Month: November 2012

Book Brief: My Temporary Life

MY TEMPORARY LIFE
by Martin Crosbie
Genre: Romantic/Suspense
Word count: 93,000

It has everything, simply everything-a coming of age, a romance, and a thriller rolled into one delightful read.

From the very first sentence, we’re drawn into the harsh Scotland schoolboy world of Malcolm and Hardly. Malcolm’s summers in Canada with his mother offer little comfort. He survives by running; running through the streets, running between Scotland and Canada, running from himself and his past.

Flash ahead 20 years. In Canada, Malcolm meets Heather, a woman haunted by an evil secret. When they camp at the Lake at the end of the World, they discover there is nowhere left to run, for either of them.

Like the great 19th century writers (but with a lighter touch), Martin Crosbie takes Malcolm from a life focused on the primary needs of food, sex and basic survival to loftier aspirations. He enters an intangible, often illusory world of evil that requires enormous human faith; and tosses the reader onto a thrilling rollercoaster ride. Mr. Crosbie’s deft character-development pen never allows the reader to question Malcolm’s choices. He has prepared for this journey since his boyhood days in Scotland. This time, he’s not backing down, whatever the cost.

This title is available from Amazon. Continue reading “Book Brief: My Temporary Life”

A Helping Hand…that which who are is…

I was summoned. The EM wanted to see me. I knew what it was: my dress code. Well, I did get Madonna’s cone bustier cheap on eBay—I was so very sorry about the EM’s eye. Or perhaps it was my body-piercing. Look, I found this dinky little stud with the initials ‘EM’ on it. Okay, perhaps the tongue wasn’t the best place for it, but you can’t dithcwiminite againtht thomeone jutht becauthe they have a sthpeeth impediment. Oh, I know…it was the tattoo. Come on, the tattooist was 93 and a bit deaf. How was I to know he’d misunderstood ‘Indies R Us’? I did tell him Indies started with an ‘I’ not a ‘U’….anyway, it was a bogof and the tattoo on my—oh, never mind.

Anyway I was a Very Worried Minion, and I was trepidating (is it only me that thinks trepidation should have its own verb?). I slunk into the EM’s bunker and there he was. Sitting with his head resting limply in his four hands. He’d written ‘Help’ with all the red M&Ms and was sucking the others up with a straw and pea-shooting them at his statuette of Popeye: I think he was trying to get them into his pipe. He was whimpering pathetically.

“Cathy, I’m confused, I’m nonplussed, I’m addled, I’m perplexed, I’m puzzled, I’m baffled and befuddled, I’m confounded, I’m flustered, I’m…”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, NO. It was worse than I thought. He’d swallowed the thesaurus.

“Help me, Cathy,” he continued after I’d wiped the dribble off his chin. I left him to digest, with Mr Pish sitting on his lap, rather worryingly scratching the EM’s ear, and I tried to make sense of his dilemma…

He was addled by two things—that/which/who, firstly. Continue reading “A Helping Hand…that which who are is…”

Sneak Peek: A Place of Safety

A Place of SafetyToday we have a sneak peek from author Tamsin Reeves’ psychological thriller, A Place of Safety.

Martha is struggling to restore some stability in her life, which has been in turmoil since her husband walked out on the family to join his pregnant girlfriend. She takes in a lodger, an asylum seeker, who fled Afghanistan but cannot escape the violence which pervades his dreams. An undemanding friendship grows between Martha and Ismail but how well does she really know the stranger in her attic? When a local girl disappears; a girl who visited Ismail’s room, Martha realises her house is not a place of safety.

A Place of Safety  is available on Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and all Amazon locations.

Here is an excerpt from A Place of Safety: Continue reading “Sneak Peek: A Place of Safety”

Is Anyone Listening When I’m Not Here?

What would happen if you threw a party and no one came?

Do you ever feel like that in our world of indie writing and publishing? We continuously talk and promote our books through Twitter, Facebook and other sites. We talk about these things all the time on this site. Hell, I am one of the biggest proponents of social media. In fact, I earn the majority of my non-writing income now from helping companies set up and maintain social media sites and campaigns.

How necessary is it?

Continue reading “Is Anyone Listening When I’m Not Here?”