Day: February 24, 2013

Chris James Announces New Title

Indies Unlimited contributing author Chris James is pleased to announce the release of his new science fiction novel, The Second Internet Cafe, Part 2: The Cascade Annihilator.

Dimension researcher Lucas Hunter returns to confront his nemesis, Dietrich, in an explosive showdown. But now Lucas’s enemy is armed with the most devastating weapon imaginable.

In reality one, the Second Internet Café is itself under renewed threat. The return of Dietrich has given its enemies the means to see it closed down once and for all. From among its staff, senior analyst Paula Featherstone finds herself unwittingly thrown into the centre of the battle to keep control of the Second Internet Café. As danger of a military strike on Europe in our universe increases, Lucas jumps to an alternate 1988 to confront Dietrich. Back in the Second Internet Café, Paula and others struggle to keep the facility functioning so Lucas can return.

Lucas clashes with Dietrich in a devastating final battle, where he must defeat both Dietrich and the weapon that can destroy our universe: the cascade annihilator.

The Cascade Annihilator was released on February 15, 2013 and is currently available from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Smashwords, and in print from Lulu.

Sneak Peek: A Formula for Murder

Today we have a sneak peek from author Dave Vizard’s novel, A Formula for Murder.

When school officials fail to protect teens from a predator teacher at school, a parent decides to get revenge for a young girl who died from suicide. Reporter Nick Steele stumbles upon the story of a lifetime when he discovers a complex plot to execute school administrators with prescription medicine. Three administrators are targeted for death. Two are dead. Will Nick and his sidekicks unravel the mystery and write the story before the third school official is killed?

A Formula for Murder is available from Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Here is an excerpt from A Formula for Murder… Continue reading “Sneak Peek: A Formula for Murder”

IU Survey: Do Reviews Belong in the Book Preview?

We get a lot of requests to feature books here on Indies Unlimited. As time allows, we like to preview those books before we commit to showcasing them here for a couple of reasons: If there is an obvious mistake (such as a typo in the book description or even the title), we can let the author know and give them an opportunity to fix it; and,
Since we don’t cover all genres of writing, we like to make sure the submission is a good fit for our site.
Lately, we have noticed a lot of authors seem to be using a large percentage of the front matter that makes up the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. In some few instances, there was so much front matter, that none of the actual story was included in the preview.

You end up with a preview that consists of a title page, a page of boilerplate copyright info, an acknowledgements page, a dedication page, a list of other titles by this author, a poem, song lyric, or quote that author likes, a couple of pages of excerpts from pre-release reviews and then you’re out of space.

Is this a clever use of yet one more space to deploy marketing, or does it deprive the prospective buyer of the promised sample? Is it a deliberate attempt by the author to hide a weak start to an otherwise good book? In short, WTF?

We’d like to know your thoughts.

Is including reviews in the preview section of your book a good idea?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Book Brief: Beauty Rising

Beauty Rising
by Mark W Sasse
Genre: General/Literary Fiction
Word count: 61,000

“My heart sank. I dumped my father’s ashes in the heart of communist Vietnam – over a thousand miles from the death of his comrades – over a thousand miles from the smile of that girl. How could I have been so stupid?”

Only the bumbling, overweight, thirtyish, stay-at-home Martin Kinney could have mistakenly flubbed his dying father’s request with such gusto. This thousand mile mistake awakens the ghosts of long-held family secrets and puts Martin on a fateful course with an unlikely romantic interest – a young, beautiful, yet troubled Vietnamese woman named My Phuong.

With its cross-cultural setting and unlikely romance, the 61,000 word novel Beauty Rising creates a powerful, unique voice in today’s literature. In a swift-moving, dialogue-driven prose which is funny, honest, tragic and unpredictable, Beauty Rising explores the depths of culture, family, and love as the Vietnam War, a generation removed, continues to hang on the periphery of society, cursing families and causing destruction.

This book is available from Amazon.

Continue reading “Book Brief: Beauty Rising”