Book Plug Friday: Twelfth Anniversary Edition

Wearing a mask can be intriguing.  But it makes it hard for your fans to find you!

Wearing a mask can be intriguing. But it makes it hard for your fans to find you!

(Can you believe this is the twelfth Book Plug Friday? Send email to [email protected] for guidelines. Deadline is Tuesday the week before publication, that is, this weeks plugs came in before September 25. We reserve the right to adjust when things are plugged; this week includes some books that were here in time for last week, when we had a glut, so we pushed them out a week. Money cheerfully refunded if unsatisfied.)

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What should you call yourself?  Kristine Kathryn Rusch says she gets several emails a week by new writers, asking her if they should use a pen name.  I get several a week, too.  And now I’ll be sending them to her column this week, where she lays out the cases in which pen names are useful:

First, the professionals: If you’re a practicing doctor or psychologist, if you work in a field that has confidentiality as one of its bedrock principles, then the best thing you can do is write under a pen name.
….
Personal Reasons: Some of you work best in a vacuum. You don’t want your friends and family to know that you write and publish. Or you don’t want them to know that you publish that kind of fiction, whatever it might be
….

People Who Should Consider Pen Names

If you plan to spend your entire career in traditional publishing, then you need to have a pen name in your pocket. If you want a career that’s not based on luck or that will last longer than five years, you’ll need to keep pen names in mind.

She goes on to explain the reasons, which coincide with the reasons that I ended up writing as Sarah A. Hoyt, Sarah D’Almeida, Sarah Marques and Elise Hyatt.  The first is because publishers think your readers are too stupid to figure out that you can have the same name and write different genres.  The other is that bookstores order on the name and are unforgiving, so if a name sells less than wonderfully, you have to change your name.

This week, I’ll start re-releasing my D’Almeida books — historical mysteries featuring the Three Musketeers plus one — under Sarah A. Hoyt Writing as Sarah D’Almeida.  Because now I can.  And I trust my readers to figure out those aren’t science fiction or fantasy.

And I’m glad to live in a time when I have that option.  If you’re writers, you should go read Kris’ article.  And if you’re readers, you should consider the offerings below and help the indie model succeed!

 

 

 


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Nighthawks at the Mission
By Forbes West 

Alone and drug addicted, young Sarah travels off-world and falls in with magic using criminals who work at night to avoid ruthless aliens and make off with the hi-tech rewards found from a lost civilization.

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David Hume’s History of England, Edited for the Modern Reader: Volume 5, 1603–1649
William W. Berry, editor 

This is a “modern language” version of volume five of David Hume’s great History of England. It contains the full narrative history but deletes bibliographic notes and an appendix. It is edited for style, not content; the latter is unchanged, unbowdlerized, and shines through the clearer by the modernizing of archaic language. This volume contains the epic saga of the English Civil War, an event of enormous and continuing importance for all Anglosphere countries; for one, it is hard to understand the American Founding fully without knowing this history. The editor made this modernized version of the Hume so it could be part of his son’s high school homeschool course on British history. Both father and son were so pleased with the result that they thought it would be good to make it available to interested readers.


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The Awesome Adventures of Pickle Boy
By Jack Bee 

In this exciting adventure story for young and young-at-heart readers, an average eleven year old boy from Brooklyn discovers a long-lost secret formula that grants him extraordinary abilities. A fun, thrilling and clean adventure that will keep kids glued to the page and should be on recommended middle-school and YA book lists everywhere.


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RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY
By Curtis Edmonds 

Five years ago, Will Morse was arrested and charged with the murder of his youngest daughter Trixie. Will maintained his innocence, and claimed that Trixie’s death was a suicide. Although Will escaped criminal charges, he lost his job as a Coca-Cola executive in the scandal. His wife, Danielle, left him, convinced that he had some role in Trixie’s death. Distraught and racked by grief and guilt, Will retreated to the safety and silence of a remote cabin in the North Georgia wilderness.

Will’s only connection to the outside world is a phone call he receives once a year, at Christmas, from his daughter Alicia. But this year, Alicia calls to tell Will that she is paying him a visit. Alicia arrives with her fiancée in tow, and tells Will that she expects him to attend the wedding in the spring.

Will wants to rekindle his relationship with her daughter, especially once he learns that she is pregnant. However, Will fears that attending the wedding will bring up painful memories from his past, and lead to conflict with his ex-wife and her family, who still blame him for Trixie’s death.

Will develops a relationship with Dot Crawford, an English professor, who makes a chance visit to his cabin. The relationship flowers into a romantic friendship, and Will begins to open up to Dot about his tragic past. But Will soon learns that Dot is not all that she appears, and breaks off the relationship.

On the eve of Alicia’s wedding, Will must confront the guilt and shame that he feels, and seek forgiveness for his actions that put Trixie in danger, and decide whether to reach out to Dot and forgive her for her betrayal.

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Jade Lady
By Patrick Wayland 

When Lance Roven, a programmer living in Hong Kong, is called back home to his grandfather’s deathbed, his grandfather asks Lance to handle the contents of a safe deposit box and then does something Lance can’t believe – he speaks Chinese.

This sets Lance off on a trail of clues, following an old map to Taiwan where he meets Annie Lee, a museum researcher. Together, they work to uncover a secret buried for 60 years while racing against Chinese spies to find a treasure and forgotten WWII treaty that could reignite a civil war.


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Seek and Destroy: Internet Defamation and What You Can Do about It
By Kenneth Eade 

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” We all know that line, and many of us have used it in retort to a vicious verbal attack. But, the truth is that words can hurt you, especially when they are broadcast online, to thousands or even millions of people. We’ve also all heard the old adage, “Don’t believe everything you hear,” but the fact is that many people do believe everything they hear and, whether they do or not, have a tendency to repeat it, especially if it’s scandalous. In the first part of the book, you learn what defamation is, how it can affect you, and what the law is regarding it. In the second part, you learn what you can do about it, starting today, to repair a reputation that has been broken online.


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Children of Apollo
By Mark R. Whittington 

In 1969 a CIA analyst reports on the effects of the race to the Moon on the Soviet economy and military readiness. In response, President Nixon ramps up the space race with a vengence. Six years later, the first woman walks on the Moon during the mission of Apollo 23.


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The Last Moonwalker and Other Stories
By Mark R. Whittington 

The Last Moonwalker: In the near future, as human explorers prepare to take the first voyage to the Moon in decades, Charles Gerald, the last Apollo Moonwalker, lends his advice to the crew of the expedition as he wrestles with his own legacy.

The First Woman on the Moon: Set in the same universe as Children of Apollo, Wendy Pendleton, who will fly on the mission of Apollo 23, remembers the cost of becoming the first woman on the Moon.

Two Old Men: Two retired politicians, in the same universe as Children of Apollo, face a deadly disease a treatment for which was developed in space.

Dark Sanction: As World War II rages, Gabriella, Venetian aristocrat, spy for British Intelligence, vampire is menaced by a Nazi vampire hunter with occult powers. (Short version of full length novella)

Hurtgen Moon: An American rifle squad battles a werewolf during one of World War II’s bloodiest battles.

Witnessing Apollo: The flight of Apollo 11 helps an alien visitor decide the fate of the Earth,

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Michael G. Munz
By A Shadow in the Flames 

There’s more behind the fire that took his home than Michael Flynn would ever suspect, and more darkness in his only friend than he could ever admit to himself. Now, three nights tracking a cybernetic vigilante will alter his life forever. As a discovery on the Moon promises to change the future of the world, a conspiracy of light seeking to shape that change has its eyes on Michael…


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Break Day
By Kerry J. Sullivan 

David Johnson is an EMS helicopter pilot. He is the courageous player a coach wants on the team, the patriotic man his country wants to fight its wars, and the loyal worker an employer wants to hire. While he flies to help save critical patients his own life comes apart. His wife no longer believes in him, his co-workers turn against him, his career flounders, and his faith wrecks. Then, a hurricane strikes his home. David Johnson finds that when we lose the external handles of our life we can still find the means to hold ourselves up.


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A, Bee, See: Who Are our Pollinators and Why are They in Trouble?
By Kenneth Eade 

From the author and photographer of the Amazon number one bestselling Kindle Book on the disappearance of the bees, Bless the Bees: The Pending Extinction of our Pollinators and What We Can Do to Stop It, comes a beautifully illustrated children’s book. Filled with full color macro photographs, this book explains who our pollinators are, what they do, why they are at risk, at what we can do to help them.


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Vulcan’s Kittens
By Cedar Sanderson 

12-year-old Linnea Vulkane is looking forward to a long, lazy summer on Grandpa Heph’s farm, watching newborn kittens grow up and helping out with chores. That all goes out the window the night Mars, god of war, demands her grandfather abandon her and return to Olympus for the brewing war.

Now Old Vulcan is racing around the world and across higher planes with Sehkmet to gather allies, leaving Linn and an old immortal friend to protect the farm and the very special litter. But even the best wards won’t last forever, and when the farm goes up in flames, she is on the run with a daypack, a strange horse, a sword, and an armful of kittens. Linn needs to grow up fast and master her powers, before the war finds the unlikely refugees…

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Leaping to infinity. Unofficial and unauthorized articles and essays on Quantum Leap
By Mila Hasan 

For all fans and lovers of Quantum Leap, this book is for you as it covers themes in the show which many of you may not have thought about in the form or short essays or articles. It’s been 20 years since the show ended and we need to keep the memories alive.


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Deserter’s Redemption
By Kal Spriggs 

Mike doesn’t want to be anyone’s friend. He doesn’t want to be a leader. He sure doesn’t want to be a hero. He’s tried all of that before; it didn’t work out then and he knows it wouldn’t work out now.

He doesn’t have a choice.

Caught by an invading alien race and shipped off to a prison station as (expendable) labor, Mike will have to become all of those things in order to escape. More, he’ll have to turn a band of misfits into a group that can not only survive… but escape from a place where survival is measured in hours. In the doing, he may have to do the one thing he knows will get him killed: learn how to trust.


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The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival
By Stephanie Osborn 

The Displaced Detective Series is a science fiction mystery in which the brilliant hyperspatial physicist, Dr. Skye Chadwick, discovers that there are alternate realities, and said alternates are often populated by those we consider only literary characters. Her pet research, Project: Tesseract, hidden deep under Schriever AFB, is her means of looking in on these continua. In one particular reality, continuum 114, a certain Victorian detective (who, in fact, exists in several continua) was to have died along with his arch-nemesis at the Reichenbach Falls. Knee-jerking, Skye intervenes, rescuing her hero, who inadvertently flies through the tesseract wormhole connecting his universe with ours, while his enemy plunges to his death. Unable to send Holmes back without causing devastating continuum collapse due to non-uniqueness, he must stay in our world and learn to adapt to the 21st century.

Meanwhile, the Schriever AFB Dept of Security discovers a spy ring working to dig out the details of – and possibly sabotage – Project: Tesseract. Can Chadwick help Holmes come up to speed in modern investigative techniques in time to stop the spies? Will Holmes be able to thrive in our modern world? Is Chadwick now Holmes’ new “Watson” – or more? And what happens next?

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The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed
By Stephanie Osborn 

Having already aborted one attempt to sabotage Project: Tesseract by an unknown spy ring, Sherlock Holmes – now up to speed in his new life, in a new century, and a new spacetime continuum – and Dr. Skye Chadwick – world-class hyperspatial physicist as well as Holmes’ liaison and new “Watson” – face the next challenge. How do they find and arrest the members of this diabolical spy ring when they do not even know what the ring is trying to accomplish? And how can they do it when Skye is recovering from no less than two nigh-fatal wounds?

Further complicating matters is their relationship itself. For the ups and downs in the relationship between Holmes and Chadwick are due to something more than the occasional clash of demanding, eccentric personalities. Chadwick has already long since acknowledged to herself that she has fallen in love with Holmes. Knowing his predilection for eschewing matters of the heart, however, she struggles to hide it, in order to maintain the friendship they DO have, preferring said friendship to total alienation. Holmes also feels attraction – but fights it tooth and nail, refusing to admit to the fact, even to himself. After all, it is not merely Skye’s work that the spies may be after – but her life as well. Having already lost Watson to the vagaries of spacetime, could he endure losing another companion?Can they work out the intricacies of their relationship? Can they determine the reason the spy ring is after the tesseract? And – most importantly – can they stop it?

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