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As the author of four books and hundreds of magazine and Web-based articles, I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to write reviews about news, products, and opportunities outside my normal area of expertise. For example, I typically write about history, genealogy, books, music, and technology - - but with a wonderful service called PayPerPost blog network, I now have the chance to broaden my professional experience.

In case all you authors out there haven’t heard about PayPerPost - it’s a service that pays bloggers to blog about certain topics, items, opportunities, or services. Payment ranges from a few bucks to more than 100 bucks - with payments depending on the popularity of your blog; for example, the higher payment posts go to blogs with high Google Page Rank. Since Page Rank usually reflects traffic, it makes a lot of sense for high ranking blogs to demand higher payment.

Why would a blogger want to blog for PayPerPost? Unless you’re prolific, I’m not sure you’ll get rich blogging (prove me wrong, please!) - - but for me, it’s really the chance to learn about new products and services, hone my writing skills, and introducing my blog readers to really cool stuff - stuff they otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Since this site is all about introducing readers to new books, ideas, music, entertainment, opportunities, PayPerPost is a win-win for this author - and her readers.

In part one of this interview, Gerrie Hugo explained a lot about his life in South Africa, and the reasons for writing Africa Will Always Break Your Heart. In part 2 we talk about his life after South Africa, and the problems of bringing a book to fruition.

This is quite the international group, you are in Sweden, your publisher is in South Africa , your promotion is being handled out of Southern California, and I am interviewing you from Canada , even a few years ago this would have been an impossible situation! How important is the internet to you in your endeavours?

The impact of our global village still does not fail to astound me. I am a techno-peasant and have yet to grasp the full extent of what the worldwide web can do for one. I am however slowly getting to grips with it and would not have made one sale had it not been for this capability. Continue reading »

Over a woe-is-me, three-martini lunch twenty years ago, a pal and fellow disgruntled stockbroker told me a tale that became the basis for my debut novel, Big Numbers.

A half-eaten olive spat from my mouth even before I heard the punchline. “Say that again?”

“Jim was a stock-jockey like the rest of us, living hand-to-mouth, until his richest client died,” my pal said. “One week after the client’s funeral, Jim started dating the rich new widow.”

I picked up my errant and twice-bitten green olive.

“And Jim married her?”

“Yup,” my friend said.

Bottoms up on my third martini. “That sounds like a novel.”

“A noir tale of greed.”

Maybe it was the times. The mid-1980s celebrated renewed and sharp economic growth, even greed in my opinion. Or maybe it was just my own greed, my desire to escape the dismally frustrating and soulfully repugnant stock and bond trade. Dialing for dollars, we used to call it. Income based solely on commissions. Believe me, avarice gets nurtured daily when you watch your salary go back to zero every month. Continue reading »

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing an advance copy of Cobra Gold, Damien Lewis’s latest blockbuster novel. Cobra Gold takes a factual event, a huge bank robbery in the mid 70’s that occurred in war ravaged Beirut, Lebanon. A robbery that to this day has no suspects and the gold is still missing!

This is a wild fictional romp about one possible scenario, and well worth reading. Action packed, and moving faster than a projectile from an AK-47 we have terrorists, gold, greed, and great storytelling. I had the opportunity to chat with Damien.

So who is Damien Lewis?
I’m a 41-year-old British author, who’s spent the last twenty-odd years as a war reporter working in some of the world’s less-visited trouble spots - Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe, Syria, Eritrea, Nigeria to name but a few. Predominantly, I’ve been reporting for TV news or documentary, the usual suspects – BBC, Channel 4, CNN, Sky.

In 2000 I was layed low for several months following spinal surgery, and during my recovery period I wrote my first book, a biography called Slave. It went on to be published in 21 different languages, and is a number one international bestseller. It won the 2004 Index on Censorship Book Award. It was serendipity that led me to write that first book, and by then the flood gates had been opened. I went on to write several other military non-fictions books.

Then this year I published my first fiction – Cobra Gold – which is based upon the true story of the world’s biggest ever bank raid, that took place in the 1970s Lebanon civil war. I’m now looking at writing a series of three further fictions – all based upon true stories – and developing the same characters throughout. Continue reading »

Choices Meant for Gods, the first in a trilogy by Sandy Lender, was reviewed by Prudy Taylor Board

Sorcerers, dragons, monsters, magic! Choices Meant for Gods, Sandy Lender’s delightful debut novel has them all.

Lender’s protagonist is Chariss, a beautiful young woman born with the mark of the Protector, an amethyst on her cheekbone, high up near the corner of her right eye. However, no one — including Chariss — understands its meaning until she and Master Rothahn travel to Tiurlang and there, in the prophecy scrolls, they uncover not only the stone’s meaning, but her life’s purpose.

As the book opens Chariss and Hrazon, her wizard guardian, flee the evil Lord Drake whose goal is to kill her. She and Hrazon take shelter in the home of Godric Alan Taiman, where she begins a series of lessons — including swordplay with monsters —  that train her to guard The Ultimate One.

The pages fly by and they are filled with twists and turns, with quirky, exciting characters who experience the gamut of universal and eternal emotions ranging from love and evil to fear and tremendous courage, from despair to exultant victory. All this and a satisfying ending!

Sandy Lender is personally interesting because she represents the new wave of authors who have embraced the Internet and electronic marketing. This is reportedly the future of book sales — especially for midlist authors. She does the typical signings at bookstores and speaking to clubs, but before this book launched, Lender visited a different blog, web site, author chat room or Yahoo group page every day for two months. She introduced herself, discussed her book, her characters, and created a base of readers and fans.

“As for ‘normal’ online marketing,” she explains, “I’ve got six blogs working that at the moment.” (If you’re not familiar with the term blog, it’s an online journal.) Nigel Taiman, her hero, has an amusing blog listed below. Continue reading »

Thank you to Gerrie Hugo, author of the autobiographical book Africa Will Always Break Your Heart for taking the time to sit down with Blogging Authors for this interview. (E-book version is also available here)

1.  What prompted you to write this book? How did you come up with the idea?

Africa Will Always Break Your Heart saw the light purely as an exercise in therapy. I suffer from Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and needed an escape valve to let off steam in an effort to put the demons of the past to rest.

It is also my confession and apology for living a large part of my life as a racist.

I wrote the first draft in six weeks. It just bubbled over. During the editing process numerous other agendas came to the fore i.e. setting the record straight. Illuminating to some people just how backward their opinions are. To anger my enemies and bring the heart failure they so justly deserve on a bit sooner. Continue reading »

BloggingAuthors.com recently had the opportunity to interview Featured Author Sandy Lender, author of Choices Meant for Gods

Q: Your book Choices Meant for Gods is a fantasy story about a young lady on the run from a madman. When she stops running and starts fighting, she discovers she’s wrapped in centuries of prophecy. Where did you get the idea for your novel?

A: Strangely enough, it occurred to me as I was writing promotional/marketing material (read: after the book was at the printer) that Amanda Chariss, the heroine, and her wizard guardian spent the 16 years prior to the novel’s beginning moving from place to place, literally running from home to home, benefactor to benefactor in mimicry of my childhood.

Subconsciously, the idea for one of the plotlines came from my experience as a child in a military family. I was born on Homestead Air Force Base, and, even though my father completed his service by the time I entered school, we still moved frequently as I grew up. I guess it influenced me more than I realized.

The idea of the Taiman estate grew out of Anglo-Saxon mead halls and Charlotte Bronte’s Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Readers will find myriad Old English, Anglo-Saxon, and Bronte references speckled throughout the novel. I also take a lot of images from song lyrics, and let those fuel my imagination. Continue reading »

Walkin The Dog
by Darwin Demers

What happens when a family’s peace of mind and idyllic lifestyle are destroyed by a new neighbor? Just how much is a person expected to tolerate?

Read this true, real life drama as it unfolds for the Demers family culminating in explosive results! Laugh and cry as you find yourself asking….What would I have done under similar circumstances?

Prepare to be challenged as you find yourself drawn into the real life existence of an ordinary family whose home becomes a prison and whose lives become a hell, as they struggle to find the answer that will finally set them free!

Perhaps you’ll even come to believe that though life isn’t fair….. It is a gift!s

Walkin’ the Dog’s Darwin Demers will be featured at BEA 2007, New York.

About the Author
Darwin Demers was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan.  Retired at age 55 after 36 years with B.C. Telephone Company, Darwin resides with his wife Carol in Kelowna.  He is the father of eight children, four girls and four boys. 

This article on collaborative writing was submitted by Heather Hepler, co-author of Scrambled Eggs at Midnight and Dream Factory

I was so happy a few weeks ago when a boy in the third row of a freshman English class raised his hand and asked us, “Where do you come up with your characters? They are so…um… random.”

I think that’s partly what attracts both Brad and me to writing. In what other vocation or avocation is it okay to know a whole lot about bottle cap collecting, and anachronistic role-playing, and Bob’s Big Boy? Not to mention Brad’s extensive knowledge of all things related to 50’s television and my somewhat unfortunate obsession with apples and chocolate.

I don’t think this obscure knowledge would even make us very good Trivial Pursuit partners for anyone. I mean, how often do you need to know that the first Ronald McDonald wore a food-tray hat, or that the Honey Crisp Apple is actually a cross between a Macoun and a Honeygold?

I was told something that I’m sure most writers are told when they are starting out. Write what you know.

The thing is no one told me that the things I know might not be the big ideas. I really don’t know how to stop global warming or how to heal a broken heart or how to get ahead in business. The things that I know are the smaller things that find their way into my everyday life. It’s in these obscure obsessions that I seem to find stories. Continue reading »

This article was submitted by  Francine Silverman, author of
Talk Radio for Authors: Getting Interviews Across the U.S. and Canada

As an on-line publicist for some 80 authors, I try to get them spots on talk radio shows. I have been successful in matching guests with hosts in many instances, but in the process have discovered an interesting phenomenon – something I call “rookie radio.” This does not refer to the caliber of the show or station, but rather the lack of information on the website.

Go to any talk radio station, especially terrestrial (those on the air with call letters), and you’ll find them sorely lacking. You may find the bios of the hosts but not the theme of their shows, or the theme of their shows but no contact information, or whether or not they invite guests, and, if so, what kind?

In contrast, authors with websites seek to promote their books on their sites with a bio of the author, excerpts, guest book, articles, and myriad other ways to showcase themselves and their books.

This shortage of information not only shortchanges guests but listeners as well.

Most shows stream on the Internet, but how does someone on the East Coast know that a show on the West Coast would interest them if there is no description of the show?

Seems to me that radio hosts want as many listeners as possible so why keep their shows a secret from the public?

I studied five talk radio sites at random and wrote to each station, including the above paragraphs of my article and pointing out to them what was missing from their websites.  I only received one reply – from Tom Collins, acting general manager at WBCK/WBFN/WRCC and operations director at WBCK/WBXX/WRCC/WBFN in Battle Creek Michigan. Continue reading »