25% off everything.
And you don’t have to wait until Monday.
From now until Monday at midnight, all you have to do is put CYBER in front of your name on the order form at either (or both) websites. The deduction will be reflected in your final credit card charge. ( You won’t see it on the form, but don’t worry.)
www.BelleBooks.com
www.BellBridgeBooks.com
We list many of our books on both websites, but a handy guide is that Bellebooks is generally known for books you can hand to almost any family member and not worry about their sensibilities. You’ll find books that are distinctly Southern and a variety of genres.
We don’t normally herald reviews, but D. Merrimon Crawford, one of Amazon’s Top 1000 and Amazon Vine Reviewer has posted one of the most thoughtful, analytical reviews I’ve read in a long time.
Don’t know this person. Don’t know if D. Merrimon is a male or female. But he/she writes a review with meat.
Plus he/she loved the book in a big way.
A sample of the review:
“a cozy mystery with all the excitement of a clever whodunit puzzle with the added bonus of a rich emotional content to draw one into the delightful cast of characters, setting and the story itself…takes the reader right into the heart of the world of horse carriage-driving with all sorts of fascinating details from horse breeds to carriage types. Above all, each and every detail brings a depth to the story…making one want to return to the book each spare moment possible and revisit the characters.”
Carolyn McSparren, the author, definitely deserves high praise and we’re glad readers are responding.
This weekend, November 21 and 22, Deborah Grace Staley will be autographing books and meeting readers at the CASA Monore Festival of Trees at the Grand Vista Hotel, Vonore, TN. Saturday hours are 730 am - 6 pm, Sunday 10 am - 5 pm. For more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
A Home for Christmas by Deborah Grace Staley is a December feature title for Jennifer's B97.5 Book of the Month Club, Knoxville, Tennessee. See http://www.b975.com/goout.asp?u=http://s
Friday, December 4, Deborah Grace Staley will be autographing books and meeting readers at Hastings in Maryville, TN from 5 - 8 pm. For more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
Saturday, December 5, Deborah Grace Staley will be autographing books and meeting readers at the Greenback Corner Market in Greenback, TN from Noon - 3 p.m. For more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
Thursday, December 8, Deborah Grace Staley will speak to the Pr
esbyterian Women at Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, TN. Fore more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
Friday, December 18, Deborah Grace Staley will be autographing books and meeting readers at Books For Less at the Citadel Mall, Charleston, SC from 5 - 7 pm. For more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
Saturday, December 19, Deborah Grace Staley will be autographing books and meeting readers at Books For Less at Columbia Place Mall, Columbia, SC from Noon - 3 p.m. For more information, see http://www.deborahgracestaley.com/News_a
Debra Dixon here.
I wish I was faster. I wish my assistant was faster. (I’ll pay for that later, trust me.)
Publishing an author well is a lot of work. There are no short cuts.
We like to think the work we put into our books shows and that you “get it.” That you submitted to us because you carefully reviewed our imprints, our books. You’ve looked at the reviews out there. You’ve checked out our availability. You’ve read the pages for writers on our website. (Except ignore the query response time. That’s a complete lie. We were young and foolish to think we could keep up that pace for the new imprint without letting our contracted authors suffer.)
We hope you’ll bear with us as we catch up on our non-contracted reading in the month of December. We want to get to your proposals and queries and manuscripts. We know there are some great books waiting for us.
Let me leave you with some words of wisdom once given to me, '”Hey. A guilty editor will read more pages before rejecting a book. You have a better shot.”
Skeered. In my neck of the (southern) woods, that's a real word. It means not just "scared," but "creepy freaked-out" or "spooky messed up" or "I ain't goin' in that there dark holler after midnight, not even if yo' mama goin' with me carryin' her AK 47." It means you're frightened beyond sophisticated notions of rational thought. You're. Just. Plain. Stupidly. SKEERED.
Stephen King's early novels skeered me. Skeered the CRAP outta me. Carrie and Salem's Lot and The Shining. So durned freaky spooky, mess-yo'-britches skeery I couldn't hardly nary turn the next page.
I remember a night in 19-mumble inarticle year-as a college student visiting home one summer weekend, in my narrow twin bed late at night, trembling as I read The Shining while a massive thunderstorm rocked the Georgia skies.
I swore I heard strange sounds in the wind that night.
I wasn't imagining them.
A half-mile up the road from my parent's house in our rural community, a small private plane crashed in the woods during that storm. All aboard were killed.
Sh*t happens. Not just in Stephen King novels, but in real life.
That's the underpinning of horror that makes novels not just frightening, but skeery.
A week ago the hubbie and I trekked down to the burbs (we live in Yokel Land)to see the new hot Halloween pee-skeery flick, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. I don't often vote for deliberate skeeriness in my info-tainment; I can skeer myself inside my own brain without Hollywood's help, thankyaverymuch.
But I'd read so many good reviews of PA that I had to go. So me and Mr. Smith drove down yon to Mall World, supped at the P.F. Chang's, then went to the cin-E-ma.
Oh, My, Gawd.
Since the invention of Wii Games, how many times have you sat in the latest "blockbuster" movie with just yourself and a handful of teenagers in need of their Attention Deficit Disorder Meds? How many time have you asked yourself, "Wouldn't I have enjoyed this more if I'd just waited for Net Flix on the flat screen at home?"
Not this time. The theater was PACKED. Old folks, young folks, folks in-between. Packed. Like the old days of JAWS and the first STAR WARS and BILLY JACK.
Packed. And skeered.
This movie, Paranormal Activity, is one of those low-budget winners that was filmed in the director's very-own California house in ONE WEEK with a budget less than Megan Fox's anti-cellulite creme for Transformers Two, Rise of the Dumb Uh?
In P.A., a young couple is trying to catch a demon on their home video camera. They set it up in their bedroom at night cause that's when the demon gets jiggy. At first the camera catches this kinda "oh, the wind just shifted the door" kinda stuff but SOON it's obvious THAT SOMETHING EVEN WORSE THAN AN INTERNET SPAMMER is stalking them while they sleep.
Oh, My, Skeered, Gawd. Invisible footsteps on the stairs. Bedsheets gettin' fluffed without obvious maid service. Demon tracks in the Johnson's Baby Powder demon-trap on the bedroom floor. AND WORSE.
No gore. No chain saws. No Lindsey Lohan.
Just plain, perfect, Alfred Hitchcockian, Spielburg-only-in-Jaws-omg-that-thing's-i
Omg. Omg. Was that a teenager shieking in the audience or my husband??
Oh. All right. It was me AND a teenager. And my husband. And the rest of the audience, too.
Such dark, skeery stuff lives deep in our brains where the cave people put it. So we'd stare deep into the shadows of the cave or the castle or the mansion and be sure to see what wants to eat us before it gets its wish.
So we'd be skeered but stay alive.
So the species could continue, and thrive, and progress to the point where humankind could reach its pinnacle and build the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World in Orlando.
(I have my standards. I do.)
All of which leads me to this simple, non-skeery point:
Please buy my new skeery novel. SOUL CATCHER. OUT THIS WEEK. On Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com., and all them other dot coms where books are discounted. I am so skeered by it that I wrote it under a pen name, Leigh Bridger, so my Deborah Smith fans wouldn't make voodoo dolls in my image.
www.leighbridger.com
I ain't skeered enough to be that stupid.
You know a genre is resonating when cake decorators get in on the act.
Here's a sample to whet your appetite and if you'd like to see some more, you can check out a cake decorating blog with more examples.
Read Mark's bio here.
My copies of Primitive arrived this week, and I couldn’t open the box quickly enough. Strange, isn’t it? Primitive is my fourth published novel, but each time a new one comes out I can’t wait to see it, smell it, feel its weight. It’s not as if it’s not real to me beforehand – amazon.com, B&N, and other online booksellers have been taking pre-orders for weeks – but the tangible nature of the text, no longer confined to a computer screen, always surprises me in a most delightful way.
But most of those books never left the post office in my hands. I’d arrived with cover letters to books editors at a dozen newspapers
, hoping to snag some interest for a novel that I really believe deserves interest. It has unique elements, beginning with Sonya, a mother who’s a model in the twilight of her career, and who finds herself caught in a bizarre and ingenious abduction by a “neo-primitive” cult with a secret government report that contains devastating revelations about global warming. The cult then forces her to be their mouthpiece in podcasts from their hidden compound somewhere in the snowy wilds of the Pacific Northwest. Sonya’s estranged daughter, Darcy – a pierced vegan activist – enters the American and Canadian political underground to try to rescue her. Darcy has her own tangled secrets that propel her to try to find her mom, but she herself is tailed by a bounty hunter intent on landing a huge reward for finding Sonya. Meantime, an elite anti-terrorist squad is determined to hunt down (and I use those words advisedly) Sonya, Darcy, and the cult.
Primitive teems with unusual characters (the author says modestly), and I would have loved to have taken all of them in all those books home with me. Alas, most of them experienced a quick turnaround: I spirited them into padded envelopes with the letters I’d written to books editors, paid the postage, and left knowing they were off to new hands that I could only hope would prove as receptive to their presence as mine had been only moments before.
As so many readers know, the attention newspapers pay to books has decreased dramatically, which is why the great growth in the number of book bloggers has proved such an amazingly encouraging development. My last book came out in ’06, and in those three scant years it seems as if book blogging has experienced a meteoric rise. As an author, I couldn’t be more grateful. While I sent off a dozen books to reviewers at newspapers, that number frankly pales compared to the number of books Bell Bridge has sent to bloggers. Consider this blog entry a paean to those writers who still pay attention to books, whether they appear in print or on the screen of a reading device. Book bloggers now appear to be the future – recipients of the fallen world of newsprint, and able heirs to its venerable responsibilities.
Courtesy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal
Help us welcome Marilee Brothers, a fabulous writer in both adult and YA fiction! How
do we know? (You mean besides publishing her first YA novel?) Take a look at what the major trades are saying about her newest book THE ROCK AND ROLL QUEEN OF BEDLAM...
From Publishers Weekly: "Readers will want to see more of this dynamic teacher/teen crime-solving duo."
From Booklist: "At turns funny, suspenseful, and touching, this novel of romantic suspense will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers."
My schizoid life as a writer in two genres would likely make a normal person crazy. Sixteen-year-old Allie Emerson is the main character in the young adult series (Moonstone, Moon Rise) I write for Bell Bridge Books. Allegra Thome is the teacher protagonist in The Rock and Roll Queen of Bedlam, an adult mystery to be published by Medallion Press in October. True, I’ve been on both sides of the desk, most recently as a teacher. But, it seems like only yesterday I was on the other side, gazing at the teacher with what I 
hoped was a look of rapt attention, while busily checking out the cute guy two rows over. Consequently, I find it easy, even beneficial, to head hop back and forth between the two.
To further complicate matters, you may have noticed both my ladies have names that start with “A.” What was I thinking? Is my brain not already suffering from information overload, not to mention swirling madly with half-baked ideas for new books and plot twists yet to be written? Did I set out to complicate my life even more? Um, no. Apparently I just love the letter “A” because it was completely unplanned, like many things in my life including three children. Yikes, that sounded bad. Rest assured, I’m not sorry I had them! My theory, though slightly flawed, was - if you wait until the right time to have babies, you never will.
Oh yes, there’s a third leg on my stool. I started out as a writer of medieval romance. You gotta love hunky guys with big swords! Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to castles, knights and feisty maidens with magic crystals when I became committed to writing my other books. There is a limit to how much my brain can handle. And, no, my heroine’s name did not start with an “A.”
I have developed a method that makes writing two different genres a tad simpler. Both Allie and Allegra live in the same imaginary region of Central Washington state which happens to be my stompin’ grounds. Yakima Valley became Vista Valley. Parker and Parker Heights became Peacock Flats and Peacock Heights, an area I drove by each day when I commuted to my job as a counselor for behavior-disordered teens. Therefore, I’m able to use the same fake names in both books along with some real ones like: Cascade Mountains, Columbia River, Space Needle, Snoqualmie Pass and Lake Keechelus. Will Allie ever meet Allegra? Who knows, it could happen.
What about you? Have you figured out ways to deal with the complexities in your life? Does it involve a bottle of wine? A chick flick? A long soak in the tub? If you care to comment, there could be a book in your future, one starring a hunky knight with a big sword and a feisty maiden with a magic crystal whose name does not start with an “A.”
First, let me quickly share that we've changed our newsletter format. If you haven't signed up, hop to! You'll find a button near the bottom to sign up and a link at the bottom to send it to friends.
Second, let me just say...Patrick Rothfuss - THE NAME OF THE WIND
I thought about this book for months after reading it. I'm not so jazzed to still be waiting for # 2 to be published, but his blog is a right treat. I linked to his reviews. Just take a gander.
So, can someone out there send me a fabulous submission for adult fantasy? I love urban and the whole horror/fantasy morph, BUT whatever happened to fabulous, rich epic fantasy? Isn't anyone writing that? Epic fantasy is missing from my submissions pile. Could someone get on that? You've got to bring voice and excellent story craft to epic fantasy. Make sure you've read George R. R. Martin, Brian Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Robert Jordan. These are complex books.
Straight-up fantasy in general would be welcome.
A strong mainstream SF wouldn't go amiss either.
And while I'm asking, add steampunk to the list of MIA in my reading pile.
We're getting a lot of urban fantasy, paranormal, ghost stories, etc. So, pass the word amongst your writing buddies that while we're pleased to see these submissions, we'd like to broaden our list. We're also terribly slow, but gloss over that part.
Why haven't we bought the few non-urban, non-paranormal books we've seen?
Voice (or lack thereof), world building and character arc. We're looking for strong LOGICAL world building in which the magic system doesn't change every three seconds to suit the needs of the writer. Books need a sense that the magical system and rules of your world were in place long before the character's current scene. These worlds are complex and textured. Characters don't have to be sympathetic, but they must be unique and riveting for the reader. (BLACK SUN RISING, C.S.Freidman- awful but riveting character)
One other tip? I rarely consider buying books in which you kill off the protagonist. Seriously. I'm not kidding. As a reader I really resent reading 400 pages only to find out the hero/heroine has killed him/herself in a meaningless self-sacrifice.
SOMMERSBY anyone? All Richard Gere had to do was say, "I'm not him." The widow still owns the land and everyone lives happily ever after and Richard Gere gets the girl.
"I will not read your fucking screenplay."
This is a fabulous blog from the Village Voice Blogs by Josh Olson. Why should you listen to him?
His screenplay for the film A History of Violence was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award and the Edgar. He is also the writer and director of the horror/comedy cult movie Infested, which Empire Magazine named one of the 20 Best Straight to Video Movies ever made. Recently, he has written with the legendary Harlan Ellison, and worked on Halo with Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp. He adapted Dennis Lehane's story "Until Gwen," which he will also be directing. He is currently adapting One Shot, one of the best-selling Jack Reacher books for Paramount.
Yes, we know. This was supposed to be a July title. But when your interior production team pulls up roots and moves to another state, well, things don't run smoothly!
But enough of the excuses. The 2nd book in the "Unbidden Magic" series is finally here and available from the wholesaler for order by your local bookstore. You can check out BN.com or Amazon (which is a little slow getting the title details up) or ...gosh, you could just hop over to our website and order direct from the publisher.
Early reviews are great...
"This book has it all: danger, mystery, unexpected plot twists. The events of the book brought forward many unanswered questions and complications, and really made me look forward to the next book. I can't wait." -- Unmainstream Mom Reads Blog
"Ms. Brothers does a wonderful job of expanding the world she's created and adding interesting new characters to the mix." -- Darque Reviews
Back Cover
Her mom's still dating losers. Her boyfriend's gone back to Mexico. Dad still hasn't told his wife and kids that she exists. At school, the drama queens and bullies still rule. But worst of all for Allie Emerson--aka the Star Seeker of an old Gypsy prophecy--is that her powers have taken a hike. She can't read minds anymore. She can't move stuff just by looking at it. The other Star Seekers are counting on her psychic gifts more than ever, and the evil Tri-marks are closing in, eager to snatch her magic moonstone necklace while she's helpless. The hot new guy at school is ready and willing to fight her battles, but he comes with some wicked baggage. Dear Diary: I'm a little worried. My new BF is a demon.
Welcome again to Allie Emerson's funny, scary, amazing, and always unpredictable life, as the girl voted least likely to save the world from evil.
------------------------
If you run a book review blog and would like to interview Marilee, give a shout and we'll pass your request along to the author.
Debra Dixon here. I'm the editor of the SF/Fantasy, Young Adult and Miscellaneous genres for Bell Bridge Books.
Okay, I'm taking a stand. Stealing the work of writers and posting books on file sharing sites is evil. I'm not good-natured about this anymore. I'm tired of people telling me, "Well, there is a school of thought which says piracy builds readers."
No. It doesn't. What it does is steal money from the author and the publisher. In the last two days I've had ONE file-sharing site take down files with over 500 downloads for ONE of our titles - BITE ME by Parker Blue.
What did that mean to her in real dollars? A lot. You can assume that not every scumbag who downloaded the free book would have bought a copy, but this is still a lot of money the author has lost, and from just one of these file sharing sites.
Large publishers and their authors suffer just as much.
When did it become okay to steal?
I checked this same site (there are dozens to work through) and found other books of ours. For EACH violation I have to fill out a separate form to request the file be pulled. www.4shared.com has quickly taken down the files, but WE (the publisher and the author) are required to find these violations. The process is a continual one. Get to the end of the file sharing sites and start again. Why? Because new files had been posted within 24 hours of having the first files removed from 4Shared.
How about the authors who share a group blog with me? (www.RidingWithTheTopDown.blogspot.com) This blog is x-posted.)
One of those authors has been ripped off to the tune of over 1000 downloads from 15 files. Most of the other authors had tons of files up. Let me say this again...there are dozens of sites. If an author has over 1000 downloads of her books from one site and you multiply that by dozens of sites...well, that's a whole lot of stealin' going on.
Some folks say book publishing better take a lesson from music file sharing and get the price down. What they don't realize is the printing cost is nothing. Especially if you're a large publisher printing tens of thousands of units at once. Books can't be divided into discrete stand-alone units in the same way that music can. Kindle lets you download a nice sample for free as do most of the ebook sites. Can't get much fairer than that. When wholesalers and booksellers expect discounts of 40-55% off the cover price of the book, there isn't much room for maneuvering on price. No one works for free.
If the authors can't make a living, maybe they'll go back to Corporate America, to the farm or simply retire. Then where would we be without that next great book from our favorite author?
We see this as a never-ending battle, but we're going to make the effort to treat this like the crime it is. We're not going to ignore this.
And let's not forget that Stephanie Meyer (TWILIGHT author for those of you living in a hole) has delayed/cancelled publication of a book in that series because of piracy. Her fans are heart-broken.
Join us in the fight against piracy. Say, "Hell, no!" to piracy. Don't download. Don't upload. If you find one of our books on a sharing site, email us so we can send a "cease and desist" to the file sharing/torrent site. Heck, notify the file-sharing site yourself.
ONLY YOU; Sweet Contemporary Romance. Book One in a series by Deborah Grace Staley
DIXIE DIVAS; Light and funny mystery by award-winning author Virginia Brown
This isn't up on the website yet, but it should be up in the next week.
Check this out. Interesting!
I'm pretty sure I met a vampire last week.
Maybe my imagination is a tad-bit hyper. Maybe I've spent too much time working on Bell Bridge Books' vamp novels, Bite Me and Once Bitten. I've also been immersed in the Southern-gothic world of Flowers for Elvis (04/09), the scary thrill ride of Primitive (10/09), the dysfunctional family drama of Tender Graces (04/09), the dark humor of Haywood Smith's Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-in-Law (04/09), and I'm putting the finishing touches on the next installment of my Solomon's Seal ebook series, about a mythical giant.
So it could be that I'm living in a whacked-out editorial world that colors my perspective.
Hmmm.
Nah. I still think I met a vampire. Really.
She lives in an 1820's antebellum mansion smack in the middle of an old-South historic district along the moss-draped coast. Picture a massive, street-front "porch door" of carved cypress, fronted by black marble steps worn down by nearly two centuries of foot traffic. Enter that doorway into a dark alcove at the base of the mansion's first floor. Climb steep wooden steps to an enormous, Greek-columned veranda curtained 
by thick tangles of wisteria; Tarzan could swing from the woody arms of these antique vines.
Heavy wicker furniture squats on the veranda's scarred wooden floor, dappled with wisteria-shaped sunshine. Ornate cushions hint that a decadent soul or two has sprawled on the wicker lounge, naked behind the veil of vines, sipping absinthe. Look up, and the veranda ceiling is painted a pale, ethereal shade of blue. A tour guide smiles nervously and explains that blue ceilings keep the "haints" away.
We step through a towering doorway directly into a formal dining room with sixteen-foot ceilings. The main table can easily seat twenty, and judging by pedestals as thick as a body, probably weighs more than a small car. Massive sideboards and liquor carts display a variety of incredible silver services, crystal decanters, elaborate ceramics and bronzes. But all of it is gently tarnished or scuffed, and the decanters look dusty, like the wicker outside. The windows are hidden behind heavy brocade drapes; a stuffed peacock stares back at us from one corner. Fading tapestries hang on the walls. The light fixtures are old, and dim. There are shadows everywhere.
Lestat could walk in here and it wouldn't surprise me at all, I whisper to my cousin.
In the midst of this shabby-chic creepy-Victorian ambience is a large oil portrait of a young woman. She perches over the mantel of a marble fireplace in a low-cut evening gown, her neck draped in long pearls, her blonde hair swooping back. She is painted in an oddly overwrought style, contemporary and campy.
The tour guide says quickly and loudly, as if to ward off more indelicate comments, "That's the owner. She's in the next room."
Sleeping in her coffin? I want to ask.
We are led through another giant doorway, entering a dark parlor where flickering candles on a gilded table give off scents of, of . . . blood, decay, undead flesh.
"I think it's just sage and lavender," my cousin whispers. But she's touching the cross on her necklace.
We stare at more tapestries, more sideboards, armoires, antique satin couches, Greek statuary, and dried flowers in funeral vases.
"Welcome," the owner says in some unrecognizable but vaguely European accent, stepping out of a dark corner. Or maybe she just floated out of her burial chamber.
We jump.
She's far less perky than her strange portrait. Sunken, darkly outlined eyes peer at us from a frame of straight yellow hair parted in the middle. Her skin is ashy. She's dressed in a snug brocade jacket and black tights. She's very thin.
Must not have fed recently, I'm thinking.
I hitch my bandana a little higher around my neck.
She politely tells us the history of the architecture and antiques. The whole time, she gazes at us without blinking. She offers no personal information.
I think of a question to ask. I'm trying to bond with her so she won't stalk me for dinner. "Are you an antique dealer?" I croak out in a high-pitched tone. I bet she can smell the fear in my Type O blood.
"No. A floral designer," she answers, still not blinking, her lips moving carefully over her fangs. She says 
it like this: Noi. Eh flur-all dee-sign-ar. Suddenly it dawns on me. Her accent? Transylvanian.
A floral designer? For what . . .mausoleums?
"That's all," the tour guide announces. "Y'all have a nice day." And she ushers us out another grand door, back to the shadowy, vine-swathed veranda with its blue, ghost-be-gone ceiling, back to the world of the living and the safe, garden-variety dead.
That night, after I'd steadied my nerves with wine, I sat with family on a rooftop patio overlooking the coastal village's gothic, secretive, elegantly mysterious cityscape and the vast harbor beyond, where cruise boats filled with tourists glide alongside gigantic cargo tankers from the other side of the oceans. Anything is possible here. The Southern low-country embraces the unknown.
Flitting through the salt breezes are the misty spirits of black slaves, red natives, white belles, blockade runners, fallen women, hanged men, victims and villains, the innocent and the guilty of too many old-coast generations to imagine.
Down an alley and across a street a willowy figure glides swiftly.
I clutch my wine glass and lean over the patio rail, hoping for one more glimpse. Her? The vampire? Or just an eccentric rich woman with dusty silverware and a funky accent?
She vanishes in the blackness. Poof. I nod. She had blue ceilings and stuffed peacocks and a life filled with shades of the night.
A vampire. Yep.
I met one.
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