Author: Editors

Complimentary eBooks

For a limited time, Elektra Press is offering several of its recently published eBooks as complimentary review copies in several different formats (ePub, Mobi, PDF, etc.). A number of titles are available, including both fiction and nonfiction. If you’d like one or more copies for yourself and your friends, scroll down and click on the “Request Complimentary Review Copy” link for whichever books you’d like to receive. Fill out the short form at the bottom of the book’s description page, instructing us on where to deliver each copy you’d like, and we’ll send them via e-mail. This is a limited-time offer for friends of Elektra Press and book lovers everywhere.

Herda: The Last Wild Orchid

When a mother-and-son research team gets too close to the grizzly truth, one of them must die. But which? With the cold blooded murderer still on the loose, Mark sets out to avenge his mother’s death. But how will he recognize the killer? And when? What will he do to help bring him to justice? And who can he turn to for help once the police declare the case “cold” and close the books on it?

Living in a Caribbean Island paradise, Mark celebrates his twenty-first birthday while facing an uphill battle compounded by a deadbeat Private-Eye father who abandoned him twenty years earlier, a well-meaning but bungling director of marine mammal studies, an international espionage plot centered on the island of St. Lucia, an unrequited love, an aggressive and beautiful young soucouyant, a murderous underground black-magic cult, and a pod of rambunctious dolphins. The results are anything but Flipper in this multicultural tale based upon a true story.

This is the warm and touching yet harrowing and riveting story of a young man’s dedicated love for his slain mother and his ongoing struggle to accept his absentee if well-meaning father. And–let’s be honest–the sister he never knew he had before finding out that he never really did! It’s the tale of eternal life, unfolding in an action-packed universe filled with nonstop suspense, torrid romance, and Caribbean-style supernatural intrigue–a gritty look into another life, another world, and a unique reality where only the last wild orchid grows.

 

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Herda: Solid Stiehl

When Hymie Stiehl, one of Chicago’s most notorious raconteurs, learns that pal Jungle Jim Alavera has disappeared, he knows what he has to do. Realizing that Alavera is still alive but in growing danger, Stiehl fakes his own death only to reemerge in drag to try to locate his ball-playing compadre. After Stiehl’s “snitch,” Jimmy the Mole, tracks Alavera to a small brownstone in New Town, Hymie and his college-professor sidekick decide to pay the jock a surprise visit. But when the two walk into a ransacked apartment with the water still warm in the bathtub, Stiehl realizes things are getting serious.

Sending his sidekick to interview a college coed with unholy ties to the underground, Stiehl runs down an informant before rejoining the kid. There, he learns the girl has confessed to having an affair with ballplayer Alavera while dating the college president. Hymie points out that she omitted one small detail from her confession–that she was also dating mobster Sammy the Bull Romano. When Alavera shows up unexpectedly, vowing to protect the woman he loves, Stiehl reminds him he won’t have to: “The Mob already has you dead and buried.” Not for fooling around with Bull’s girl, Stiehl adds, but for failing to throw the 2016 All Star Game, costing Romano a cool million in bets.

In a showdown in Bull’s penthouse suite, all hell breaks loose as the cops learn that Sammy has been killed after buying college prez Alexis and a dirty city alderman one-way tickets to the morgue. They arrest the philandering girlfriend, followed by Alavera, and finally Stiehl’s sidekick before Stiehl steps in to set the record straight and reveal to the D.A. who the real murderer is–and why.

 

Favage: The Mynah’s Call

Paula Favage, a young, sensuous, beautiful woman of strong will and unbreakable spirit, is restless and eager for adventure. She and her husband decide to strike out for the Middle East, where she hopes to find a different life for the two of them–a renewed love within her marriage and a renewed sense of being for herself. And why shouldn’t she? She embodies everything a woman could ask: She is at once beautiful and passionate, intelligent and skilled, devoted and adventurous. But those traits eventually produce a woman who is trapped between two worlds–one in America and the other in Afghanistan.

Before long, Paula finds herself torn between two men, her husband and a mysterious Afghani she meets one day at the marketplace. Instead of growing closer to her husband, she soon feels him slipping away physically and emotionally. Desperately trying to recapture their love, she finds herself immersed in growing turmoil and upheaval as her husband finally abandons her for drugs and a life of debauchery. When the countryside around her is ripped apart by guerilla warfare, her devotion for her husband is further challenged by her elusive Afghan freedom fighter. Is he really her silent, mysterious beacon of light on a cold, foreboding night? Or is he actually the enemy within from whom she needs to escape to save herself and her sanity?

This first book of an exotic new series is approximately 104,000 words in length, all of which build toward a remarkably unexpected, turbulent, and fulfilling conclusion.

 

Herda: Chi-Town Blues

Here are all the whimsical, haunting, riveting, and erotically charged tales you’d expect from a lifetime spent growing up in the Windy City. When master storyteller D. J. Herda left Chicago in the late Seventies, he took a big part of Chicago with him. Now, he has unleashed some of his most memorable tales in all their wild-and-wooly, sexually charged, hit-and-hit-harder glory. These are the hauntingly vivid stories that run the gamut from Crime and Punishment to Humor, Pathos, Spirituality, and Coming-of-Age in the Windy City.

Among the tales of intrigue included in this volume are these eye-popping delights.

“The Tenants” When an officer of the law investigates a series of disappearances all centered around one main suspect, he’s convinced she’s as clever and diabolic a murderess as he’s ever seen. Until she convinces him otherwise, after which he sets out to prove both himself, and her, wrong.

“The Fisherman” A look at just how badly things can go when a young man leaves his comfortable home to go smelt fishing with his gung-ho, war-hero, new father-in-law one raw, rainy, Saturday morning–and just why he’s not likely to do so again.

“Double Jeopardy” When a young bank executive joins a new firm and gets promoted to mortgages and personal loans, he finds his new landlady the perfect customer–as old, doddering, and doting as anyone he’s ever seen. Not to mention trustworthy. But his foolproof trap backfires as she turns the tables on him before he manages at the last moment to wiggle free from the trap.

“The Great Man” A young man in the glory years of his youth discovers that his grandfather, whom he always considered a great man, was nothing of the sort. He’s crushed–until he meets one of his grandfather’s sexually alluring legacies and realizes he’d been right after all. Jim Blasdell really was a great man.

“The Union” They meet at the university’s Rathskeller and immediately fall in love–he with her angelic face and demonic body and she, with his apparently unlimited funds and innate gullibility. But when she goes to tighten the noose, he adroitly dances out of reach and turns the tables on her. Until she turns them right back on him.

“Trapped” A young building contractor and part-time author moves to the suburbs where he meets all the right people, including the really wrong ones. Poised to make a killing in real estate, he soon discovers others are just as poised to stop him. After beating back false criminal charges, he’s finally in the clear, but his own gullibility enables his best “friends” and business associates to ensnare him in a noose he constructed by himself–from which there is no escape. Or is there?

 

Buy It Today at Amazon.com

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Bauer: The Devil in the Deal

Have you ever thought to yourself, I should write a book?  After being dragged through yet another deposition and being asked the same ole’ questions and giving the same ole’ answers, I thought to myself, “I’ve told this story so many times, I should write a book!” And so I did.Some ask if my life has changed since The Devil in the Deal was published. I’m not sure how, but it has. It has certainly gotten better. Through my writing, I’ve  learned the process of never giving up after having spent most of my life feeling helpless.Since The Devil in the Deal, I’ve continued writing. I can’t not write! There are just too many words at the tips of my fingers that need to get on paper and too many stories in my head to leave untold.

Whittling my book down to what it’s about, I come up with two words: Learned Helplessness.  My life wasn’t all bad, but it’s far better now. Although I have no complaints, there was a time when most of my days were spent living through horrifying experiences–experiences that groomed me to believe I was helpless. Learned helplessness destroys your self-esteem and leads to making bad choices in your life instead of good ones.

Whenever I cried out for help, no one listened. According to one Catholic nun, I was just a bad little girl who didn’t respect her parents. My teachers didn’t want to get involved: How can she be telling the truth? Such things just couldn’t possibly have happened in my family. My aunts and uncles and even my grandparents knew what was going on, but they didn’t know what to do. No one knew what to do; so I became helpless.

I still get excited talking about my book and knowing people are listening! It’s an incredible story involving crime and passion and love and hate. It’s the tale of a young, naive girl who fell into the hands of opulence beyond her wildest dreams and then watched it all slip  through the fingers of the people who gave it to her. All she could do was enjoy the ride while it lasted. And in the end, when the world came crashing down around us, I was the lone survivor. I’d won.

We’ve all got a story to tell, that’s for sure. The Devil in the Deal is my story. And perhaps, it’s your story, too.

Danenberg: Crazy-Good Living!

I’ve been a very busy boy. (At the age of 72, I can still call myself a boy.)

Nutrition, gut health, oral health, and overall health are my passions. My unique take on these subjects has led others to ask me to participate in numerous webinars, seminars, and interviews on social media, the Internet, and in front of live audiences. You can read my weekly Blogs by going to my website: https://drdanenberg.com/blog/

A few months ago, I wrote a protocol for a double-blind clinical study to show that specific spore-based probiotics in combination with vitamin K2 as a supplement can improve and prevent gum disease. The clinical study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and is now in active trial. I am overseeing this research in three separate dental offices in the U.S.

And oh, yes, I was diagnosed with an incurable bone marrow cancer in September 2018 and was given 3-6 months to live. But I have created an integrated protocol to treat my disease unconventionally. I feel great; I have energy, and I am baffling my conventional oncologist who thought I would be dead by now.

So, as I have said, I have been–and continue to be–a very busy boy!

Rely on Reedsy – Really!

If you haven’t explored the Reedsy Website’s offerings available to authors and publishers lately, it’s time you did so. Among other great self-marketing and -promotional resources you’ll find:

Best Book-Review Blogs – Discover the best book review blogs in your preferred genre, from general fiction to YA paranormal romance. Their search bar connects you to a vetted catalog of active book blogs and thoughtful, quality book reviewers. A great opportunity to pick up some new reviews.

Book-Promotional Services – Looking for that ideal book promotion site within your price range? Reedsy’s vetted database can eliminate the scammers while their tier system is designed to give you a better picture of the sites that tend to deliver the biggest bang for the buck.

Writing Contests – Adding some book awards to your resume or your book’s Website might be just the ticket for drawing more attention to you and your book without running afoul of the losers and scammers that dwell among legitimate competitions. These are “the finest writing contests of 2018,” according to Reedsy, for both fiction and nonfiction authors of short stories, poetry, essays, novels, and more. 

It Takes More than a Blog

Great. You’re an author with a blog. What next? Well, just sit back, bide your time, and wait for those thousands of dedicated readers to begin buying your book. Right?

Wrong! You don’t need a mere blog. You need a community of dedicated readers to serve as a launching pad for new books, announcements, speaking engagements, contests, and whatever else you might envision to help peddle your wares.

According to author/marketer Joel Friedlander, “Simply having followers or a large email list won’t create engaged readers who will answer calls to action. To create that kind of relationship, bloggers need to project three vital qualities: authority, trust, and likability.”

Friedlander, whose book, A Self-Publisher’s Companion, has become something of a cult marketing guru, goes on. Check out what he has to say.

How To Sell Books

Latino writer promotional guru Marcela Landress has a suggestion for getting the buzz out about your new book.

“No surprise here, but ‘word of mouth’ on Twitter spreads very quickly. The word can spread very fast within a 24-hour period, so the more information available about you, your work, and your interests, the greater the chance of gaining a fan, a feature, or a sale. With that said, I urge you to start the chatter!”

She advised authors to be social, share themselves, and be authentic. “Make sure that you have a variety of places where you can share information and grow your features, publicize your book, and share your successes. All of these outlets provide more exposure for your book and help to establish a strong digital footprint. Publicity breeds more publicity. So, my advice is to chat it up, be social, and continue building a social network.”

However, she admonishes authors not to be a living, breathing advertisement. Her rule of thumb? Share on a four-to-one ratio. “You can post something self-promotional if you post four other non-promotional links that are helpful to your followers. The key is to build credibility.”

In other words, convince the reader that you’re interested most of all in him.