Rouge,” the driver said.

The young girl obeyed as if in a trance and squatted on the ground where she landed. Her body hung motionless in the black moonless night as her soul screamed with the maternal hunger of eons. She had lost her first born child.

An avid student of history, Carole Eglash-Kosoff is a native of Wisconsin. After graduating from UCLA, she spent her career in the apparel industry and teaching fashion retail, marketing, and sales at the college level. Her first book is The Human Spirit. She has also established the …a better way! Scholarship program, which provides money and mentoring for worthy high school students for both their first and second year of college. Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.

Her latest book is When Stars Align.

You can visit her website at www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com or connect with her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.

YOU NEVER KNOW: TALES OF TOBIAS AN ACCIDENTAL LOTTERY WINNER, by Lilian Duval, Wheatmark, 354 pp., $16.02.

In an excerpt from Lilian Duval’s new book, You Never Know: Tales of Tobias an Accidental Lottery Winner, we get to see what could happen in one split minute that will change our lives forever.  But it does more than that.  The book shows us also what can happen to an ordinary person who becomes…extraordinary.  And sometimes being extraordinary has its pitfalls.

Tobias starts out in life much the same as any of us—not rich, not poor, with imperfect parents and unlimited ambition. When he’s twenty years old, his future is altered in irreparable ways after a tragic car accident pushes him down a new path. The once-promising anthropology major is forced to abandon his dreams in order to care for his orphaned, brain-damaged younger brother.

In his late thirties, Tobias works in a bookstore, trying desperately to make ends meet to support his family. His daily grind only reinforces the sadness that broken dreams and bad luck bring in their wake.

When Tobias finds he has won the Mega Millions lottery, his unimaginable bad luck seems to have changed into unimaginable good luck … or has it?  This is an extraordinary book about an ordinary person and highly recommended.

You Never Know: Tales of Tobias an Accidental Lottery Winner Book Excerpt

Chapter 1

Saturday, December 23, 1989, was the kind of tepid winter day that made people ask, “What winter?” Dark by four in the afternoon, but no wind, no bite, a gray curtain over the sky for most of the day, just barely cold enough to freeze the slush into a treacherous skin of black ice that coated the streets like slime in a dirty shower stall. Tobias skidded on it when he stepped off the New Jersey Transit bus from Port Authority.
He was to call home from the bus station as soon as he arrived. He would wait in Amy’s Coffee House and pop out with his luggage when his father double-tapped the horn.

The bus had pulled into Woodrock, New Jersey, at four-thirty PM, half an hour late in Christmas traffic. Tobias slung his overstuffed book bag over his shoulder and dragged his valise into the crowded restaurant. He bought a giant latte and sat on a bar stool at the end of the counter. Other college students were chatting about ski trips and courses and their current romances. Christmas carols played on an endless loop. The place smelled of cinnamon.

The location of home was debatable. The longer he stayed away, the more separate he became from the family still living in Woodrock, to the point where he could almost forget them. Home was where his life was: Abington College in Maryland and the off-campus apartment he shared with Martin, his tennis partner, a math major planning on business school, who called Tobias a “liberal arts lefty.” They got along fine, were evenly matched on the courts, and took turns abandoning their apartment for a few hours when one or the other had a girlfriend over. They were both twenty, going on twenty-one, seesawing between adolescence and adulthood.

Tobias took a gulp of coffee and scalded his tongue. His father would be sitting in front of the TV now, doing nothing, waiting for the phone to ring. His mother would be delaying dinner preparations, sneaking another glass of wine. His brother, Simeon, would be upstairs in his room, sketching or drawing.

He sipped half the coffee and folded his arms over his book bag. Simeon, age fifteen, was a cartoonist. His pictures had appeared in the high school newspaper, the town newspaper, and the state magazine. Their mother was an art teacher, but no one had taught him cartooning; he just drew all day long–in class, where he was warm in art and cold in every other subject; at home, where he holed up in his room, away from the fighting; and anyplace he went where he had to wait in line. He didn’t talk much.

When Tobias was eleven, Simeon was six, and already attracting attention with his cartoons. He entered the school art contest with a drawing of his first-grade teacher, emphasizing her long earrings and long face, a caricature that was otherwise flattering. The school principal called and demanded to know who, in fact, had drawn a picture too advanced for a first-grader. Their mother huffed off to school, carrying a Grand Union bag crammed with Simeon’s cartoons of the last year or so, mostly of family members, to back him up. Simeon won the prize: a drawing set containing colored pencils, chalk pastels, an eraser, a sharpener, and a blending stump, all in a tin box with compartments like a Swanson frozen dinner.

Watching him sketch at the kitchen table, Tobias told their mother, “He’s talented because he practices so much. He never does anything else.” Simeon went on drawing without seeming to listen.

“No,” their mother said. “He practices so much because he’s talented.”

Tobias first saw his baby brother when he was two weeks old. He’d been sent alone at age five on a plane to his aunt Joyce in Encino, California, hovered over by flight attendants, at the time called stewardesses. Joyce, accustomed to covering for her alcoholic sister, took care of Tobias competently and joylessly for a month. On his return home, his father showed him the baby, asleep in a crib. “Here’s your new brother,” he said. “Just like you, only smaller.”

By the time Tobias was twelve, his mother was drinking in the mornings, her coffee mug filled with wine, and couldn’t get Simeon off to elementary school. Tobias packed his brother’s lunch every day before he left for middle school, taught him to tell time, and made sure he got out the door on time, while their mother went back to bed.

Tobias finished his coffee and asked the girl next to him to watch his stuff while he went to the men’s room. Someone was on the pay phone at the back of the restaurant. He ordered another coffee the same size. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. But rather than making him jittery, the caffeine was calming him, and he cast around for something to look forward to after this visit. He was always thinking, When this or that happens, then I’ll be happy. It was never now; it was always later. Maybe happiness is forever anticipating being happy, he thought. Getting what you want doesn’t equal happiness. His was a life always heading somewhere but never arriving.

At the moment, he was looking forward to three things: One, seeing his brother, his only family member who was not stuck in time or moving backward. Two, perversely, for this visit to be over. And three, his undergraduate anthropology fellowship in the rainforests of the Peruvian Amazon and the Yanomami territories of Brazil and Venezuela.

His father had forbidden Simeon to draw or paint until he raised his grades in school, where he was making As in art and Cs and Ds in all his other tenth-grade subjects. Twice, Tobias had mediated on the phone long-distance, to no avail. Simeon could draw with a fingernail in the dirt, but missed his art supplies, which their father had confiscated for the semester.

The phone at the back was free. Tobias felt in the front zippered flap of his suitcase for his family’s presents, all bought at the last minute from the campus store: an Abington College scarf for his mother, an Abington coffee mug for his father, and the book Best Cartoonists of the 20th Century for his brother. He lugged everything to the phone corner and started fishing for coins in his coat pocket, slowly. At the center table, students he had known in high school were staring at him. He turned his back and plunked a quarter into the phone.

“Toby!” a voice boomed from the open door. A man stepped into the coffee shop. “Tobias Hillyer.” The thirty or so customers all stopped talking at once. “Holly Jolly Christmas” warbled on the soundtrack.

Tobias grabbed his backpack and valise, scattering the coins from the phone shelf onto the floor. “Dad, I just got here. I was just calling you.”

They hugged.

“An hour late,” his father said, grinning under his winter hat, the kind with ear flaps. He cuffed Tobias on the head– only playfully. It hurt anyway.

“Thanks for coming, Dad. Come on; let’s go.” Murmurs of conversation sprang up as they shuffled to the door.

“Your mother wants us to stop and get Chinese food. No time to cook.” He put Tobias’s bags in the trunk. “So she said.”

“Dad, please don’t put anything on top of the suitcase.”

“How’s school?”

“Good, fine, Dad. I got a work-study job tutoring. Doing all right. So I’d like to invite you all out to dinner.” Getting the family out in public would at least mitigate their initial meeting.

They got in the car. “You still going down there with those pygmies?”

“Dad, they’re Yanomami. Brazilian Indians, some in Venezuela. It’ll be all right.”

“Yo Mama, that what you call them?” He laughed.

Tobias ignored him the rest of the way to the house. He started to unlock the front door, which gave way before he turned the key. Still broken.

“Hi, sweetie!” His mother embraced him. She reeked of wine, and her enthusiasm alarmed him. There would be a confrontation; he could sense it.

“Good to see you, Mom.” He stepped into the kitchen, ostensibly to get a glass of water, but only to check the barrel of corks behind the kitchen door. The top of the barrel reached his waist, and it was full of corks, some still wet from the bottle.

His mother was following him. “Sorry, honey, I didn’t have time to cook.”

His father said, “Tobias has invited us out. He’s into money now.”

“Mom. Dad. Let’s make this a good one, OK? How about in twenty minutes, we all go out and celebrate the Christmas season?” His head was hurting. If it weren’t for Simeon, he would have stayed on campus with the foreign students who lived too far away to go home on a holiday. He went upstairs to the room he had shared with his brother, who still had not emerged to greet him. Their bedroom door was closed. He knocked and walked in without waiting for an answer.

“Toby!” Simeon grabbed him, laughing and jumping like a little kid.

Tobias hugged him hard and thumped him on the back. “What are you doing, kiddo?”

“Just goofing around.” Simeon’s desk was covered with cartoons drawn on notebook paper with pencil, his other materials still under lock and key. There were caricatures of school friends; drawings of girls he favored, endowed with plus-size breasts and deep cleavage; and one picture of their mother, wine glass in hand, and their father, apparently scolding her.
Simeon was tall and thin like Tobias, but nearsighted. His rectangular glasses were always slipping down his narrow nose. “Toby. I got you something special. For your trip.” He opened his desk drawer. “Open it now.”

“Today’s only the twenty-third.”

“No, I have a regular present for you for Christmas. This is extra.”

“Aw, I feel bad, Simmy. All I have is one gift for you.”

“Doesn’t matter. This is for sticking up for me. Open it,”

Simeon said, handing him a wrapped box.

“Why now?”

“Hey, you never know.”

The present was heavy and solid, the size of a book, but denser. Tobias undid the wrapping paper. “Oh, man, Simmy, these are expensive.” It was a pair of Swarovski binoculars, 10 x 50 power, good enough for ornithologists in the jungle. “Oh, my God, Simmy, how could you do this?”
Simeon took the box from his brother and spilled the accessories out on the bed. “They’re waterproof and fog-proof.” He took out the lens covers, eyepiece covers, carrying case, and neck strap. “I won some art contests.”

“Simmy. Thank you. Thank you so much. I need these.” Tobias fingered the focusing knob. “These are great. Wow.”
Simeon laughed. Someone was starting to climb the stairs. They packed up the binoculars, hid the box under the pillows, and hurried downstairs.

Their father wanted to go to Vinny’s, their usual family restaurant. Tobias imagined the scene that would ensue. His mother would progress from tipsy to downright drunk. His parents would fight over how much she was drinking. Vinny’s had low ceilings, and you could hear every word from table to table.

“Dad, in honor of this special occasion, I’d like to take you all somewhere fancy.” The town’s other Italian restaurant, the upscale one, had no liquor license and poor acoustics, where you could hardly hear a word across the table. “Come on, everybody. I’ll drive.”

His mother was carrying a bottle of wine in a canvas tote bag.

“No, Toby, you never drive at school. Sit in the back.” She opened the door of their Ford Escort.

“He can drive,” his father barked and handed the keys to Tobias, and then sat in the front seat. Tobias wanted his brother to sit with him but didn’t complain. One hurdle cleared, and ten more days to go. He didn’t know how he was going to make it; his head was already throbbing. Simeon sat in the back behind Tobias and kicked the driver’s seat three times. Tobias grinned at him in the rearview mirror.

All during dinner, Simeon drew. On a typewriter pad from his brother’s book bag, he sketched a detailed cartoon of Tobias. In the drawing, Tobias was wearing a safari hat and hip boots and carrying a butterfly net. A pair of binoculars hung from a strap around his neck.

Their father scowled. “Simeon, quit scribbling, and join the family.”

“He’s not scribbling; he’s drawing,” his mother said.

“He’s OK, Dad.”

Simeon was exaggerating his brother’s thick, dark hair in the cartoon, letting it droop over his forehead. In the picture, Tobias’s nose was pointy and slightly bent, but his real-life nose, though aquiline, was fine and straight, its hook scarcely noticeable. His features were so symmetrical that you would have to compare his photo and its mirror image to spot any irregularities. Simeon’s own nose was ineffective in holding up his glasses, which he poked upward every now and then. He printed Toby at the bottom of the picture, signed it SIM, and turned to a new page.
“The food here is great,” Tobias said. He sprinkled some crushed red pepper on his spinach gnocchi in marinara sauce, which was delicious. He was ravenous, having skipped breakfast to catch the Greyhound bus from Baltimore to New York and having had nothing to eat all day but a bag of Fritos at a rest stop.

“Yeah, great,” his father said. “Try this.” He poked a meatball with his fork and dropped it onto Tobias’s plate.

“No thanks, Dad. This is fine.” Tobias returned the meatball and wiped his fork on the side of his plate.

“He’s a vegetarian, remember?” his mother said.

“Oh, sure, I forgot. He’s one of those tree huggers,” his father said. “At least put some cheese on that.”

Tobias was about to explain about being a vegan when he had another idea. He reached out his hands to his father opposite him and his mother on his left. “Mom. Dad. Simmy. I love you all.” His mother clasped his left hand. “It’s Christmastime. We’re together. We’re doing OK.” His father clasped his right hand. “Let’s enjoy this meal and stop bickering.” Simeon stopped drawing and joined the circle of hands. Their mother’s eyes teared.

Tobias paid the bill in cash over the objections of his father, who left a 20 percent tip. Simeon helped his mother with her coat. They got into the car in the same seats as before: Tobias in the driver’s seat, his father next to him, his brother behind him, and their mother next to Simeon.

“Oh, rats! I forgot the sketch pad.” He started to undo his seat belt to run back in for Simeon’s cartoon, dreading the fight that might erupt among the other three at close range.

“I’ll go, Toby. Stay there.” Simeon jumped out and ran into the restaurant before Tobias could open the door.
On the way home, his father asked him about his fellowship and the trip to South America. Tobias, happy to break the tension, explained he’d be living among the Yanomami Indians and sleeping under nets, learning their language, taking notes for his research.

“You’re distracting him,” his mother complained. “It’s icy.”

“Goddamn it, stop interrupting,” his father snarled. “This doesn’t concern you.”

Tobias approached the four-way intersection slowly and put on his left blinker. The light was red.

“Careful,” his father said.

“Let him be,” his mother said.

Tobias checked all the mirrors. The light turned green. In the back seat, his brother was smirking. As he went into the turn, out of nowhere, a larger vehicle ran the light, sped into the intersection, and skidded into the right side and back of the Hillyers’ car. Tobias heard the deafening crack, like a thunderclap in the mountains, before registering the impact.

The Ford spun around 180 degrees on the black ice. There were screams, splintering glass, scraping sounds, the sputtering motor. His hand turned the key and shut off the engine. His neck hurt.

He shouted, “Mom! Dad! Simmy!” No one answered. He jumped out of the car, tried to open the doors on the other side. The entire right side of the car was crushed. His parents weren’t moving. In the street lights, he could see blood oozing out of their mouths. He ran back to the driver’s side, opened the back door. “Simmy. Simeon. No, no!” he screamed.

“Somebody help, please!”

Sirens, police cars, ambulances appeared as if in a nightmare. Paramedics brought something called the jaws of life. By the time his parents had been extricated, they were both dead. They were wheeled to ambulances on covered stretchers.

Simeon was unconscious but alive. No injuries were apparent. They rushed him to the emergency room at Woodrock Hospital. A police officer drove Tobias to the hospital with sirens on and lights flashing.

The emergency room doctor came out of a white-curtained cubicle, holding a clipboard. “Mr. Hillyer?” he asked.

Tobias looked around. The doctor meant him. “Yes.”

“Who’s your next of kin?”

“My parents,” Tobias said. “My brother. Where’s my brother?”

“Your brother has a concussion and possibly some other head injuries. He’s unconscious. Any other family members nearby?”

“My aunt in California. Grandparents in Florida. Can I see my brother?” The pad with Simeon’s drawing was under his arm.

“We’re testing him now. Any other relatives? Other grandparents?”

“One in a nursing home. One dead. That’s all. Please take me to where my brother is. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s in a coma. We suspect a diffuse axonal injury,” the doctor said. “It’s a type of traumatic brain damage.” He looked behind Tobias, but no one was there besides the police officer who had brought him in. “How old is your brother? How old are you?” he asked.

“He’s fifteen. I’m twenty. Twenty-one in March.”

The doctor put his arm around Tobias. “I’m sorry, son,” he said.

Lilian Duval has been fascinated with lottery winners for years, and they’re the inspiration for her intriguing novel You Never Know, which explores how an ordinary man copes with terrible luck, and later, amazing luck, when he wins the Mega-Millions lottery. Her story collection, Random Acts of Kindness, will be published in 2012.

Lilian and her husband are both survivors of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. They live in a small house in New Jersey overlooking a large county park. She’s an amateur classical guitarist and enjoys attending concerts, plays, and movies in New York City.

Lilian’s latest book is You Never Know: Tales of Tobias, an Accidental Lottery Winner.

You can visit her website at www.lilianduval.com or follow her at Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/lilianduval and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lilian-Duval/121776657899250?sk=wall.

Where I’m planning a wonderful 3 day trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina next week, I thought wouldn’t it be really neat if I could work on my next book (ahem…The Soul Mate Triangle: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Soul Mate Relationship) while I’m there? Sure, I could move the doc over to my laptop which I’ll have with me, but wouldn’t it be neat if I could download it to my Kindle e-reader since it’s smaller and would give me an idea of what the book would look like as ebook as it will not only be in paperback but I finally get to see one of my books in the Kindle store, whoop, whoop!

So I heard about this free online epub converter called 2EPUB which you can convert PDF, Doc and other types of documents to ePub format, the standard format for ebooks.  The 2EPUB is supported by almost every reading device including iPad, iPhone, iPod, Sony Reader, BeBook, Nook, Kobo and for me, Mobi for the Kindle e-reader.

This 2PUB will come in handy for ebooks people send you as PDFs and you want to download it onto your e-reader without the formatting being all wonky.   ANY e-reader.  And it’s FREE.

To find out more about the 2PUB, click here!