EPIC Contest still open to Entries

Just a Reminder to those who would like to enter this year's contest. www.epicorg.com See more complete information below.

Nina Osier's Science Fiction Novel

 REGS 

was one of our earliest
winners of the EPIC Contest!

Survey Team Leader Nora Falconi's closest friend, anthropologist Marcus Cranshaw, has disappeared on Class M Planet No. 8055. Nora must find and rescue him before a long-awaited treaty takes effect, and 8055 becomes part of Ast territory.

EPIC's eBook Competition

Welcome to EPIC's eBook Competition!
Our rules and FAQs will answer most questions you may have. If you cannot find the answer to your question, contact the Competitions Chair and include a general description of your question, e.g. entry, upload, etc.
A few general things you should know before you enter:

• Works published between June 1 and May 31 are eligible.
• Qualifying entries must be submitted as non-DRM PDF format English-language electronic books, including self-published books.
• Each entry submission must be "as the product sells," that is, the content of the entry must be the same as the book which can be purchased by the publc.
• There are no limits on the number of titles entered by an entrant, however, the same work may not be entered in more than one category.

Entry fees: $25 for EPIC members; $35 for non-members.
The entry period is June 1 through July 15.
The Rules and the FAQs are accessible through the Competitions menu.
Good luck!

by Marie Prato

 YA- Grades 5 and up

As humans, we feel that we are the only mammals on earth that have the heart to adopt a "needy one." In The Wolf Pack, we see that mother nature also takes care of her orphans. The heart and the future of the wolf pack is the pups. While Rowena loves her tiny nieces, her heart belongs to the male pup. When the den is threatened by a rabid dog, Rowena risks her life to save the pup she loves.

Both Arline and Shelley have received the Dick E. Wolf Award for Cover Art. Shelley Rodgerson (Chase) for the cover painting she did for Marie Prato's book, Above. And Arline Chase (for Maggie Dix) for the cover below.

by Carl E. Burke

The Fathers of Tomorrow is a tale of adventure, murder, love and friendship. It is the story of men who overcome great challenges, whose troubled lives find meaning and purpose in their sons and the bonds they share through time.

First Place Winner:
Maryland Writers' Association 2007 Novel Contest

Ariana eBook Cover Art Competition

Welcome to EPIC's Ariana eBook Cover Art Competition!
Our rules and FAQs will answer most questions you may have. If you cannot find the answer to your question, contact the Competitions Chair and include a general description of your question, e.g. entry, upload, etc.
A few general things you should know before you enter:

• Original art work for eBooks published between June 1 and May 31 are eligible.
• Qualifying entries must be submitted in jpeg or jpg format, 200 x 300 pixels.
• There are no limits on the number of covers entered by an entrant, however, the same work may not be entered in more than one category.

Entry fees: $10 per entry.
The entry period is June 1 through July 15.
The Rules and the FAQs are accessible through the Competitions menu.
Good luck!

Ariana eBook Cover Art Competition

Welcome to EPIC's Ariana eBook Cover Art Competition!
Our rules and FAQs will answer most questions you may have. If you cannot find the answer to your question, contact the Competitions Chair and include a general description of your question, e.g. entry, upload, etc.
A few general things you should know before you enter:

• Original art work for eBooks published between June 1 and May 31 are eligible.
• Qualifying entries must be submitted in jpeg or jpg format, 200 x 300 pixels.
• There are no limits on the number of covers entered by an entrant, however, the same work may not be entered in more than one category.

Entry fees: $10 per entry.
The entry period is June 1 through July 15.
The Rules and the FAQs are accessible through the Competitions menu.
Good luck!

Catching UP!

   In Free Fall, Best-selling author Leslie Anne Galloway leads the perfect life—until it inexplicably begins to fall apart. Her husband dies. Her pregnancy fails. Her career tanks. Unfortunate coincidence? Or is some unknown enemy working to engineer her downfall?

News For Romance Writers

if you're not one, skip down!

www.allromanceebooks.com is now booking spots for featured places in a full page ad in Romantic Times's November issue. Cost $105.00. They will bill your Paypal account.

The ad will be a full page/color and contain 24 covers on the flame background with our logo, tagline, and web-address. A review is not guaranteed. Image size must be 600x900 pixels in .jpg or PDF format, by August 1. (If you need a resized image, contact us.)

Please query via email to info@allromanceebooks.com to discover if space is available.

Books that went to press, or back to press this week:

FREE FALL: Fox River Valley Series, Vol. 3

Galleys that went out, or went out again, this week:

THE TIGER'S CUB, by Debi Emmons
   Chase Benton was born lucky. Aloriah Starbird swore she was the most unlucky
person ever. When lucky meets unlucky, whose luck wins out?

MINISTER'S SHOES, by Celine Rose Mariotti
   Gambling! Casino deals! Embezzlement! An extramarital affair! Murder! Town gossips!
   This all happens in Corning, Alabama, a small southern town where Rev. Castle, a Baptist Minister, solves crimes.

Work began or continued on the following this week:

SEER, TYRO, FIEND, by Kathryn Flatt


   When a fledgling investigator comes to Stefanie Durant's Windsong Lake art studio to ask her to use her psychic ability to find a missing insurance beneficiary, she refuses. Yet she cannot stop thinking about Nadine Oberg, a teen who ran away from home and disappeared on the streets of Chicago ten years ago.

LIVING THE CALL, by Barbara Garro
    By listening and answering God's call to serve...consider being a lifeboat and keeping people afloat. Hold out a ladder to raise people up. We are all God has to serve Him on our planet. Do you believe that? Or are you thinking God can do everything Himself?

 
SOLID OIL, by Russell Hunter 
   The rainforest’s secret is known to a very few. But each is perfectly placed to profit from it. The secret is lithium – sometimes described as the oil of the 21^st century – and the knowledge of it has spawned a crime cabal led by Vietnamese gangster-turned-investor Johnny Ho and including a diverse cast of crooks from a corrupt Scottish knight to a vicious Russian mafia boss.

LAINEY DELANEY BACK IN BUSINESS, by Fran Langley
    Lainee Delaney, social debutante turned private investigator wannabe, and substitute teacher gotta be to make ends meet, has just landed her first big case. Enter straight-laced and amazingly hot Cade Gainess, an acquaintance from Lainee's past who has done nothing but irritate her in their brief dealings with each other. 
 
POWERS IN BALANCE: Red Knight Series, Vol. 6, by Ray Morand
   There is a bloody war being waged between the mage ruled Kingdom of Ludnikan led by the dark elf armies of the Nameless King against the elven Kingdom of Nadezhda and her ally the Kingdom of Niadhardal.

More News

Work will inevitably slow due to pay-roll and the necessary data-entry work to get everyone paid. Please be patient, for though there are many new books in the works, it may take while to get them finished, as Shelley is spending all her time in getting new markets for us.

Personal Opionion Question

Need a gift for someone who just finished a grade of school?  Here's a great summer read for the younger set

One by one neighborhood dogs disappear. One by one the ransom notes arrive. When Toby Martin and her best pal, Freddy, discover Toby’s dog is the next intended victim, they become first-rate detectives. 

Question from the e-mail: Someone asked me to write a "short opinion piece" about an event she is planning. I went last year, she said, so I "know all about it."  But I write mystery stories. Years ago you had a handout about writing for the editorial page. Do you still have it?

Answer:  Yes, Marge. See below.

Personal Opinion? Baloney!

The two easiest kinds of articles to write are Personal Rxperience and Opinion essays. Each of us has a lifetime of personal experiences from which to draw.  Opinions are like noses. Everyone has one.

Personal experiences can be shared with your children and grandchildren, with old friends, or just with yourself as a journal entry. They also, if you are willing to share them with others, may make good columns for publications from national magazines right down to your local newspaper.
                               
Start with the Lead:

The lead is the most important thing you have to say about the subject. If you can tie it up with a hook, so much the better. A good lead for an article on how paramedics saved your life would be, “I died three times on Christmas eve and lived to tell about it.”

The Body:

Then put the details of the medical emergency and the Certified Emergency Technicians response in the second paragraph. Then just tell the story as it happened to you, with your own thoughts and feelings.

The Point:

Every article has a point. The personal experience / medical emergency article outlined above might be used to point up the importance of funding for emergency services.

Personal Opinion differs very little, except instead of writing about yourself, you would choose to write about an event or an issue – Say, baloney. Here’s the outline:

The lead: Make a statement about something
    The price of baloney is $4.89 a pound. and write a couple of lines about how it used to be 10 cents a pound back in the Great Depression, and was still expensive in a time when the average man’s salary was $1 a day, IF he was lucky enough to have a job.

The body: Give examples and tell anecdotes
    People used to say they were spreading baloney when people told lies or exaggerated the truth.  (And give some examples of people who have told lies, some amusing, some serious. Girls who’ve lied, or to whom guys lie, politicians and how many lies they tell, the way government cuts medicare, and SSI, but spends millions to study the Whooping Crane.)

Make your point:
    Lots of people will hand you baloney.

The conclusion: Use the lead to confirm your point and make the piece come full circle
    Think about the baloney people slice for you every day. Even when people give it away for nothing, baloney can be very expensive. 

Fruit and Fish Pie

The last voice heard from the house was an 18th Century ancestor's blood-curdling screams in the dark of night. What was it about the "house" that made people tremble? Why had no one dared venture near it since 1789?

18th Century Fruit and Fish Pie

---

INGREDIENTS:

• Figs, minced
• Raisins
• Apples, peeled, cored, & minced
• Pears, peeled, cored, & minced
• White wine
• Sugar
• Cooked Salmon, Cod, or Haddock meat, minced or shredded (leftovers are fine)
• White Pepper
• Whole spices - Cinnamon Sticks, Black Peppercorns, Cloves, Ginger, etc. - wrapped up in cheesecloth
• Salt
• One nine-inch deep dish pie shell with pastry lid
• Pitted Prunes
• Dates, quartered

DIRECTIONS: Place the figs, raisins, apples, & pears in a large pot; cover with wine and add sugar to taste - it should be just slightly sweet, but not overly so. Add fish, spices, & salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Allow the mixture to cook until it has reduced and thickened. Remove the spices in cheesecloth. Remove the pot from the heat and let cool. Place the filling in the pie shell and arrange the prunes and dates on top. Cover with the pastry lid. Bake until pastry is a golden brown. Serve forth!

---

Catching UP!

News Flash: 

SPECIAL FREEBIE WEEKEND!  

NO CHARGE FOR THIS BOOK THIS WEEKEND!

Newton Love's NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE,
the first in the Nick Schaevers Mystery Series

Please do your fellow-author a favor, and share this message!

When Nick Schaevers takes the case, his client is already in prison, convicted of murdering a business partner. If ever there was a need for St. Jude--the Patron Saint of desperate situations--to intercede, this was it.
 
Print books that went to press this week: None

This is poet Bobbi Sinha-Morey at her best. In THE GLASS SWAN she demonstrates her wide range for mainstream poetry. In here the reader will be taken on a journey of loss, love, happiness found in daily lives, and separate lives. One will even find a little bit of dark verse in here, featuring her haunting, hard-hitting style.

E-books that went to press this week:

The Glass Swan by Bobbi Sinha-Morey

Artist Stefanie Durant never expected trouble on her return to Windsong Lake after her Uncle Hank was killed in a storm. When she arrives clues indicate that Hank had feared for his life. Was it an accident, or murder?

Galleys that went out, or went out again, this week: 

DABBLERS: Windsong Lake Series, Vol. 1.

THE MINISTER'S SHOES, by Celine Rose Mariotti

THE TIGER'S CUB, by Debi Emmons

WIFE: LOST AND FOUND, by Ludima Gus Burton

By listening and answering God's call to serve...consider being a lifeboat and keeping people afloat. Hold out a ladder to raise people up. We are all God has to serve Him on our planet. Do you believe that? Or are you thinking God can do everything Himself?

Work began or continued on the following this week:

LIVING THE CALL, by Barbara Garro

SOLID OIL, by Russell Hunter

SEER, TYRO, FIEND, by Kathryn Flatt


POWERS IN BALANCE: Red Knight Series, Vol. 6, by Ray Morand

Viewpoint

Bobbie Grant has no idea of how the world turns when she is hired as a waitress at Mama Trucker’s, a truckstop just off the interstate. Newly separated from her fickle musician husband, Bobbie vows to make better choices in her life.

Question from the e-mail: I had some readers complain that I had problems with point of view.  I always write in first person (saw your tip last week) so isn't that just the difference between I and She? My character, Shirley, always writes as if she is the one talking to the reader, not me.

Answer: Well, not always.  Basically, your viewpoint character is the one the reader lives inside. When writing fiction, it is the writer’s job to create a dream experience for the reader. To do that the writer must put the reader inside the main character.

The reader should be able to see, touch, taste, and feel whatever your character does (as long as it’s important to the story). And NEVER know what any other character thinks and feels except through Shirley's observation. That is viewpoint.  It is easy  to slip up and say, "John thought Shirley was nuts!" instead of "John looked at me as if he thought I was nuts!"

To speak of what John thinks, puts the reader INSIDE John's body, as only John knows what he is thinking.

Whether in first person (I) or third person (she) in your story, the reader should become Shirley for the time they are reading. The reader should live inside Shirley’s body, think with Shirley’s mind, and feel with Shirley’s heart.

Grilled trout with Spicy Tomato Relish

As many know, before tuberculosis was conquered,

Saranak Lake was a health spa of world renoun. Many

well-known people went there for health care, including

Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 

and Mark Twain.

In the Depression Era tale above,  Gabriel Levine punches out a guy who is being rude to a dancer, then learns the next day the guy's name is Dutch Schultz, retreat seems in order. To avoid a gang war Lucky Luciano sends Gabe to Saranac Lake to recuperate from tuberculosis.

Grilled Lake Trout

Ingredients

1 cup sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4-6 trout fillets, 6-8 ounces each

Directions

In a small saucepan over high heat, reduce the vinegar to 1/4 cup. In a mixing bowl, combine the vinegar syrup with the mustard, honey, and ancho chile powder and season to taste with salt and pepper. Let rest 30 minutes.

Preheat grill. Brush the salmon with the glaze and grill 3 minutes on each side for medium. Serve with the spicy tomato relish.

Spicy Tomato Relish

2 medium ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons finely diced Spanish onion
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

For the Spicy Tomato Relish: Combine all ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature.