Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Something for Your Eyes or Your Ears

Whether you like reading or listening, we have you covered with Of Half a Mind at 99 cents for the eBook or $2.99 or less for the audiobook.


When you talk to yourself, there’s only one voice. When you look at something in your mind’s eye, there’s but one image.

Psychologist Sam “Doc” Price and his colleagues had always held those principles to be true … at least under normal circumstances. But as they studied the work of a brilliant but troubled neuroscientist, they discovered a device that created a reality that was anything but normal. And when they had unraveled its mysteries, the only question that remained was, could they survive the brutal truth?

eBook: https://bit.ly/38cat4K

Audiobook options

Author's direct: https://bit.ly/36qGgPi

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3pBjGuJ

Chirp: https://bit.ly/2NYFVgh

Google Play: http://bit.ly/3czbeZa

Apple: https://apple.co/3eHOxkY

Nook: https://bit.ly/32WFaIN

Prices good now to May 12.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Unless you can time travel too ....

Then, you’ll need to enter this Dr. Who giveaway soon!


Prizes include: Print copies of Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter, Doctor Who: The Knight, The Fool and The Dead: Time Lord Victorious by Stephen Cole, Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker, a signed edition of The Binge Watcher’s Guide to Doctor Who by Mackenzie Flohr, and more!

Enter for your chance to win:  http://bit.ly/DWAllonsy

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

The Challenges of the Future


Environments destroyed? Societies broken? Aliens taking over the world?

It's these authors best (imaginative) guesses as to the challenges today's youth might face in the future. And the best part? These stories are all free in April with a newsletter signup.

Saturday, April 17, 2021

My Decluttering Means a Chance for You to Win

With opportunities for face-to-face giveaways virtually nil last year, I have several books I should move to make room for my new release. I have the following to give away:

  • Three copies of In the Space of an Atom 
  • Three copies of Of Half a Mind 
  • Two copies of Mind in Chains
  • One copy of Killer in the Retroscape (marked as proof on the outside - something that Amazon has started doing.)


Toward finding them a home, any new subscriber from the United States between now and May 10 will be entered into a drawing for one of these paperbacks. (Sorry, but international postage costs are prohibitive.)

I'll randomly select 9 winners on May 11 and announce the winners here on the blog.

If you'd like a chance to win, subscribe here:  https://bit.ly/2MVHdCk

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

If Scary Is Your Thing

From Dystopian Sci-Fi (The Midnight Library) to Paranormal Romance (From Blood and Ash), you’ll find something to make your nights a bit creepier in this collection of books and swag.

Well, I guess the gift cards aren't all that scary.

Enter for your chance to win: https://bit.ly/2QpO9iy

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Book Review: Straight River (Matt Lanier Book 1) by Chris Norbury

An Amateur Sleuth with a Musical Ear Faces a Not-So-Subtle Conspiracy

The protagonist of this novel, Matt Lanier, is a musician. He’s always humming a tune or drawing parallels between his situation and the lyrics of a song. And when he’s reluctantly pressed into a murder/conspiracy investigation, he leverages this talent to find clues to the truth in the timber and tone of voice of the people he meets. That’s not an ability I’ve seen other amateur sleuths leverage and one of the reasons I enjoyed Straight River.

As you might imagine with a thriller, the songs that Matt finds apropos to his situation are ones like Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor—his circumstances are often bleak. Called back to his boyhood home after his father’s unexpected death, Matt soon suspects foul play. Then, later, he finds evidence of a multi-state (perhaps eventually, multi-nation) conspiracy to purchase vast tracks of farmland at below-market prices. Physical intimidation, even murder, are the tools of this criminal scheme and author Norbury keeps the reader guessing, presenting us with a long list of possible co-conspirators. The action is tense and well-paced, with the body count increasing steadily throughout the novel. But even so, there are pauses to enjoy the Minnesota countryside or to relive moments of Matt’s past. His still strong feelings for his ex-wife, in particular, provide a nice counterpoint to the action. And the ending, though a bit well-worn, felt appropriate to the plot.

The limitations of the book are primarily in the lack of subtly of the conspiracy and how/why that seemed to have little effect on the course of the tale. To start, the story is set in the 2008 Recession, so killing reluctant sellers seems a bit excessive given the overall financial state of the world. But even if we accept that premise as a literary given—to create tension—the number of deaths, near fatalities, and co-conspirators in one small Minnesotan county implies dozens, if not hundreds of incidents across multiple states. And facts that should have caused suspicion amid this killing spree are often ignored—things like suffocating in a silo when the grain isn’t being taken out from the bottom or a hanging that produces no bruising around the victim’s neck. And when a police sergeant asks the coroner about the latter evidence, she refuses to talk … but the sergeant still ignores the issue. A little more attention to aligning the investigation to the extent and nature of the crime would have increased the impact of the tale considerably.

Overall, expressive descriptions of setting and backstory add spice to a tense, well-paced thriller. Tightening up the plot would have let the action reach its full potential.

See on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/3s7PQyc

(I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.)


Tuesday, April 6, 2021

New Release - Audiobook

My narrator, Denver C. Risley, just completed the audiobook version of Mind in the Clouds.

A suspenseful whodunit, where not all the suspects are human.

While it makes its way to other retailers with a list price of $9.95, you can get a copy from Authors Direct for only $3.99 during April.

https://shop.authors-direct.com/products/mind-in-the-clouds