Friday, July 28, 2017

Catching UP!


Books that went to press, or went to press again, this week!   

EASTERN SHORE NOIR: a Noir collection from the Writers' Bloc, by members of the Writers' Bloc.

   These stories are told in many styles. Some writers have been drawn back to memories from long forgotten times; the life they once lived, or observations of families and friends.
   Explore the emotional connections, at the very core, with keen insights that are not all black and white.Understand, that the writers are the rays of light, passing through the darkness, resonating long after the final page is turned. --- M. Rita Tiso.


DARK ELF: Rec Knight Chronicles, Vol.2, by Ray Morand
    The Red Knight Chronicles continue with the tale of Akulina, a dark-elf former princess, who was cursed and cast out by her people for dabbling in black magic. Now, she fights for honor in the troubled kingdoms. Will she adapt when she is assigned to take orders from a new group in the king’s service? 

IS JESUS SERIOUS, by Barbara Garro
Truly, I say you cannot obey God’s will without being in relationship with all three Persons in one God, the Holy Trinity. Each has a specific function in your service life:
1. The Father has a plan for your life
2. The Son, Jesus, the Christ, teaches you the faith and how to live it to gain salvation.
3. The Holy Spirit is your daily Guide for wisdom and Comforter here on earth and resides within you after Christian Baptism.
I struggle daily with feeling uncertain I am where God wants me to be, but Jesus shows me what I need to do to do God’s will, provided I am paying attention, while the Helper, the Holy Spirit, takes my hand and St. Michael has my back.


ARMY OF THE DEAD, Red Knight Chronicles, Vol. 1, by Ray Morand.
   If you liked Lord of the Rings, you will love the Red Knight Chronicles. In book one, Judicator Gwendolyn “the celibate” is kidnapped to join an Army of the Dead led by a former knight, Sir Victor. She embraces the future and her new identity as Captain Isobel of the “Scaled Fist.” Isobel revels in her acceptance by the other warriors and tries not to be too disturbed by some shady areas in Gwendolyn’s past. She is impressed by the Army’s domestication of dragons and the sophisticated magical powers possessed by some of them. Though to her family and all who knew her as “Gwendolyn,” she is dead—
Captain Isobel is alive and well, though it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her, or Victor, or both.
Cover Inccomplete
DELICATE DAMESby Barbara Grengs, author of the popular Toby Martin YA series.
In her first mystery for adults, Delicate Dames, Barbara Grengs prooves to be a dab hand at plotting while retaining her laurels in "Creative Characters," "Smooth Satire" and "Witty Writing." 

Cover not set
THE FLYER: Legacy Series, Vol. 4, by Elena Dorothy Bowman
    Finally! The last volume in the ever-popular Legacy Series a time-travel saga that is every bit as intriguing as Outlander.

Cover Not Set
BACKWOODS MEMORIES by Shelley Abbott

      A collection of memoir essays by a famed singer and songwriter, the Eastern Shore's own, Shelley Abbott.



Jack's News!
  by your Official Bookstore Cat,  
and Gossip Columnist.

Hi Folks, Jack here, your favorite Bookstore Cat...
   Heard from Barbara Garro this week. She wrote to say she's working on getting church approval for her latest book, but far too busy to work on the book itself! Barbara's preparing for for a "single artist show"(Quite an honor I understand!), where she'll display 56 of her paintings, I forget how many sculptures --and of course will ALSO have copies of all her published books (See Above) on hand to display, sell, and autograph!

   Boy, that Barbara never misses an opportunity to publicize her work! ;D


   Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... Arline decided to stop spending 30% of her time trying to retrieve her e-mail, because the program that's supposed to collect everything from all her addresses and move it to one place in her computer was refusing to function after its latest Helpful Update. 


   First it failed once in awhile, THEN it started to Miss Some Places, so she kept skittering all over the Internet, checking to be sure she didn't miss anything. Finally, Wednesday Morning, she called the Tech to fix it. The first tech, who had actually chatted with her enough to know what she wanted, had all the various addresses and passwords, and had worked a couple of hours trying to get it to do what she wanted, went on break. While he was out to lunch, another tech wandered into the chatroom, but didn't BOTHER with reading through the two hours of questions and answers, and only checked the ticket, that said, "Set up e-mail." 


    SHE ASSumed someone had bought a second-hand computer and proceeded to dump Five Years of carefully saved e-mail folders and THEN empty the TRASH. 


   She-Tech did send a Chat message of her intentions, but didn't wait around for Arline's reply, so her reply message, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", went equally unread... 


   By the time the first guy got back from lunch, EVERYTHING was Gone!!! 


   It took HIM Until 10 pm Wednesday Night to retrieve what he could -- about half of it. 


   And of course, when he had done that -- the e-mail still wouldn't send mail out! (Thanks be to God and the intrepid Christian Person, who had Worked Hard and Done All He Could to right things), Much of the trashed e-mail was recovered (!), though not in any kind of order. Shouldn't take more than a week, or so, to get it straight.


Never a crier, Arline just shook with shock and pulled at her hair until Thursday Night, Then Screwed UP her Courage and  called the Tech Service Again. That guy took less than 5 minutes! 


Even the baby sister knows enough to stay out of her way when Arline gets like that. ME? Well this morning she was actually asleep and so I tried to wake up her to feed me. But she threw the pillow at me again, so I just went and woke Roger up! HE fed me.


Maybe she'll get back to normal by next week. Until then, as I told the baby, we'll just have to stay under the couch and love her from afar...


    Meanwhile, if any of you -- my favorite authors, are going to festivals, or holding book signings, or have heard any good gossip, please let me know so I can pass the news along right here. Just drop an e-mail to: 

arline@mail.com  

with

"News for Jack" 

 in the subject line, and
I'll make sure it shows up here  
for all the world to see!

Friday, July 21, 2017

Catching UP!

No Books Went to Press this Week


    ARMY OF THE DEAD, by Ray Morand
   "Twists and turns, chivalry and treachery, sword fights and, goblins and fire-breathing dragons---this book has all the familiar trappings of fantasy, but it also has a very human and engaging woman at its heart. Its cliffhanger ending definitely left me wanting more." ---Nina M. Osier, Eppie winning author of the Regs, The Mad Fisherman's Daughter, Interphase, and the Farthinghome Series.

cOVER INCOMPLETE
DELICATE DAMES, by Barbara Grengs, author of the Toby Martin  YA Series
   In her first mystery for adults, Barbara Grengs explores a crime tale that is brought to the attention of several venerable beauties.

DARK ELF: Rec Knight Chronicles, Vol.2, by Ray Morand
    The Red Knight Chronicles continue with the tale of Akulina, a dark-elf former princess, who was cursed and cast out by her people for dabbling in black magic. Now, she fights for honor in the troubled kingdoms. Will she adapt when she is assigned to take orders from a new group in the king’s service? 
    How will she deal with her new captain, who is an elf-of-the-light?

IS JESUS SERIOUS? by Barbara Garro
Truly, I say you cannot obey God’s will without being in relationship with all three Persons in one God, the Holy Trinity. Each has a specific function in your service life:
1. The Father has a plan for your life
2. The Son, Jesus, the Christ, teaches you the faith and how to live it to gain salvation.
3. The Holy Spirit is your daily Guide for wisdom and Comforter here on earth and resides within you after Christian Baptism.
I struggle daily with feeling uncertain I am where God wants me to be, but Jesus shows me what I need to do to do God’s will, provided I am paying attention, while the Helper, the Holy Spirit, takes my hand and St. Michael has my back.

Cover not set
THE FLYER: Legacy Series, Vol. 4 by Elena Dorothy Bowman
    Finally! The last volume in the ever-popular Legacy Series a time-travel saga that is every bit as intriguing as Outlander.

Cover Not Set
BACKWOODS MEMORIES by Shelley Abbott

       A collection of memoir essays by a famed singer and songwriter, the Eastern Shore's own, Shelley Abbott.




Jack's News!
  by your Official Bookstore Cat,  
and Gossip Columnist.
Hi Folks,

   Heard from Tom Taylor, who is Chairman of the Writers Bloc Anthology Book Committee. He has a copy of the Printed book galley and sent the following message:


Thanks Arline.


got it

it is looking good so far.

will read it through and let you know soon.

thanks

tom


Guess he thinks I didn't work on it at all. Seriously, Tom, if it wasn't for me, reminding her where her real work lies, all she'd ever do is lie around and READ all day.


Also got a comment on last week's blog, from C.M. Albrecht. He Wrote:




Thanks for posting my comments. This morning I had another assignment: how pets help keep seniors healthier and happier and get more exercise as well. How can you be grouchy when you have a loving pet nestling up to you?**



   ** Trust me, Carl, Arline can do it!  Ifyou want to talk Grumpy, well, when I tried to get up and get my treats at 5:30 this morning, she said I had to WAIT. Me? Her loving pet who had been nesting peacefully until I noticed the birds were singing...

PLUS when I Gently Patted her on the Cheek to remind her that I was WAITING, she bopped me with the sofa pillow she had been resting her book on! I might, MIGHT understand it, if she had been asleep, but she should at least love Me, her devoted and  health-giving pet, more than Eileen Dryer!

    Meanwhile, if any of you, my favorite authors, are going to festivals, or holding book signings, or heard any good gossip, please let me know so I can pass the news along right here to the rest of the world. Just drop an e-mail to: 

arline@mail.com  

with

"News for Jack" 

 in the subject line, and
I'll make sure it shows up here  
for all the world to see!

Friday, July 14, 2017

Catching UP!

No Books Went to Press this Week


Galleys that went out this week

    ARMY OF THE DEAD, by Ray Morand
   "Twists and turns, chivalry and treachery, sword fights and, goblins and fire-breathing dragons---this book has all the familiar trappings of fantasy, but it also has a very human and engaging woman at its heart. Its cliffhanger ending definitely left me wanting more." ---Nina M. Osier, Eppie winning author of the Regs, The Mad Fisherman's Daughter, Interphase, and the Farthinghome Series.
DARK ELF: Rec Knight Chronicles, Vol.2, by Ray Morand
    The Red Knight Chronicles continue with the tale of Akulina, a dark-elf former princess, who was cursed and cast out by her people for dabbling in black magic. Now, she fights for honor in the troubled kingdoms. Will she adapt when she is assigned to take orders from a new group in the king’s service? 
    How will she deal with her new captain, who is an elf-of-the-light?

IS JESUS SERIOUS? by Barbara Garro
Truly, I say you cannot obey God’s will without being in relationship with all three Persons in one God, the Holy Trinity. Each has a specific function in your service life:
1. The Father has a plan for your life
2. The Son, Jesus, the Christ, teaches you the faith and how to live it to gain salvation.
3. The Holy Spirit is your daily Guide for wisdom and Comforter here on earth and resides within you after Christian Baptism.
I struggle daily with feeling uncertain I am where God wants me to be, but Jesus shows me what I need to do to do God’s will, provided I am paying attention, while the Helper, the Holy Spirit, takes my hand and St. Michael has my back.

Cover not set
THE FLYER: Legacy Series, Vol. 4 by ElenaDorothyBowman
    Finally! The last volume in the ever-popular Legacy series a time-travel saga tht is every bit as intriguing as Outlander.

Cover Not Set
BACKWOOKS MEMORIES by Shelley Abbott

       A collection of memoir essays by a famed singer and songwriter, the Eastern Shore's own, Shelley Abbott.




Jack's News!
  by your Official Bookstore Cat,  
and Gossip Columnist.
Hi Folks,

    The Writers Bloc meets this coming Saturday, July 15, in room 3 of the Salisbury library from 1 - 3. Hope to see you all there. Their paper galley is on the way!







Heard from one of my favorite authors this week. C.M. Albrecht. He Wrote:

Hi Jackster.

    For my PR job, I just had to write an article about dogs (and threw in a few cats) but mostly I wanted to stress that most people refer to "my dog" or "my cat" as if they were vacuum cleaners or bicycles or cars, etc. I tried to point out that my view is that when an animal comes to live in your house, he then becomes family and should be treated as such. Maybe he's like a kid and has to learn a few things, but animals can and do learn, or barring that, they can teach us so we can learn.  After a few dog experiences, I actually learned to communicate very well with little hand signals.

    Cats or course, are a little more independent as YOU know. But I've had good luck with them too. One stray we took in would come up in the morning and when she thought I was sleeping, she'd sneak up onto the bed and snuggle down under the covers. We had open stairs with carpeted steps covering top and bottom, and later, when I'd go down for my coffee, she would cling to the underside of one of the stairs and clip my heels as I descended. She thought that was really cool.

Take care of  your family...

Carl.




    Had another a nice note from Barbara Garro with THANKS to Arline because WE (note the WE, please!*) finally got the software to behave as it should to enter her book, LOVE BITES, in the POetry division of the EPIC Awards.  The Cover (see above), in original Painting by Ms. Garro and was entered last week.

   *Little does any Author know that Arline only functions on a Human Level, because of The Abilities of my My Baby Sister and MYself, to keep her relatively sane, because of our Melodious Purring in Harmony (unison just won't do it!), while contemporaneously allowing ourselves to be stroked on our bellies. Any human should understand how difficult it is to get cooperative behavior between cats and, even if they do not realize the difficulty of getting Spunky to cooperate, should Certainly Appreciate the Indignity inherent in the required behavior, to a TOM cat of my MY DISTINCTION!

     I do think entering the competition a good thing to do. THERE IS STILL TIME, if you are quick! DEADLINE is MONDAY! July 17th, so you only have the weekend.  ALL E-books published between June 1, 2016 and May 31, 2017 are eligible. 

    Meanwhile, if any of you, my favorite authors, are going to festivals, or holding book signings, or heard any good gossip, please let me know so I can pass the news along right here to the rest of the world. Just drop an e-mail to: 

arline@mail.com  

with

"News for Jack" 

 in the subject line, and
I'll make sure it shows up here for all the world to see!