Bell Bridge Books

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO PET A RHINO ON HIS HORN

By H.W. Buzz Bernard

To some people it must seem like the Running of the Bulls–chasing tornadoes.

But it isn’t really.  In the Running of the Bulls, the beasts are pursuing you, not the other way around.  If you’re chasing storms, you’re doing just that; you’re the chaser, not the chasee.  You hold the advantage.

In fact, a year ago I would have told you that hot-footing it after twisters was probably safer than driving to work.  The big concern in the chasing community then wasn’t that someone would get an express pass to the Land of Oz, it was that someone would get turned into a Crispy Critter by lightning.

Then the tragic events of last spring occurred.  An experienced chaser and his crew, researchers no less, found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Attempting to outrun an EF-5 monster, they wound up directly in the path of a violent and exceptionally large (the largest on record) tornado near El Reno, Oklahoma, and met violent deaths.

So there is danger out there, but I continue to maintain it’s minimal if you do things right. Certainly the group I traveled with in the spring of 2012, gathering background for Supercell, did things right.  They, a commercial storm chasing operation called Silver Lining Tours, put safety first.

Silver Lining’s president, Roger Hill, told me, “I always have an escape route planned.”  In truth, there isn’t a huge advantage in trying to cozy up to twisters.  Usually they’re better viewed from afar, through frameworks that lend perspective to them.  You don’t need to pet a rhino on his horn to see what he looks like.

People chase storms for different reasons.  For some, it’s an adrenaline rush.  For others, it’s experiencing nature’s fury and majesty simultaneously.  For still others, it’s to shoot photographs and videos, or to carry out research.  All, I suspect, have an overarching fascination with weather.

Although the chasers I journeyed with never cornered a twister–or vice versa–it didn’t matter.  I rubbed elbows with pros, watched how they operated and listened to their tales.  And while tornadoes on my trip proved as elusive as Bigfoot, I managed to get up close and personal with quite a few supercells.

I mean–this is coming from a weather geek now–how many people have ever stood directly beneath a supercell aborning and watched it mature?  I did, in a place aptly named Levelland, Texas.  As an aside, let me say it’s so damned flat around Levelland it makes most of Kansas look like Rocky Mountain National Park.

Anyhow, there I was, braced against a stiff inflow wind, bolts of lightning lancing into the ground all around me (see Crispy Critter comment above) and loving every moment of it.

We later pursued the storm, by than a full-blown hail beast, into Lubbock.  All the while I’m thinking, I gotta get this stuff into Supercell.

I did.

Head on over to Amazon and pick up Buzz Bernard’s books, PLAGUE, EYEWALL, and SUPERCELL (out today!!)

Click on the pictures for a link to Amazon!!

SUMMER MERMAIDS

By Danielle Childers

There’s a day every spring when the sun shines so bright you can smell swimming season around the corner. You know it’s too early for a dip to be anything more than ice cold, but oh, what you would give to lay next to the water and pretend it’s really, really summer.

In my family, this day meant we were about to have cousin camp, a really intense week with my very large, very loud Texan family. We’d wake up with Jesus before dawn and drive to the family lake house at Possum Kingdom. My very roughened Texan grandfather would carefully paint sunscreen on our faces to look like Indian war paint. If a mom didn’t catch you to rub it in, you could spend the summer looking like a wild child from the hill country with stripes over your brows and dots high on your cheekbones .

We’d spend our days bathing in the lake, scaring each other with tales of alligator gars beneath the surface, and jumping off the cliffs. We’d eat watermelon from an uncle’s pocket knife and keep an eye out for scorpions in the grass my Papa cut so thick you could walk on it without ever feeling the ground. At night, my grandmother would walk down the extensive row of grandchildren and drop rubbing alcohol into our ears. At her command, we’d turn en masse so she could get the other side. Then we’d watch The Karate Kid. Every single summer.

When I really need to feel the day that starts the summer and the swimming, I read ALICE AT HEART. It’s magical realism at its best. Right between Sarah Addison Allen’s GARDEN SPELLS and Susanna Kearsley’s THE WINTER SEA, before Alice Hoffman’s THE RED GARDEN.

ALICE AT HEART is one of my favorite books, and I’m pretty sure it’s true. After all, we’ve all been summer mermaids.

I’ve been championing this book forever, and today Amazon Kindle is too! Get it for $1.99!!!

BOOK TITLES: WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT

By Don Donaldson

It’s a constant surprise to me that I’m able to write books that are liked by people who aren’t my mother.   But I often can’t figure out what the title of a book should be.  Oh, I know when a title is great and so do you… It’s like the dealer at a flea market who once said to me when I picked up an expensive item to look at more closely… “You have good taste.”  Then, while I was secretly preening at his compliment, he added,  “Of course, it’s not that hard to spot quality.”   It’s the same with book titles.  Here’s a test:  What do you think of this title?  THEY DON’T BUILD STATUES TO BUSINESSMEN.

To me, it’s awful.  I’d think so even if I’d been the one to come up with it.  Actually, it was the famous writer, Jacqueline Susann, who crafted that one for a book that eventually became a mega best seller as VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.  Does anyone out there like the first title better?  Okay…. So there’s always someone who enjoys being a contrarian.  But all the rest of you I’m sure gave the right answer.

Let’s try another.  How about ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL?  That’s actually not horrible.  But it doesn’t sound like the sweeping saga the author wrote.  I certainly think the title it was eventually given, WAR AND PEACE, is soooo much better.

I once had an agent who told me that they had a consultant who was a “genius” at titling books.  I guess he was too busy to take a look at the book the agency titled for me.  (I’ll never tell which one it was, but will say that when BelleBooks reissues it later this year, it will have a new title.)

So, it’s easy to know a great title when you see it, but boy is it hard to come up with one.  I usually sit for hours playing with words and rearranging them in what I hope are creative ways.  No matter what title I eventually settle on for a book, I have this nagging suspicion that even if I really like the one I pick, there was a much much better one I could have used.  I just couldn’t find it.  My WAR AND PIECE was out there, just beyond reach.

Okay, a final test, and maybe you already know this one.  Which of these titles is better?  TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY, or the one that has become an icon: GONE WITH THE WIND.  See, even our contrarian from above picked the right answer.

Well, I’ve used up my allotted space here so all I can do now is be GWTW.

-Don

This month get Don Donaldson’s THE MEMORY THIEF for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

This month only! These bestselling titles are ONLY $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!  Click the covers to preview!

ZOMBIE SURVIVAL

by Howard Odentz

Bell Bridge Books is proud to present debut author Howard Odentz!

Zombies are a big part of my life. Who’s interested in the fact I raise little goats?

Sure, I live on a small farm in Massachusetts where I have a herd of Nigerian Dwarfs, a couple llamas, a flock of chickens, my attack cat, Severus, and my incredibly intelligent West Highland Terrier, Einstein, but honestly, everything about my life is all about the walking dead.

Seriously, what if the zombie apocalypse really does happen?  Thanks to Tractor Supply, I’ve got a sturdy fence—good for keeping

Wickham, Howard's llama

animals in—awesome for keeping zombies out.  I’ve got a steady supply of milk from the goats. Of course my hands will probably cramp up from squeezing those teeny-weenie udders, but if I can make cheese and yogurt, I’m willing to risk a few calloused palms.

The eggs? As long as my girls are happy, I’ll get a dozen a day.

Then there’re the llamas. All they really do is keep the lawn down and poop, but that’s premium poo we’re talking about. The garden grows really well here.

Oh yeah, after getting all gross and sweaty from working on the farm, I can even take a shower with my own well water and my home-made soap.

So, you see, with all the hobbies going on, I’ll be pretty safe when the zombies come knocking at my door up here in Western Mass.  As a matter fact, I can probably make goat milk cheese and veggie quiche, sit on the deck and laugh.

Try and get me, you creepy dead things—just try.

Carnival, Howard's Goat

Did I forget to mention that if I’m bored while the zombies are storming my stronghold, I can keep myself entertained by singing songs from the few full-length musicals I’ve written and produced around the country?

Yeah, I know—I’ll l eventually get tired of belting out the same old tunes, but by then, I’ll have bigger fish to fry.

The UFOs will probably be buzzing the goat pens and that Bigfoot in the woods out behind the llama field will be eyeing my fattest buck, Rebuttal.

Paws off, fella—he’s mine.

(Howard Odentz is not crazy. Honest. All his doctors say so.)

To learn more about Howard’s survivors of necropoxy, visit his blog: http://howardodentz.com/index.html

Get your copy of DEAD (A LOT) today!

Click the cover for a preview!

SUMMER READING

by Danielle Childers

Okay, it’s almost August (which means there are only 148 days until Christmas! Get excited about your life!) And I’m just now thinking about summer reads.  Traditionally they’ve been chick lit or beach themed (SERIOUSLY check out the Tiki Goddess Mystery Series by Jill Marie Landis).  But, I define a summer read as a book that’s worth reading even though you have a beach and an endless blue sky and the sound of waves competing with it. With this in mind, I stumbled upon WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE.

Now, it’s been popular on the lists and has this awesome art deco cover, and I’m thinking, “Wow, Bernadette looks cool!”  The only problem is that I accidentally read the entire book before I could find a beach. Sad day.  It started with a sample.  Book samples are gateway drugs.

This book is quirky. SO quirky, you’ll expect it to be magical, but it’s just so simple and so chocked full of the most amazing visual metaphors, it gets away with being . . . simply quirky.  Go read it and tell me how you would describe it!

WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE is written in a smattering of correspondence, emails, newsletters, notes among gossipy friends, and billboards of all things. There is some narration by the only daughter of the star of the show, Bernadette, so don’t worry that you’ll be lost.

Now, I have to tell you about the blackberries. Bernadette, a brilliant but reclusive architect (even when you see the unreliability of other characters – and I love an unreliable tale) who walks around knitting from a backpack, managing to act refined and educated while simultaneously being treated as a pariah, has blackberries. Not just a plant or two, but so many blackberries that they prevent landslides and fill the basement of the house she lives in as they’ve grown up through the dirt to take over.  It’s cool, though. Both the overtaking of the house, which isn’t really a house, and the blackberries represent Bernadette’s talent and shame and … well, life just pushed her down a little. So she disappears to reclaim herself from the universe.

The ending is inspired.  The words will fly by.  You will devour this book.

In Bernadette’s honor, I’ve homemade blackberry butter today, because when life hands you blackberries, you just have to churn some butter.

This recipe is easy-peasy.  You’ll need 1 qt of heavy cream, 3 T of powdered sugar, 3 T of blackberry jam, and a pinch of salt. (Side note: Dear Grandma, A pinch is not a measurement.)

Just whip the cream (a stand mixer or processor is best) until it becomes whipped cream, but DON’T stop!  It will become butter.  The butter will eventually separate from the buttermilk (save it if you have cornbread on hand).  Here’s a fabulous tutorial. The whole process is less than 15 minutes.  Then mix in the jam, sugar, and salt, and voila! Blackberry butter! Serve on soft, warm bread.

Enjoy, but tell me, what’s your favorite kind of summer read?

WHAT IF

by Susan Kearney

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? Is the question I’m asked most frequently.

OK, I’m going to admit a secret. I don’t think of myself as a writer.  Writing was that hard boring stuff with commas and grammar that I was supposed to learn in school. But story telling?  Ah, that’s where the fun is.

My process for creating a story always seems to start with a “What if.”  For example, when I read the headline in my newspaper, Woman To Direct Secret Service, I started playing What if?  What if a woman took a bullet to save the President?

What if aliens saved the secret service agent?

And what if the alien who saved her was a sexy warrior from another world?  Now ever since I first saw Star Trek  I’ve always had a thing for sexy men in sleek space ships.  So I thought what if the man had to train the woman for an alien challenge?

OK.  So my imagination tends to go where others may not have gone before.  However, once I put my hero and heroines in space, I get to create entire new worlds.  But as a lazy writer, I tend to avoid the parts I don’t enjoy—like describing clothing. Hence, I made suits for my characters to wear that they can alter with a mere thought.

See, all this is fun.  And think about all the things one can do if the suits nullify gravity.  TheKamaSutra would need re-writing.  At least need more pictures, right?

That’s kind of how my mind works, one idea leads to another

Okay, so now I have built a world from playing What If.  What if the alien and the earthling fall in love?  Conflict is good, without it life is boring.  So mix in a common enemy—just to complicate my characters lives.  And then what if my hero can either save his home world or the woman he loves?

So my process to write a story is to play “What if.”  I don’t censor my thoughts.  I don’t say -–oh that’s too strange—-I leave that to reviewers. J

And I adore readers who leave reviews of my books all over the Internet. It’s especially fun to hear how excited readers are about the re-release of The Rystani Warrior series in e-books and print.

Coming late June 2013

THE CHALLENGE is out now. THE DARE, THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST will be out soon.  These stories can each stand alone, but I think they are best when read from first to last. Yes, the stories are hot and sexy.  Yes, there are moral and ethical dilemmas.  But the stories are about how my characters react to all the problems I throw at them. It just comes down to telling a story. And the first person I have to entertain is myself.

All right.  You get the idea.  It would be even better if you get the books.

Susan Kearney is the USA Today Bestselling Author of The Rystani Warrior Series. Get THE CHALLENGE (Book 1) today at Amazon Kindle for ONLY $4.79! Look for THE DARE in late June 2013. THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST (Books 3 and 4) to follow.

DESK DEFINITION

By Lisa Turner

It’s been said that our friends define us. What about our desks?

Five things I found scattered on my desktop:

1. A prediction from a fortune cookie that reads: “There’s a big change ahead of you.” Depending on my mood, I can either be elated about that or wildly depressed.
2. A set of DVDs entitled “Building Great Sentences” that instruct you on the correct way to write sentences that go on for a page and a half without taking a breath. I renamed the course: “Addicted to Parenthetical Phrases.”
3. A coffee mug bought at Square Books in Oxford, MS., home of William Faulkner. (Please note the parenthetical phrase at the end of that sentence.)On the mug is this quote from Flannery O’Connor. “Whenever I ask why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”  The mug is my totem. I can’t write unless it’s in my line of sight.
4. Sticky notes of useful words and people’s names. There’s Preston Teagarden. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake. Zook Rebus. Ding Paulie. The word “idjit” is a favorite of mine. “Don’t hold me responsible; I’m an idjit.” I also like “rabid.” You never hear it anymore. I once used “rabid” to describe a friend who does needlepoint. She took it to heart. We’re no longer speaking.
5. A grocery receipt for $110 worth of groceries that fit into two small bags. Here’s a question: In the grocery store check out line, do you watch what the person in front of you buys so you can figure out what their life is like? If I checked groceries, I’d be totally entertained. I enjoy Pinterest for the same reason. Pretty pictures, deep psychological profiles.

I spend more time with my desk than with my friends. This exercise has been a revelation.

Today only get Lisa Turner’s A LITTLE DEATH IN DIXIE for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

PUNDITRY OVER PERFUNCTORY

by Deborah Smith

I Eat, Therefore I Yam.

The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways

I’m Not A Biscuit, Don’t Butter Me Up.

I love slogans and sayings. For one thing, they turn words into a toy box full of colorful blocks, sort of an old-school Rubik’s Cube, and it’s fun to arrange the blocks until CLICK, you’ve figured out the angles and discovered some nifty patterns. But also, pedestrian though they may often be, slogans and sayings often contain serious kernels of truth. They’re one-line poems. Haiku for the half-hearted. Shortcuts to Deep Thought.

But they touch us. The three above are from The Crossroads Café and its spin-off novellas—The Biscuit Witch (now published) and The Pickle Queen (coming in August.) By the time I get to the third novella in the trilogy, The Kitchen Charmer (this fall,) I’ll have more pithy perceptive packets of punditry  than a politician in a pickle.

Ah, alliteration. I love you.

Since discovering the world of Pinterest, where EVERYTHING EVER THOUGHT OF is posted with links to the source material, I’ve begun collecting memorable, witty or simply silly words to live by. Or, at least, to laugh by.

Here are some of my favorites, all of which are inspirational, particularly when it comes to writing a novel:

“She loved mysteries so much that she became one.” (Literatureismyutopia.tumblr.com)

“Sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.” (sayingimages.com)

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” (Unknown)

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Sylvia Plath)

“When I first met her I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there’d be room for her to stay.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby.)

“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.” (Stephen King.)

“There are certain fiction character’s deaths you will never recover from. Ever.”

(problemsofabooknerd.tumblr.com)

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” (Margaret Atwood.)

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” (E.L. Doctorow)

“At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” (artistlaraharris.tumblr.com)

“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe the one reason why it will.” (Unknown.)

And last but not least, a TRULY IMPORTANT saying inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, as contributed by redbubble.com:

“Marry the beast. Get that library.”

Yours in pithy profundity … Debs

Today is the LAST day to get NY Times bestselling author Deborah Smith’s THE CROSSROADS CAFE for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

WHY I WANTED A PUBLISHER

By John G. Hartness

“So why did you want a publisher? I thought you were selling a lot of ebooks on your own?” That’s a question I get a lot, and since today is a perfect example of something that I can’t do for myself, and something my publisher has done for me, I thought there was no better time than the present to answer the question.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the Kindle Science Fiction & Fantasy Daily Deal for today, May 27^th, and see who’s featured there – yep, it’s me!

Yes, I was self-published before I signed with Bell Bridge Books. Yes, I was selling quite well, and yes, I think I did a pretty good job promoting my work and making it onto some Amazon lists. I’m no Amanda Hocking or J. R. Rain, but I made it as far as #2 on the Kindle Horror list, and that’s a pretty good deal for a solo act.

But I wanted more. I didn’t just want more sales, although that was certainly a contributing factor. I wanted more support. I wanted a team of people behind me that all had my book’s best interests at heart. And that’s what I found at Bell Bridge – a bunch of people who work just as hard as I do to make my books better. And better-promoted. And better-branded. And better-packaged. Etc, etc, as Yul Bryner would say.

When I talk to folks who are currently self-published about my decision to sign with a publisher, I liken it to going to graduate school. My deal with BBB was for three more books, so it takes about the same length of time as a Creative Writing MFA. I’m signing a deal with a significantly lower royalty structure than I used to get as a self-published author, so there’s me paying my tuition. And at the end of my contract, I will be a much better writer than when I started. And that’s why I consider my work with Bell Bridge to be my Master’s Degree.

The work that we’ve all done on the books in The Black Knight Chronicles has been mind-blowing. The attention to detail that my work has received from the editors here has been extensive, and at times ruthless. And the books are better. I challenge anyone who read Hard Day’s Knight, Back in Black or Knight Moves in their original versions (which I still say were pretty good), then to read the Omnibus edition and tell me the stories aren’t better. The characters are better developed. The world has more details. The plot has consequences and logical outcomes.

And that’s all stuff that I could have done on my own. But I didn’t, because I didn’t know to do them. It’s not just that my editors here have had decades in the industry where I’m still relatively new, it’s that they know how to make an awesome book. And they know how to make awesome partners.

So that’s why I wanted a publisher. Because working with this one is making me a better writer. And if you want proof, go pick up The Black Knight Chronicles Omnibus, on sale today!

Today only, THE BLACK KNIGHT CHRONICLES OMNIBUS EDITION is only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle.

Omnibus includes, HARD DAY’S KNIGHT, BACK IN BLACK, and KNIGHT MOVES.