Teaser Tuesday #80 – False Starts by Ken La Salle @KenLaSalle

Posted on November 1, 2016 by fundinmental

Teaser

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of booksandabeat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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Ken La Salle is an amazing author that dips his feet into many genres.

I have enjoyed everything I have read by him, so to get a glimpse into what makes him tick is an opportunity I can’t pass up.

Are you ready to take a blast to the past…The 1970’s coming up.

Amazon / Goodreads

MY TEASE

When I heard a song on the radio I didn’t understand, I would walk right up to my mom and demand an answer.

“What is ‘one toke over the line’ Mom?”

(16% on Kindle)

I will be reviewing False Starts by Ken La Salle on 11.7.16, so be sure and stop in to check it out.

GOODREADS BLURB: I recently opened up my chest of childhood memories, faced a decade I had long since forgotten, and wrote these words:

“It was the hippest of times. It was the funkiest of times. It was the 1970s.”

And I grew up right there in the middle of it. I won talent shows. I went to camp. I fought the school bully for the honor of the girl I loved. I lost my father…

But having just turned 50, I decided the time had come to take an honest look at those years without the tinted lens of nostalgia, which allowed me to remember so much more. I never told the girl I defended that I loved her. I barely survived camp. No amount of talent show victories brought my father back and, to be honest, my memories weren’t as accurate as I thought they were.

The 70’s were a swirling minefield filled with a family destroyed by poverty and divorce, horrible TV shows, bad disco on AM radio, wretched food… and the only saving grace a child like me had was Pong. My teachers tried to put me on drugs. My sister taught me the art of shoplifting. My best friend was Burp Boy. Life was a series of constant set-backs, a barrage of defeats, embarrassments, and false starts.
And I wouldn’t change a thing.

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One Sentence Review – Oh Ship! by Lori A Moore @LoriAMooreKY

Posted on September 17, 2016 by fundinmental

I have been on many cruises and if you enjoy people watching, like I do, Oh Ship by Lori A Moore will supply you with plenty of laughs and travel tips.

Goodreads / Amazon

MY ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

If you are a people watcher, Oh Ship by Lori A Moore is chock full of people…some nice and some not so nice…that had me laughing and shaking my head at their antics.

3 Stars

GOODREADS BLURB: Ship happens. Cruises can be quite the adventure within an adventure if you keep your eyes open and watch the little dramas that are going on among the several thousand passengers and crew members aboard the ship. Reading author Lori A. Moore’s true tales of things that happen on the high seas will have you saying, “Oh Ship!” From stories of passengers pepper-spraying other passengers to grown men fighting over glass figurines of penguins, you’ll laugh until your ribs hurt.

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Giveaway – Dumbest Thieves, Thugs & Rogues by Leonard Birdsong @Prof_Birdsong

Posted on August 10, 2016 by fundinmental

MY REVIEW

Dumbest Thieves, Thugs and Rogues by Leonard Birdsong is a compilation of humorous snippets that are printed as found, mistakes and all.

Fish pornography…toxic chili…

These guys are so dumb, if breathing wasn’t an automatic response, they’d die of asphyxiation.

I couldn’t help but laugh and shake my head at their idiocy. A lot of these criminals didn’t even last a week outside of prison before committing another crime. Makes me wonder why they are walking around in our world to begin with. What does this say about our justice system…a waste of our resources.

An entertaining look at the world of the Dumbest Thieves, Thugs and Rogues will have you questioning how these criminals manage to survive, so go ahead, grab a copy and have a good laugh.

I received a copy of Dumbest Thieves, Thugs & Rogues from Leonard Birdsong in return for an honest review.

4 Stars

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Professor has delighted in telling you stories from his first two book series, Dumbest Criminal Law Stories and Weird Criminal Law Stories. Now he writes for fun and your enjoyment in his latest, Professor Birdsong’s Dumbest Thieves, Thugs, & Rogues. These stories are some of the best from around the world and should bring you many good laughs. For instance:

A thief in Phoenix just released from County jail on drug charges ran laps around the jail celebrating his freedom, then tried to carjack a truck belonging to the jail.

The Miami man arrested for stealing a corpse from a casket at a funeral home. An Orlando bandit who broke into a convenience store by bashing in the front door with his head.

The awkward thief who burglarized an Albuquerque home only to be confronted by the 66-year- old wife and her 70-year- old husband who held him at gunpoint in his car loaded with their household possession until police arrived.

The San Jose thug who confessed to murder by cutting out the middle man and presented himself to the Santa Clara County jail with his confession.

An impatient Wendy’s drive-thru customer in Chicago, so hungry he opened fire on another driver who tried to cut in front of him;

The thug who was sentenced to a year in jail for trying to sell a backpack of dirty socks as marijuana.

The Norwegian prisoner gone rogue who used a surfboard to escape from an island prison.

A Frenchman suspended from his job with pay for 12 years who sought compensation of $500,000 because he claimed his career was ruined.

And so many other stories about dumb thieve, thugs, and rogues that will make you laugh out loud.

Buy it on $2.99 Amazon or Free with your Kindle Unlimited Subscription

About the author:

Professor Birdsong received his J.D. from the Harvard Law School and his B.A. from Howard University. He teaches law in Orlando, Florida. After graduation from law school he worked four years at the law firm of Baker Hostetler. He then entered into a varied and distinguished career in government service. He served as a diplomat with the U.S. State Department with various postings in Nigeria, Germany and the Bahamas. Professor Birdsong later served as a federal prosecutor. After leaving government service, and before he began teaching, Professor Birdsong was in private law practice in Washington, D.C.

Find Pfr Birdsong on his website and on Twitter @Prof_Birdsong, on Literary Addicts and Goodreads.

Professor Birdsong is giving away a $20 Amazon Gift Card to one lucky winner. Fill out the widget below to enter.

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You may see my Giveaways HERE.
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Friday 56 #94 & BB – The Natural by Joe Klein @JoeKleinTIME

Posted on August 5, 2016 by fundinmental

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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.

Please join Rose City Reader every Friday to share the first sentence or so of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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The Natural by Joe Klein

The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton

Even though this is the Goodreads ebook cover, this is the cover I have on my 1st edition hardcover.

My 56

So the political benefits of dropping the gas tax were obvious. And there was no political benefit to expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit…The EITC was too cumbersand a concept for most journalists to even bother to understand, much less attempt to describe.

But Clinton…expanded the EITC…

(Page 56 in hardcover)

I am not big into politics, or news, for that matter, but I do believe in exercising my right to vote. I must be informed enough to make my own educated choice, so some knowledge is mandatory. That being said, I thought it was “funny” that this was sitting on a fiction shelf. Timing is everything, so even though I have only been sharing non fiction, thus far, I will go ahead with this biography.

MY QUESTION TO YOU: How do you view the press? Do they cause more harm than good in this day and age?

Add to Goodreads

GOODREADS BLURB: Joe Klein, best-selling author of Primary Colors and one of our most brilliant political analysts, now tackles the subject he knows best: Bill Clinton. Astute, even-handed, and keenly intelligent, The Natural is the only book to read if you want to understand exactly what happened–to the military, to the economy, to the American people, to the country–during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and how the decisions made during his tenure affect all of us today.

Much has been written about Clinton, but The Natural is the first work to cut through the gossip, scandals, media hype, and emotional turbulence that Clinton always engendered, to step back and rationally analyze the eight years of his tenure, a period during which America rose to unprecedented levels of prosperity. Joe Klein puts that record into perspective, showing us what worked and what didn’t, exactly what was accomplished and why, and who was responsible for the successes and the failures.

We see how the Clinton White House functioned on the inside, how it dealt with the maneuvers of Congress and the Gingrich revolution, and who held power and made the decisions during the endless crises that beset the administration. Klein’s access to the White House over the years as a journalist gave him a prime spot from which to view every crucial event–both political and personal–and he sets them forth in an insightful, readable, and completely engrossing manner.

The Natural is stern in its criticism and convincing with its praise. It will cause endless debate amongst friends and foes of the Clinton administration. It is a book that anyone interested in contemporary politics, in American history, or in the functioning of our democracy, should read.

To see all my Giveaways, go HERE.
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Giveaway – Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours by Roxanne Rhoads

Posted on March 24, 2016 by fundinmental

I have participated in Roxanne Rhoads Bewitching Virtual Book Tours since shortly after I began blogging. I have found her to be wonderful to work with, helpful and very knowledgeable about getting maximum exposure for the authors she spotlights. Therefore, I felt this book would be an excellent resource for authors, making their experience more enjoyable and I wanted to share it with you.

Ten Reasons Authors Should Go On A Virtual Book Tour

By Roxanne Rhoads

Going on a virtual tour can help you network with bloggers, readers, reviewers, other authors and publishing professionals. You can build a professional network of contacts through a tour.
A virtual book tour can help build your author brand and platform.
An online tour can vastly expand your online presence and visibility as an author. The more you and your book are mentioned online, the more hits readers will find when they Google you.
You can target niche reader markets. Does your book feature food, crafts, or secondary topic that can be built upon for marketing purposes? Make sure that in addition to the normal book blogs and genre blogs that several of your tour stops are on targeted blogs for food, recipes, crafts or a side market that fits your niche. For instance, Juliette Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries could be featured on sites that cater to vintage clothing or San Francisco because both of those feature heavily in her cozy mystery series. Melissa Bourbon’s Dressmaking Mystery Series could be featured on a sewing blog. Find your niche and target it.
A tour can build your mailing list and increase your social media following. Include links to your newsletter sign up page and all of your social media profiles so readers can easily follow you.
A virtual tour can direct traffic to your website. Make sure your website is up to date and full of content for readers to explore.
Expose your book to readers around the world. Many tour companies have book bloggers in numerous countries. Your book can be showcased around the world 24/7.
You will have the chance to interact directly with readers via live chats, Facebook events, and comments on blogs and websites.
Most blogs archive their content; this means it does not get deleted. Your tour stop will remain online indefinitely for readers to find.
A virtual book tour can increase book sales.

Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours

Quick Tips for Authors Guide

Roxanne Rhoads

Book Description:

Are you considering a virtual book tour?

Not sure where to start or exactly what an online tour will entail?

Roxanne Rhoads, book publicist and owner of Bewitching Book Tours, shares her virtual tour expertise in this Quick Tips for Authors Guide.

Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours will guide you in utilizing the best marketing tool available- a virtual book tour, which can create online exposure for your book, jumpstart your book sales, help build your author brand, and expand your network.

In this guide you’ll learn:

what you should do before a tour
the components of a great author website
the best social media outlets for authors to utilize
tips for building your author brand
how to write great guest blogs
what to expect from an online book tour
the secrets of successful book tours
how to schedule your own virtual book tour

And you’ll receive in-depth details about what to do during a virtual book tour to guarantee success.

Amazon BN Kobo Scribd iBooks / Smashwords Inktera Createspace

About the Author:

Roxanne Rhoads has been working in the world of online book promotion since 2005. She has worked as a freelance writer, author, book reviewer, book blogger, editor, self-publisher and book publicist. She has a unique advantage of knowing how multiple sides of book publishing and promotion operate.

Roxanne understands how book bloggers work and what they want to make their jobs easier while also understanding that authors need promotion to be streamlined, easy, and less time consuming.

Roxanne shares some of her knowledge in her latest release, Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours.

Author Website http://www.roxannerhoads.com
Bewitching Book Tours www.bewitchingbooktours.com
Bewitching Blog http://www.bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com/
Facebook/Roxanne Rhoads http://www.facebook.com/RoxanneRhoads
Facebook/Bewitching Book Tours http://www.facebook.com/BewitchingBooktours
Twitter @RoxanneRhoads
Newsletter Sign Up: http://eepurl.com/0z3z1

GIVEAWAY

Tour Giveaway: Bewitching Book Tours’ Release Day Blitz or Cover Reveal (winner’s choice) ebook copy of Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY HERE

To see all my Giveaways, go HERE.
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Review ~ Groovy Cool Writing Techniques by Cinta Garcia de la Rosa

Posted on March 29, 2015 by fundinmental

Add me to Goodreads now.

Cover by Mark Stone

MY REVIEW

This is a short, simple, to the point guide to writing that could become your best friend. The book is filled with helpful hints and ideas, with examples and exercises.

Cinta had writers block and decided to unblock it. She would write anything to jumpstart herself. She believes, and I agree with her, that anyone can be a writer, even if you only write lists or in your journal, writing is writing. I agree with her philosophy of just writing, don’t edit. I think that may one of the most important pieces of advice she shares.

Writing is a process, so, why not enjoy it instead of thinking you must suffer to be any good. Her writing has a humorous and lightness to it that makes this easy to get into and not seem like a school lesson. I liked her reminding me to use all my senses.

We are all creative in our own way and her exercises sparked my imagination and made me feel like I am a writer, too.

This is a book I will have by my side when I write my novel, but for now, I will apply it to my reviews.

5 Stars

AMAZON US / AMAZON UK / AMAZON ES / AMAZON CA
AMAZON IT / AMAZON DE / SMASHWORDS / DRAFT2DIGITAL

SYNOPSIS

Groovy Cool Writing Techniques is a collection of essays developing techniques for improving writing in a creative way. Every person is creative; they only need to light that spark inside, so the magic can begin. A picture, a walk in the streets, your own childhood memories… Everything can hold stories. You just need to find the way to tell those stories in a creative way. This book can help you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WINNER: In 2014, the Funny Adventures of Little Nani was a gold medal winner in the Children’s category of the International Readers’ Favorite Book Awards.
WINNER: Indie Book of the Day Award (July 5th, 2013).
SEMI-FINALIST: 2013 Book Cover Contest at the website Authorsdb.com.

Cinta Garcia de la Rosa is an award-winning author who spends her time in the United States and Spain with her amazing husband. Along with writing, her career encompasses beta-reading, editing, proofreading, and translating Spanish/English. Cinta has loved the written word since she was five years old and reads at least one hundred books every year. She has a B.A. in English with minors in Literature, Art, and Creative Writing from Oxford. Cinta has published:
– A Foreigner in London (anthology Blessings from the Darkness)
– Never Again (anthology Satan’s Holiday under the penname Rosa Storm)
– The Funny Adventures of Little Nani (Children Book)
Read more at: http://cintascorner.com

Twitter / Goodreads / Facebook / Pinterest

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To see all my Reviews, go HERE.

To see all my Giveaways, go HERE.

If you like what you see, why don’t you follow me?

Look on the right sidebar and let’s talk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Let’s Meet Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Rick Bragg

Posted on February 20, 2015 by fundinmental

SHERRY_&_RICK_BRAGG

Recently, I was fortunate to be able to meet Rick Bragg, a pulitzer prize winning author. He was taping a program for PBS in the WSRE Amos studio at Pensacola State College in Florida. He also did a free ‘lecture’ for all those who wished to attend.

He is the guy next door, a warm and friendly person with a knack for telling a story in rich and vivid detail. He reminds me of my Uncle Eddie, who we describe as a large, cuddly teddy bear. He believes his poor upbringing has filled his life with stories to be told. His first novel is about his mother, All Over But The Shoutin’. I loved it, when he said he never knew his grandfather, so, he made one, thus, Ava’s Man. Rick wraps up his family stories in the American Saga series with The Frog Prince, inspired by his relationship with his ten year old stepson.

I could sit and listen to him for hours, so I can only imagine how I will feel about his books. Let’s check out his latest novel, Jerry Lee Lewis, His Own Story by Rick Bragg.

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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs you and post it..

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

~~~~~~

Jerry Lee Lewis, His Own Story by Rick Bragg

Add to Goodreads

My Friday 56

He was a student of mischief, and even a lifetime later he relishes it almost as much as he relishes the early music, relishes any discomfort or awkwardness or devilment he took part in, the way he remembers the taste of his mama’s tomato gravy. Some men outgrow their boyish devilment.

(page 56 of hardcover)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

The water would rise up every few years, wash across the low, flat land, and take everything a poor man had, ruin his cotton and corn and drown his hogs, pour filth and dead fish into his home, even push the coffins from the earth and float his ancestors all the way to Avoyelles.

“Oh Lord, Maxine, the Rapture has done come and the Lord has left us here.”

SYNOPSIS

The greatest Southern storyteller of our time, Rick Bragg, tracks down the greatest rock and roller of all time, Jerry Lee Lewis—and gets his own story, from the source, for the very first time

A monumental figure on the American landscape, Southern boy jerry Lee Lewis spent his childhood raising hell in Ferriday, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi; galvanized the world with hit records like “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” that gave rock and roll its devil’s edge; caused riots and boycotts with his incendiary performances; married his thirteen-year-old second cousin—his third wife of seven; ran a decades-long marathon of drugs, drinking, and women; nearly met his maker, twice; suffered the deaths of two sons and two wives, and the indignity of an IRS raid that left him with nothing but the broken-down piano he started with; performed with everyone from Elvis Presley to Keith Richards to Bruce Springsteen to Kid Rock—and survived it all to be hailed as “one of the most creative and important figures in American popular culture and a paradigm of the Southern experience.”

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is the Killer’s life as he lived it, and as he shared it over two years with our greatest bard of Southern life: Rick Bragg. Rich with Lewis’s own words, set in context by Bragg’s richly atmospheric narrative, filled with rare and unpublished images, this is the last great untold rock-and-roll story, come to life on the page.

ABOUT RICK BRAGG

Rick Bragg is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of best-selling and critically acclaimed books on the people of the foothills of the Appalachians, All Over but the Shoutin, Ava’s Man, and The Prince of Frogtown.

Bragg, a native of Calhoun County, Alabama, calls these books the proudest examples of his writing life, what historians and critics have described as heart-breaking anthems of people usually written about only in fiction or cliches. They chronicle the lives of his family cotton pickers, mill workers, whiskey makers, long sufferers, and fist fighters. Bragg, who has written for the numerous magazines, ranging from Sports Illustrated to Food & Wine, was a newspaper writer for two decades, covering high school football for the Jacksonville News, and militant Islamic fundamentalism for The New York Times.

He has won more than 50 significant writing awards, in books and journalism, including, twice, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993, and is, truthfully, still a freshman at Jacksonville State University. Bragg is currently Professor of Writing in the Journalism Department at the University of Alabama, and lives in Tuscaloosa with his wife, Dianne, a doctoral student there, and his stepson, Jake. His only real hobby is fishing, but he is the worst fisherman in his family line.