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Sunday, February 18, 2018

BOOK SPOTLIGHT & REVIEW: Get To Be Happy: Stories and Secrets to Loving the Sh*t Out Of Life By Ted Larkins


Get To Be Happy: Stories and Secrets to Loving the Sh*t Out Of Life
By Ted Larkins
Genre: Autobiography/Self Help

The secret to my happiness started during my high school days (yes, drugs were involved) and continued through hitchhiking across the country, through the suicide of my girlfriend, through bartending in many cities around the country and then a move to Japan. I lived there for nine years, helping start a $500 million business, including a LARKINS (my last name) line of product, finding enlightenment and meditating in Zen temples in the mountains of Hiroshima, meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, partying with Bon Jovi, experiencing the death of my business partner and then the loss of my daughter, and all the life lessons that come with the following statement: I Get To do this!














My Review: 

I believe everything falls into our laps at just the right moment! Get to be Happy entered my life in just that manner. Author Ted Larkin has composed a literary piece about perspective – outlook – how you choose to react to heartbreaking situations. It’s a relief to read a self-help style book from someone who has actually suffered tragedy in their life. You know that they have really walked the walk and speak from that vista.

Each passage includes a small exercise to do after read. I found this to be a group of wonderful teachings that I can return to again and again, as needed. Great job, Mr. Larkin. 

I give this one 5 stars!






About the Author

Ted Larkins is an author, speaker and accomplished business executive and entrepreneur. Through his book and keynote talks, he shares the powerful Get To Principle, the ability to say "I Get To" as opposed to "I have to". Ted also co-developed a leading entertainment licensing company in Tokyo, representing major movie studios that included Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. He’s worked on projects with Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Nicklaus, Mariah Carey, and many other artists. He is former Senior Vice President of the North American division of CPLG, one of the world’s leading entertainment, sport and brand licensing agencies. He is on the board of directors of the Licensing Industry Merchandise Association (LIMA), co-chairing the charity committee and sitting on the executive committee. He is a guest lecturer for the UCLAx Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts program.

Over the last year and a half, during his daily 4 hour train commute to work in Hollywood, he wrote the book, “Get To Be Happy: Stories and Secrets On Loving the Sh*t Out of Life." Ted lives with his wife of 22 years and their two children in Southern California.  

Links:




Friday, February 16, 2018

BOOK BLITZ: The Senior Sleuths: Dead In Bed By M. Glenda Rosen

The Senior Sleuths: Dead In Bed
By M. Glenda Rosen
Genre: Mystery

Like Nick and Nora Charles from “The Thin Man” series, Dick and Dora Zimmerman solve crimes, especially murders.” Along with Zero the Bookie (fashioned after the authors father) and a fascinating cast of other characters (such as Frankie Socks fresh out of the Witness Protection Program) the Zimmerman’s have the time-the money, the smarts and the chutzpah-to get involved in murder and mayhem, even when warned by the police to stay away…or else.
In these modern noir stories, the hard-boiled detectives are soft-boiled sleuths whose inner shell is softer and gentler, although their outer shell is still tough and determined. Of course, they can still be nearly beaten by the bad guys. But it is the puzzle of the mystery and putting the pieces together to solve it that matters.
“No doubt, thanks to my father, writing mysteries is in my DNA!  My father was a small time gangster. Really! So, it wouldn’t take a genius, a psychiatrist or a palm reader to figure out the geneses of my fascination with crime and criminals.  In my series, “The Senior Sleuths,” Zero the Bookie is a version of my dad and several other characters are based on his associates who I met, like Doc, The Gimp, Johnny the Jig, Fat Lawyer and others. What a wealth of material there was for me to claim! Believe me, I saw and heard a lot.”


This series is the senior version of Nick and Nora Charles, with a humorous touch, a splash of noir, cracker-jack sleuthing, unusual, captivating characters, and fascinating mysteries.
 —Marilyn Meredith, Author of the “Deputy Tempe Crabtree Mysteries


About the Author

Marcia Rosen has previously published four books in her mystery series, “Dying to Be Beautiful.”  Rosen is also author of “The Woman’s Business Therapist” and award winning “My Memoir Workbook. For a dozen years she has given writing workshops on "Encouraging and Supporting the Writer Within You!" and "Now What? Marketing Your Book.”  She was founder and owner of a successful Marketing and Public Relations Agency for many years, created several radio and TV talk shows and received numerous awards for her work with business and professional women.  She currently resides in Carmel, California.  www.theseniorsleuths.










Links: 

Website: www.theseniorsleuths.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarciaGRosen
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterMysteries 
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/2C1OfjH 






Thursday, February 8, 2018

BOOK BLITZ: Dead Lines By Grace Hamilton


Dead Lines
By Grace Hamilton
Genre: Science Fiction/ Post-Apoc


Book Description

911 operator Jim Parker wants—more than anything—to be useful again. When a catastrophic EMP strikes, and he’s the last person a kidnapped girl speaks to before the lines go dead, he knows he can’t let her down. Especially when the circumstances are so similar to his own daughter’s disappearance. With the world falling apart around him, he wants to do nothing more than retreat to his prepper cabin. But with a fresh lead on his daughter, and another innocent girl’s life on the line, the disgraced cop will do everything in his power to track them down.

Finn Meyers has lost Ava, her best, and only, friend in the world, but she knows where the
missing young woman might be—and perhaps Parker’s long lost daughter. Now, Parker must form an uneasy alliance and tackle his own internal demons as the two begin a perilous journey that will take them to the headquarters of a mysterious cult in Indiana.
But what they find along the way will shatter all their preconceptions—and threaten the world as they know it. Can a has-been and a has-not save the innocent, and stop a disaster from happening?


Author Bio

Grace Hamilton wasn’t always a prepper. But after being stuck in a mountain cabin for 6 days following a flash flood, she decided she never wanted to feel so powerless or have to send her kids to bed hungry again. Now she lives the prepper lifestyle and knows that if SHTF or TEOTWAWKI, she’ll be ready to help protect and provide for her family.

Combine this survivalist mentality with a vivid imagination (as well as a slightly unhealthy day dreaming habit) and you get a prepper fiction author. Grace spends her days thinking about the worst possible survival situations that a person could be thrown into, then throwing her characters into these nightmares while trying to figure out “What SHOULD you do in this situation”

It’s her wish that through her characters, you will get to experience what life will be like and
essentially learn from their mistakes and experiences.

Grace is a proud momma-bear to four kids and wife to a wonderful husband.



Links:




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Excerpt

Southern Indiana, 2306 hours

Countdown: 25 seconds until Event.

James Parker rubbed the sandy grit out of his eyes and stared at the monitors in front of him. Three screens—low light, supposedly easy on the eyes—sat at his station along with a computer, telephone, and emergency communications radio. But he was suffering from a hangover headache pounding dully behind his temples, and it hurt to use his eyes, even in such dim lighting. 

His hand, big and calloused, massaged a five o’clock shadow rapidly heading towards full-on homeless scruff. He wanted another Vicodin, but had promised himself not to take too many at work. Mostly, he kept that promise. Mostly.

The light in the room was muted, more a soft ambience with the illumination designed to be easy on an operator’s eyes, and the soft glow of computers reflected like silvered mirrors from each station. From all around him, the white noise of the call center was a light murmur of background conversations punctuated by the alerts of incoming calls. Parker leaned back in his comfortable chair and eyed the clock.

Fifteen minutes to quitting time.

He lifted a hand to Kevin Oaks in a lazy gesture of greeting as the man, his relief, came in through the door of the “vault” and meandered towards the coffee maker on the table in the corner.

Right behind him, though, Parker’s supervisor Annie Klein burst through the door, resembling a squat lead ball fired from a musket. An old, not well taken care of musket. Her arms, pudgy bowling pins topped by raptor claws of fingers, clutched her iPhone and a thick pile of official manila folders.

Avoiding eye contact, Parker sat up and spun around to more fully face his row of monitors. His conversations with the indefatigable Ms. Klein inevitably ended in a poor fashion. He’d already earned two written warnings for insubordination, and HR had informed the union that he was currently under investigation. Yay.
He couldn’t afford to lose another job. His pension and retirement benefits were closely tied to his employment with the city. After how he’d left the department, getting fired from this job would vastly reduce his options. Besides, when the factories had closed down and moved to Mexico, they’d taken the greater part of employment options with them. Try as he might, he couldn’t see himself working as a barista, jumping to fetch absurd coffees for uppity IT techs half his age.

He sighed. “Because I’m old,” he muttered.

An indicator light blinked on. He moved his foot and nudged the pedal, opening the line.

“911,” he said into his headset mic. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Please help!” a young woman’s voice cried into the line. “Please help, something horrible is going to happen!” 

“Calm down, miss,” he said. “Let me help you.” He’d taken enough calls by now to know whether it was the real thing or not. This felt real.

Automatically, his voice went down a register, sliding from gravely baritone to an almost basso profundo. It was a habit left over from working domestic disputes and suicide interventions as a law enforcement officer. It helped in his new career.

He went on, “I need your name, ma’am.”

His eyes went to his screen and he quietly cursed. She was on a cell; the caller locator software had the 812 area code, but that was it so far. He could have figured that much out on his own by her southern Indiana accent alone. Go Hoosiers, he thought.

“They’re going to do something at Stapleton Mall, the Church!” the girl half-sobbed. 

He winced internally at the location, the reminder of his daughter, but pushed the feeling away quickly. He possessed an instinct, a residue left over from working patrol. This girl was fighting to hold it together; he could hear it in the timbre of her voice. She wanted to be brave, she was fighting to be brave, but she was utterly terrified.

“They’ve already killed a girl... I guess you’d call them a cult,” she went on. “But the Church kidnapped me, and Casey, Jesus, they killed Casey!” The words burned through the signal into his ear and he heard the raw anguish and terror in her voice.
Parker’s stomach clenched. This was no hoax. 
He eyed the caller ID screen—nothing. Goddamn satellites. He frowned. He inhaled through his nose, calming himself. Since Sara had disappeared, such actions were only effective at work. Outside of the call center, it took Ativan, 4mgs at a time, to calm him. Usually with a Steel City Lager chaser. Sometimes something stronger.

“Tell me your name,” he repeated. His voice remained steady, calm. He might be all this girl had until he could dispatch officers to her 20. He didn’t want to fail her. Didn’t want to fail another girl the way he’d failed Sara.

“It’s Ava,” she choked out. “It’s Ava Tablot—”

The line went dead.  

Saturday, February 3, 2018

BOOK BLITZ: Dark/Darker By Paul L Arvidson



Dark/Darker
By Paul L Arvidson
Genre: SFF

Dark (book one) Book Description

The corroding labyrinth of pipes called Dark, needs a hero. Dun just wants answers to the terrifying dreams he's been having.  Real answers are going to tear him from the only home he's ever known.



















Darker (book two) Book Description

Dun didn’t want to be a hero. He didn’t want to be in a war. He didn’t want to lose friends. War rages all the same. The Over-folk tribes of the ‘Bureaucracy’ crash against the Under-folk alliance. Can Dun help the Dark’s strangest ally hold the world from flying apart?

The Dark is never going to be the same again, but the shockwaves, might spread across the universe.





















About the Author

Paul Arvidson is a forty-something ex lighting designer who lives in rural Somerset, UK. He spends his non-author time bringing up his children, fighting against being sucked in to his wife’s chicken breeding business and preventing Morris the Dashund contributing to his typing. His SFF works form the Dark Trilogy. Dark is the first book in the trilogy and came out in 2017. Darker comes out this year, the series will be completed by Darkest in 2019.




Links:

On Twitter: @realarvo

 Dark


Darker