Month: January 2020

Interview With Karen Eisenbrey

By way of introduction, here is Karen’s bio:

Karen Eisenbrey lives in Seattle, WA, where she leads a quiet, orderly life and invents stories to make up for it. Although she intended to be a writer from an early age, until her mid-30s she had nothing to say.

A little bit of free time and a vivid dream about a wizard changed all that. Karen writes fantasy and science fiction novels, as well as short fiction in a variety of genres and the occasional poem if it insists.

She also sings in a church choir, plays drums in a garage band, and was surprised to find herself writing songs for her debut YA novel The Gospel According to St. Rage , a finalist for the 2016 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.

A YA wizard fantasy, Daughter of Magic, was released by Not a Pipe Publishing in 2018 as part of The Year of Publishing Women and was also a Wishing Shelf finalist. Wizard Girl, the sequel to Daughter of Magic, was released in July 2019.

Gospel was re-released in a 2nd edition from Not A Pipe in August 2019 and will be followed by a sequel, Barbara and the Rage Brigade, in November 2019. Karen shares her life with her husband, two young adult sons, and two mature adult cats.

Now that you’ve been introduced to Karen, let’s get to know her a little better.

Hello, Karen, welcome to Angel Kiss Publications. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview

Thank you for having me.

How did the writing bug ensnare you?

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved stories. So it was exciting to discover that learning to read and write included learning to write stories!

It was always my favorite homework—getting to make up whatever I wanted, being allowed to lie, on purpose, for schoolwork! Or finding a way to make the assigned parameters work for what I wanted to say.

Is writing your full-time profession?

For 2 years in a row, I have earned in the low three figures, so … no. It is a full-time obsession, though. It’s rare that I’m not thinking about a story at some level.

How long have you been writing?

Since elementary school! But seriously, with intent to publish, about 20 years.

Have you won any literary awards?

One short story won 2nd place in a small local contest and 5th place in big national contest. Two of my novels have been finalists for the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards.

How many published books have you written?

Four, not counting anthologies: The Gospel According to St. Rage (2016, re-released 2019); Daughter of Magic (2018); Wizard Girl (2019); Barbara and the Rage Brigade (2019).

Which genres do you write?

I write fantasy and science fiction for teens and adults. The published books are all YA; two are high(ish) wizard fantasy, two are contemporary superhero fantasy.

What do you find most challenging writing for these genres?

Coming up with an original take on these very popular genres. I decided at the outset with my wizard fantasy that there would be magic but no kings, no battles, no monsters, no magical creatures, and very few magical objects.

And then to try to make it interesting enough to hold a reader who may have come for the dragons and unicorns. Same with the superhero series: I didn’t want my supers wrecking up the city fighting supervillains, so what do they do for truth and justice?

What are you working on now?

I’m coming off a hiatus while beta readers take a look at the draft of the third book in my wizard series. The working title is Death’s Midwife, and I’m looking forward to digging back into the story and turning it into a book.

I’m also in the early stages of a collaboration with LeeAnn McLennan, who also writes about teen supers in the Pacific Northwest. We’re going to write a crossover story where our characters meet and interact.

Where do you find inspiration for your characters?

Everywhere! My own personality and experience, everyone I’ve ever known, people I observe or overhear out in the world… A couple of my characters started out based on specific people, but most are a mishmash from the start.

What has been your most rewarding experience since publishing your work?

I’m going to give you two because they’re neck and neck. 1) interacting with readers who have enjoyed one or more of the books; 2) interacting with the other authors at Not A Pipe Publishing.

We do events together, go to each other’s solo events, promote each other’s work, plot world domination, and generally have a great time.

What advice would you give to authors just starting out?

Write the book! Write something you’d want to read or that past you couldn’t find. Somebody else out there is just waiting for whatever it is you’ve dreamed up.

If you don’t have a big idea, use whatever little ideas you do have. Get it down however you can, then spend the time to make it good. Find someone you trust to read it and give honest feedback to make it better.

Learn from other writers but don’t compare yourself and your work to them.

Is there anything else you’d like your readers to know about you?

I’m also a musician! I’ve always sung, and I started drumming in elementary school. In our 50s, my brother and I started playing together as a band called Your Mother Should Know.

This directly affected my writing because Barbara, the main character of my St. Rage books, is a songwriter and leader of a garage band. Someone had to write her songs, and to my surprise, that turned out to be me!

My brother helped me come up with music for the first batch of songs; then I did both words and music for a couple of the newest ones. We have recorded all 11 songs and happily perform them live, too.

What message are you sharing in your books?

After writing them, I discovered my books fit into a subgenre called “hopepunk.” Everything I do tries to be uplifting and encouraging while also being subversive and countercultural toward authority and domination.

I especially want to encourage people who are something other than cis-het-white-male to unapologetically claim their power and live their own truth.

What are your favorite books?

I have been a big fan of Ursula K. LeGuin since my pre-teens. I’m probably a fantasy writer because of her Earthsea series, and I consider The Left Hand of Darkness to be my favorite book.

I also love Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books, which are just extremely funny and smart. A recent favorite is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It is exactly the kind of warm-hearted, low-stakes sci-fi that I want to write.

If you could create an author’s group with writers from any time period, who would you invite?

Well, Ursula LeGuin, for sure. Kurt Vonnegut. Charlotte Bronte. Virginia Woolf. Walt Kelly would be fun! And Stan Lee. I should probably stop or we’ll need a bigger table.

Who has influenced your writing the most?

Ursula LeGuin set the example of character-driven genre fiction with excellent writing. I absorbed a lot about voice and dialogue from Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip.

And I have to thank the friends and family who read my early efforts and didn’t cringe but encouraged me that it was good enough to spend more time on.

When you’re not writing where can we find you?

I’m always writing, from a certain point of view. But when I’m not actively at my computer, I might be found in the kitchen, baking cookies or bread.

Four mornings a week, I’m at my day job, managing the office of a small Seattle church. Sunday mornings, I’ll be singing in the choir at a different church. And I spend far too much time on Facebook.

A movie producer wants to turn your book into a movie, and you get to make a cameo. What would you do in the movie?

I could easily see myself as the main character’s mom in a movie of Barbara and the Rage Brigade, or grandmother in Wizard Girl. But those are large enough roles that they probably wouldn’t cast me.

For an actual cameo, I’d love to be part of a band playing in the background of a scene. I actually wrote our band into a scene in The Gospel According to St. Rage.

An elf named 12-25 approaches you. He’s sneezing, wheezing, coughing and there’s a strange tattoo of a snoring dog on his cheek. What do you do?

Offer a tissue and ask if he’s OK. Try to get him indoors, if possible; it’s winter here and no one wants to be outside when they have a cold.

Once we have our hot tea, I’d want to hear his story. I’m not that familiar with elves, so I’m not sure how common tattoos are in their culture. If he doesn’t bring it up, I’d probably ask.

What are your most effective marketing strategies?

I’m not sure I can call them strategies, but I try to do a variety of things. I post in promotional groups, do online author events, post in my own social media, blurb other people’s books, and do live events with other authors and on my own.

It’s really hard to tell whether anything is working in the moment. I seem to do best face-to-face, even though I’m not much of a people person. If I can talk with a potential reader about my books, I will generally make a sale.

Do you have a website/Facebook page, etc?

Website: https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/

Blog: https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/blog/

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/KarenEisenbreyWriter/

Twitter: @KarenEisenbrey

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7577611.Karen_Eisenbrey

Bandcamp: https://strage2.bandcamp.com/

Where can we find your books?

If you don’t find them on the shelf, any independent bookstore can order them from IngramSpark. They are also available online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Thank you, Karen, for spending time with us and sharing your story. We wish you continued success and lots of luck!

While an epidemic rages and a strangler stalks the streets of the city, Luskell trains and works as a healer, but she aspires to greater power.

Though everyone knows girls can’t become wizards, she persuades Wizard Bardin to make her his apprentice. Luskell leaves the city on a quest for new magic and to explore mysteries that have more to do with love and desire.

But the strangler follows her. She must gain the trust of old friends and an unexpected ally if she’s going to stop the murderer before he strikes again.

Barbara’s starting over.

She’s happy to leave high school behind, but doesn’t know how she’ll make new friends when her bandmates leave town for college. She has no plans for the future beyond driving school, a part-time summer job, and community college in the fall.

OK, and getting control of her rage-fueled superpowers without her parents finding out. It would be so much easier if an experienced superteam would take her on.

Just when an invitation for another band’s record release explodes into the gig of a lifetime, Barbara starts noticing weird circumstances around a cult-like church.

Other superpowered kids are showing up left and right, looking to her for guidance. Guess Barbara has to make her own superteam! She’ll need all the help she can get to battle dangerous, cult-like megachurch.

Look out, world — here comes the Rage Brigade.

Seumas Gallacher’s: Strangely, I’m Still Here

Available on Amazon

Synopsis:

Fact is often more incredible than fiction.

Seumas Gallacher has survived long enough to savour places, characters and events for more than forty years in the Far East and the Arabian Gulf.

He started life in Scotland, travelled far and wide as a wannabe Trainee Master of the Universe, but the Universe had other plans for him.

From a career in banking, he escaped to become a corporate trouble-shooter.

He discovered the joy and torture of becoming a wordsmith, writing five best-selling crime novels, a book of poetry, and being hyper-active on social media.

‘Strangely, I’m Still Here’ is his story.

Author Bio:

SEUMAS GALLACHER escaped from the world of finance years ago, after a career spanning three continents and five decades.

As the self-professed ‘oldest computer Jurassic on the planet’ his headlong immersion into the dizzy world of eBook publishing opened his eyes, mind, and pleasure to the joys of self-publishing.

As a former businessman, he rapidly understood the concept of a writer’s need to ‘build the platform’, and from a standing start began to develop a social networking outreach, which now tops 30,000 direct contacts.

His first four crime-thrillers, in what has become the ‘Jack Calder’ series, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK, SAVAGE PAYBACK and KILLER CITY have blown his mind with more than 90,000 e-link downloads to date. The fifth in the series, DEADLY IMPASSE, was published in the third quarter 2016. When he reaches the 100,000 sales/downloads mark he may indulge an extra Fried Mars Bar to celebrate.

He started a humorous, informative, self-publishers blog, never having heard of a ‘blog’ prior to that, was voted ‘Blogger of the Year 2013’ and now has a loyal blog following on his networks. He says the novels contain his ‘Author’s Voice’, while the blog carries his ‘Author’s Brand’. And he’s still LUVVIN IT!

Reading Challenge 2020

Reading Challenges have become very popular over the years. They’re a huge social talking point among readers and writers. As any introvert will tell you, if you want to strike up a conversation with them, ask them what they’re currently reading and you’ll earn yourself a worthy literary conversation.

As a mother, teacher and author, I think swapping Reading Challenge Lists is a wonderful way for friends, family and like minded individuals to connect and have meaningful conversations.

If you’re looking to add more books to your own To-Read List, (A-hem, coughs in a please-notice-me-but-I-don’t-want-to-be-rude-about-it sort of way) I just happen to have a few that might interest you or your children.

Kamla Chung and the Creepy Crawlies

Kamyla Chung and the Classroom Bully

Captain Hook: Villain or Victim?

Happy Reading!

Interview With The Old Bookshop Of Bordentown

The Old BookShop Of Bordentown is the 8th stop on my Independent Book Store tour. In an effort to bring awareness of how vital these places are, I’m interviewing the great folks who manage them.

Located in historic Bordentown City in central New Jersey, The Old Bookshop of Bordentown are purveyors of out of print and antiquarian books. They have titles that cater to history buffs, sports and erotica fans, aspiring thespians, gardeners and religious folk.

But wait, there’s more!

Their inventory also includes fantasy titles like Eragon, George R. R. Martin’s epic saga Game of Thrones as well as Manga, mysteries, an expanding entertainment section and a children’s room. It’s bookworm heaven!

Don’t worry if your book budget is limited, the Old Bookshop has many discounted titles, some as low as a $1.00. (FYI: if you check out their Facebook page you may find even more savings.)

Their doors are open Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday from  12:00 pm  to 4:00 pm.

Doug, the owner of The Old Bookshop Of Bordentown, was kind enough to answer a few questions about his store and the value it adds to his community of readers. 

Hi, Doug, welcome to Angel Kiss Publications. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview.

Thank you for having me.

What motivated you to open (or work at) an Independent Book Store?

I’ve been a book collector since I was about 14 years old. After spending a career on Wall Street and with a large amount of books, many in storage, I began to consign material to a cooperative shop in the late 1990s.

Once I got fed up with commuting to New York City from the Princeton, NJ area and decided I’d rather watch my two little sons grow up, we opened a shop in Freehold, NJ.

The bookselling trade is rewarding in ways other than financial (it’s not particularly remunerative).

I like to think, however, that we’re providing a valuable service–books give people pleasure, knowledge, sometimes comfort, and help to expand horizons.

Can you tell us a little about Old Bookshop Of Bordentown?

The Old Book Shop of Bordentown is a general used and out-of-print bookstore with vintage and rare editions as well. Most of the stock on our shelves is priced under $10 (though we also carry material that runs into the thousands of dollars).

We sub-specialize in New Jersey books (naturally) and have the largest section of New Jersey titles in the state. We carry general history, American history (American Revolution, Civil War and WWII), fiction and literature (geared more toward the classic authors like Austen, Hemingway, Virgina Woolf, Tolkein, etc).

We also have sections on art, architecture, music, theater, movie and TV, cooking, antiques, etc.

There are some 10,000 books on our open shelves and we also have an online inventory of some 9,000 titles.

What’s involved with running an independent bookstore?

Nowadays a small independent operating in a brick-and mortar open location has to be in a place where the cost of location operation is low enough to stay in business. This is very difficult in New Jersey.

In order to pay the rent, one usually gives up any significant walking traffic. For example, if I were in Princeton where there is a large walking population during the days and evening, my rent would be 5 to 10 times what it is here—and I’d be out of business within 90 days.

Acquisition of inventory is also a critical issue—what do you carry and from where do you get it?

We don’t buy inventory directly from publishers or from overstock houses (except for a few very local history titles). We can’t compete with Barnes and Noble in terms of prices or customer volume on that material.

We buy from individuals (people who are moving, down-sizing), estates, historical societies or libraries who are deaccessioning material, etc. One big advantage to having an open shop is that you get buying opportunities that you would not otherwise.

As with any such business, it’s always a bit of a guessing game — hopefully what we buy will interest our customers. Sometimes it is and sometimes we have things in inventory for years.

Is competition with online retailers difficult?

Competition with other online retailers is always an issue. Certain ones, Amazon particularly but eBay as well, are a headlong dive to the bottom of the barrel. Anyone with a cardboard box of books in their garage and a computer can be a “bookseller”.

That hugely increases supply and buyers on these sites usually are looking for the cheapest possible item—and they’re often disappointed with the actual item when it arrives (or so a number of customers have always told me). They are the world’s low-end yard sales.

How do small bookstores compete with Amazon and Barnes & Noble?

All that having been said, you have to deal with the devil. We sell on Amazon and it in fact makes up a significant percentage of our monthly revenues. We get a greater number of orders through them than through any other sales channel, but the orders are also almost always for lower priced items—and there is absolutely zero customer loyalty as they are hysterical about keeping sellers and buyers from communicating directly.

Barnes & Noble is not a competitive factor for us as we don’t deal in new books. We’re signed up as vendors for out of print stuff with them but rarely get an order.

Barnes & Noble is not a competitive factor for us as we don’t deal in new books. We’re signed up as vendors for out of print stuff with them but rarely get an order.

What makes your store unique?

We try to offer a bit of everything so that folks who come in can hopefully find things they didn’t know they wanted when they came in.

We also have a whole room full of books for children and young adults—everything from baby picture books to Nancy Drew, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and even more mature titles for teens.

I feel strongly about getting books into the hands of children at an early age—that’s what my mom did with me and my sister when we were little. 

What are your biggest sellers?

Our single biggest seller over the years since we’ve been here has been the Harry Potter series. We sell the hardcovers for around $7 and the paperbacks for around $3.

J. K. Rowling has, in my opinion, done more to advance literacy than anyone else in the last half-century.

We sell lots of New Jersey books—Pine Barrens and Jersey Devil stuff is popular given our geographic location. American history is a good seller as well.

In terms of adult fiction and literature, our steady sellers have been Jane Austen, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, J. R. R. Tolkien and more recently Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin and Chuck Palahniuk.

There’s always a run on books with current TV and movie tie-ins like Game of Thrones.

Do you have promotions throughout the year?

Not really. We coordinate more with the big events here in Bordentown: the Cranberry Festival in October, the Holiday Chocolate Walk and the Valentine’s Day Chocolate Walk. Those events provide us with a ready-made crowd.

Do you have author book signings?

We’re too small to do it effectively. The only exception is for local authors that put out local history books or general interest things—we have two local authors who have published children’s books and we’ve had signings with them. We schedule those sessions during the bigger two events as mentioned above so they get good exposure.

What advice would you give to authors just starting out?

Don’t give up your day jobs.

The current publishing environment is extremely competitive as writers have many more venues than just traditional hard-copy publishers.

Yes, it’s easier to get your stuff out there via the innumerable online venues but it’s incredibly difficult to actually get eyeballs on your work.

And if you want to get an authentic following, don’t write books about growing up, issues with your parents/siblings/spouses, or your views on the cosmos, or poetry.

Write something that may be unique, write local history, develop and write children’s book characters.  In terms of fiction, try young adult and have a plan for books two, three and more in case you catch lightning in a bottle. Then you might have a shot.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you and your store?

The same thing I say to consumers about all small local businesses: “Use ‘em or lose ‘em”.

We welcome everyone to come in and browse, poke around the shelves, try something new or just pick up a copy of an old friend. Just picking up a $2 or $3 paperback or hardcover helps pay the rent and keep us open.

Want to read The Great Gatsby (another of our most steady sellers)? Try finding a paperback copy at B&N for less than $15. We sell them for $3 or $4.

What are some of your favorite books/authors?

I enjoy historical mysteries set in the Middle Ages, the Victorian Era, and the colonial period, so we usually have a good selection of those.

I’ve also been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I was a teenager, so we have a nice selection of that material.

My favorite 20th century American author is John Steinbeck (I think The Grapes of Wrath was the greatest 20th c. American novel) so we have lots of his books.

Do you have a website/Facebook page, etc?

Our website is oldbookshopofbordentown.com and on Facebook find us as Old Book Shop of Bordentown.

Thank you, Doug, for spending time with us and sharing your story. We wish you and the Old Bookshop of Bordentown continued success and lots of luck!