Huge Enormous Book Giveaway

This is a note about books, actually about FREE books. One of my marketing efforts has been The Write Room Blog. 

It is a cooperative effort of thirty disparate writers who have banded together to work on marketing. The funny thing about cooperation: sometimes it bears remarkable fruit. Having been up for only four months, The Write Room has already had over a hundred thousand hits and In the past week alone, we had over 14, 000 hits on the blog. 

To celebrate we decided to do a book raffle. All of us have contributed print and electronic versions of our work. We want to give them away and are urging visitors to our blog and our friends to enter the raffle. It is free and you may win some great writing. If nothing else, you might find the blog itself worth visiting. 

The most recent post, for instance, is a collection of 9 short pieces about the end of the world. 

Here’s the link. I hope you’ll click on it, be intrigued, and follow the simple directions to join the raffle. Be assured, we aren’t going to put you on some mailing list or insist that you follow the blog. We just want you to enjoy some good reading.
So here’s the link: http://www.thewriteroomblog.com/?p=1366 

Capricorn Cravings Video Trailer

I am getting really excited now for the launch of my first book in the Astronomy Series — in which each heroine will belong to a different star sign and will display the recognized traits of that sign of the zodiac.

Capricorn Cravings is scheduled for release on October 30th and will be available for download at Amazon for $2.99.

Small town Colorado veterinarian Riley Shaughnessy knows she is falling for hunky Powell Stewart. But is he really an undercover FBI agent or is he the serial murderer the FBI has dubbed the Capricorn Killer?

I will be posting an excerpt soon…

First Page – My First Travel Book

This book serves as an educational, fun and entertaining reading for children 3 – 10 years of age. It reflects on travelling to some of the world’s most famous landmarks and popular destinations around the world. The book consists of fun rhymes and important information. The creative and bright illustrations are a great discussion topic for both the children and parents. It makes a lovely gift from parent or grandparent to child.

My First Travel Book

Anna Othitis

Welcome aboard Angelic Airlines. This is Captain Frankie, and I will be flying you to some of the most popular places around the world. Please fasten your seat belts, make yourselves comfortable, and get ready to take off on a wondrous journey.

Buy Now: 

http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-62510-945-3

https://www.facebook.com/AnnaFrankieOthitis?ref=hl

http://www.amazon.com/First-Travel-Book-Anna-Othitis/dp/1625109458

First Page – Shadows Along the Zambezi

Author, Diana M. Hawkins has penned an action-packed thriller in which a couple battles poachers, ivory traffickers, and corrupt officials to protect embattled herds of elephants in Zimbabwe’s eastern Zambezi Valley.

Seven years after the brutal murders of his wife and children during a violent, government-sanctioned farm invasion, Pieter van Rooyen focuses his energies on trying to save wildlife in Zimbabwe’s national parks. In 2008, their beleaguered and underfunded staffs are helpless to stop rampant poaching, as depicted in a gut-wrenching scene where a dozen men wielding automatic rifles slaughter a family group of elephants for their ivory tusks. Jessica Brennan, a doctoral candidate studying elephants in the Zambezi Valley, joins forces with Pieter to pursue the poachers, who are working in collusion with a phony Zambian travel agency to supply a Chinese diplomat.

Jessica and Pieter’s pursuit leads to her kidnapping and a suspenseful confrontation in a Zambian warehouse. Interspersed throughout the human drama are realistic accounts of the elephants’ interactions, both in times of joy and tragedy, which will rend readers’ heartstrings. In the end, however, what lingers in readers’ memories is the sorrowful portrait of Zimbabwe, a nation whose leaders have squandered its magnificent natural resources for short-term political and financial gain.

Shadows along the Zambezi

Diana M. Hawkins

Prologue

Tuesday April 3, 2001

            Sandie van Rooyen was angry and upset. Her husband should never have left her and the children alone on their Zimbabwe farm. Robert Mugabe’s brutal land invasions were on the rise.

            Why did he take the Cessna and fly off to Harare, just to collect tractor parts? If he’d waited, they’d have been delivered by the end of the week. Surely a day or two’s delay in the plowing didn’t matter that much. She thumped the dining room table with her fist, hurt by his obvious disregard for his family’s safety.

            Before he left, he’d pulled her into his arms. “You’ll be fine,” he had assured her with his usual air of confidence. His kiss had lingered long, and for a brief moment or two, it seemed to erase all her fears. Then with a spring in his step, he walked away.

          “Don’t worry Sandie,” he called out, as he turned to wave goodbye. “I’ve left a shotgun with Shoriwa and I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon; before you know it. You’ve got the emergency radio, remember.”

          “Don’t worry?” Sandie scoffed under her breath as she watched him disappear. “That’s easy for you to say.”

          Several hours later, she felt somewhat more composed. Nonetheless, the possibility of an impending attack still bothered her. In the sewing room, she found her nine-year-old daughter, Bernice, hunched over the Singer, trying to sew a straight seam. Sandie realized her daughter was frustrated since a wiggly line of stitches was the best she could do.

          “Mummy, I can’t get it to stay straight.” Bernice frowned, tossing back a head of blonde curls. “The silly machine keeps pulling the material crooked.”

          “Sweetheart, the secret is to guide the fabric, using the lightest touch. You aren’t in a tug-of-war with the machine, you know.” Sandie lifted the Singer’s sewing foot. She snipped the…

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Diana+M+Hawkins

WEBSITE: http://dianamhawkins-books.com

First Page – Dare to Flee by Phil Graham

 The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are a threatened species. They are being forced from an area they have occupied for 30,000 years, by the Botswana Government so that diamonds can be mined. 

In an exciting story, Xai, a Busman hunter embarks on a journey to save some of the Bushman and also to hunt down his deadly enemy.

Dare to Flee

Phil Graham

PROLOGUE

The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are an ancient tribe dating back 20000 years. They were the original inhabitants of the Cape and the mountainous areas of Kwa Zulu Natal and traces of them have been found over much of South Africa. The mere fact that they exist to this day is in no small way attributable to their ability to survive.

The arrival of the white man in South Africa began in the seventeenth century and shortly after their arrival, they began to decimate the vast herds of wild game, upon which the Bushmen depended. In retaliation for this slaughter, the Bushmen began plundering the white man’s livestock, and so began a war that the Bushman could not win.

In 1802 the African tribes were decimated by a famine that set the tribes to warring amongst themselves. These wars inevitably involved the Bushmen who were driven from their traditional hunting areas and ended up in the Drakensberg Mountains, bordering South Africa and Lesotho. The whites continued to encroach on the Bushmen’s territory and the warring blacks continued to slaughter their people until, in 1869, the last settlement of Bushmen was decimated.

There were, however some survivors and these hardy people fled to a place where neither the black tribes nor the white settlers were willing or indeed able to live. This was the vast thirstland known as the Kalahari. The Kalahari, like many deserts, has no surface water and any water that exists, is to be found underground, where the Bushmen suck it up with hollow reeds. It is in this inhospitable land that most of the current day Bushmen live.

The Bushmen are keen conservationists; they never kill unless the animal is to be used as food and even when they have killed an animal, they offer thanks to the animal’s soul for the food that it has supplied. They are experts at mixing plants to make poisons and medical remedies and are able to identify over three hundred different plant types.

The Bushman’s relationship with the earth has been described as “An inspiring model of the powerful connection possible between nature and the higher self “

Is it surprising then, that the Bushman is one of nature’s hardiest survivors?

Website                      http://sbpra.com/PhilGraham

Youtube Video         http://youtube.com/watch?v=uoSKI3WILfo