The Indie Express: October 2021

Friday, October 29, 2021

Memoir Feature: Out of the Field #promo #nonfiction #memoir #rabtbooktorus @RABTBookTours @mkwebsiteandseo

A Memoir full of Family Betrayal, Homelessness, Survival, Forgiveness and Love

Memoir

Date Published: August 1, 2019

Publisher: ‎Mindstir Media

LARRY A. LEE’S JOURNEY TO CLAIM HIS SOUL began at seven years old when he chose to defend his mother against his alcoholic father’s physical abuse in Unionville, Connecticut. Three years later, his mother passed away from infectious hepatitis. Before her passing, Larry promised his mother he would grow up to be a “Good Man.”

Since the age of ten, life undoubtedly threw itself against Larry time and time again. All forms of unspeakable torments and challenges made up his adolescence in Burlington, Connecticut. At eighteen years old, while he was living in a field in Oklahoma City, a single act of kindness saved him, and it forever changed his life.

And so it was, his journey of ten million miles to keep the promise he made his mother led him to a seven-year-old boy, who adopted him. Larry held love in his hand, and then he conquered his world.

Purchase Link

Amazon

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Children's Book Feature: I Am Me #promo #childrensbook #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours @mkwebsiteandseo

A Journal of Positive Affirmations for Kids Hardcover

Children's Book

Publication date: April 6, 2021

Publisher: Mindful Impressions

"I Am Me" is a journal of positive affirmations with the intent to encourage children to look within and find their own power, confidence, and to unapologetically accept and become their true authentic self.

Presenting five mindfulness exercises alongside 20 positive affirmations, I Am Me supports self-worth and positive mindset skills by introducing therapeutic practice for handling life obstacles in a gently way.

About the Author

Angelica Clark is a Louisiana native who holds a B.S. in Psychology and naturally found herself mentoring and uplifting others during difficult times.

She was born in Monroe, LA. She spent a few years in Baton Rouge, LA and a few more in Dallas, GA before making her way back home to Louisiana. She is the mother of two daughters, and one fine toy poodle named Teddy P.

When not writing, she can be found listening to music, taking a few selfies (or twenty), and eating her most favorite thing in the whole wide world. You’ll never know what that is until you buy your copy of the I Am Me Kids’ Journal!

Purchase Link

Amazon

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Children's Book Feature: A Rose for Grandma #promo #childrensbooks #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours @mkwebsiteandseo

A Journey Through Alzheimer's

Children's Book

Date Published: April 14, 2021

Publisher: ‎ MindStir Media

Annie loves spending time with her grandparents; they're some of her favorite people. One day she notices Grandma acting a bit strangely, and Annie learns that her warm, creative, loving grandma has Alzheimer's Disease. Although at first Annie is worried, as she learns more about dementia, she makes up her mind to help Grandma in any way she can.

About the Author

Christiana Egi wrote A Rose for Grandma as part of an ongoing effort to eradicate the stigma around dementia and mental illness. She spent 10 years of her 34-year nursing career working in the crisis unit of Canada's largest psychiatric hospital and owns and operates Alexis Lodge Retirement Residence, Memory Care Facilities in Toronto, Canada. She believes in treating everyone with love, respect and dignity, and she has a passion for helping families and individuals as they adjust to the changes that often come with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. Christiana is a woman of faith who uses her belief as a guide as she and her staff provide daily care to individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. This is her first children's book.

Purchase Link

Amazon

Children's Book Feature: The Adventures of Amber: Walk in the Woods #promo #childrensbook #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours @mkwebsiteandseo

Walk in the Woods

Children's Book

Date Published: June 10, 2021

Publisher: Mindstir Media

Amber, a nature-loving girl who enjoys afternoon walks in the woods with her grandma and puppy, has an adventurous spirit and a heart that belongs to Mother Nature. She takes you on a magical journey in the woods near her grandparents' mountain cottage. Immerse yourself in the magnificent beauty of nature with the experiences from Amber's perspective. This book will inspire readers to go outdoors and appreciate the wonders of Mother Nature.

About the Author

Isabell Hayden is a child author. She loves to draw, dance, read, and write. Isabell also enjoys building LEGOs with Dad, baking cupcakes with Grandma (while wearing matching aprons), solving challenging puzzles with Grandpa, playing beautiful tunes on the piano for her pup, Daisy, and, last but not least, reading a good book with Mom. Isabell hopes to write more books to share her love of nature and all things fun and creative.

Purchase Link

Amazon

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Self Help Feature: C'mon Let's Play! by @DSuberla #blogtour #bookreview #givewaay #selfhelp #nonfiction #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

Living, Playing and Moving Forward

Self-help, Inspirational

Date Published: December 8, 2020

Publisher: Balboa Press

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C’mon, Let’s Play!” shares methods for the readers to play with that can help them change their lives. Here, Suberla reflects on her life journey, and uses her own examples of good and bad choices to give practical advice on how to achieve your goals. With humor, she shares her approach to making some life changing choices including how she became a hippie in the late 60s and early 70s, to her decision to retire early from her corporate job. Dee also shares her process for how she moved through breast cancer. By sharing her personals story, the author demonstrates the importance of how one’s thoughts and beliefs determine the life that he or she leads and how anyone can get more living in life by playing with the concepts in this book.

Review

I'll be honest, I wasn't sure what I was going to get from this book. This was unique and has an insight into life and moving forward in a positive way.

It's full of great information and I think you will learn a few things from it. I liked the fact that she has concepts that are easy to understand then therefore easier to implement.

The author really opened up her life to share with the reader her experiences and give great examples.

About the Author

Dee G Suberla is best known for her expertise in project management. Of course, she didn’t start out that way, no she started writing poetry at an early age, then became a resource for people she worked with in the pharmaceutical industry when there was a need to write something particularly tricky. When she reflected on the favorite parts of her job it came down to coaching; she loved helping people to set and achieve their goals. Coaching wasn’t in her job description but it was a passion that she pursued after she became a consultant and wrote her first book to help new project managers called Poof You’re a Project Manager and Other Delusions of Grandeur. Recently, she was compelled to write C’mon Let’s play to share what she had learned with people who felt stuck, helpless or were looking for something new. Whether Dee is career coaching, life coaching or coaching somewhere in between, she shares much of this information with her clients and wrote this book to reach a wider audience.

Contact Links

Twitter (@DSuberla)

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Monday, October 25, 2021

Fantasy Feature: Pretty Deadly by @kelseyjosund #promo #darkfantasy #fantasy #releaseday #excerpt #giveaway #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

Dark Fantasy

Date Published: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Darkstroke Books

Cinna would quite literally kill for the throne.

She’s spent years forced to serve her wealthy cousins rather than attend society events alongside them, waiting for the chance to prove herself and exact revenge. When a ball is announced at the castle, promising to bring many powerful people to town, she seizes the opportunity to strike.

She bets her best friend, a small-time thief and con-man, that she can land a greater score the night of the ball than he can. They embark on parallel heists. But as their plots unfold, things begin to unravel: by the end of the night, the castle’s on lock down, a duchess is dead, a mansion has burnt to the ground, and Cinna hasn’t stolen anything. Or has she stolen something more valuable than gold and jewels?

Excerpt

How interesting, Cinna thought. She had spent so many hours bent over a stove in the kitchen or crouched before the hearth, stoking flames carefully that refused to light. But she had prepared: this house was waiting tinder, ready to be consumed.

She couldn’t hear the screams over the roar of the flames, but surely they were there. Strangely, she didn’t feel cheated to have not heard their voices. It was fine that they died in silence.

It did not take long for the neighbors to begin streaming out of their own houses, and she did hear their screams. They swarmed around the flames, politely mute once they realized they could not do anything, full of awe before the enormity of the fire. Cinna blended into the crowd, nearly invisible in her costume.

At last, just as she had always pledged she would, she watched the house fall in on itself.

About the Author

I am a software engineer and author living and working in Silicon Valley, California. I studied computer science at Stanford University, but I’ve always loved stories in all their forms. I approach writing fiction the same way I approach writing code: I like to know where it’s going, but I want to figure out the details as I go along. Good software is a lot like a good story, full of neat and clever solutions to tricky problems, beautiful at a granular level but also from a distance.

Originally from Seattle, I love getting outdoors and living in places that allow me to escape to the mountains on the weekends, and I care deeply about the ecosystems that humans impact and that impact us. My writing explores these issues while also following classic coming-of-age arcs in science fiction and fantasy. I’m also very interested in stories and characters that complicate the traditional and familiar, leading me to fairytale retellings from unexpected angles.

Contact Links

TikTok @kelseyjosund

Purchase Link

Amazon

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Memoir Feature: Babe in the Woods #promo #releaseday #giveaway #memoir #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

Biography and Memoir, Adventure

Date Published: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Pepin Enterprises

At age eighteen, Yvonne set out to build a home from trees on 80 acres she bought on an Oregon mountainside. In 1975, log by log she creates a cabin and heals from an orphaned past, finding a new family in the forest, and with people in a valley named John Day.

Babe in the Woods: Self Portrait is the second in a three-book series. It chronicles a span in Yvonne's four decades long relationship with her log cabin and the people she meets in the valley. The book continues Yvonne's story of learning to live in the wilderness within and outside of herself. It is also a story of rogue bears, building a bear-proof log studio, a young artist's development, and the trials and triumph of finding oneself, alone in the backwoods.

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Nonfiction Feature: BECOME, an inspirational journal by @hpmueller242 #promo #nonfiction #giveaway #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

Self-Help Journal

Date Published: August 24, 2021

Publisher: Hunter Street Press

Goal setting is not the answer to all life’s complications and hardships. It is a process to define what you want your life to look like, to be. Goal setting allows you to reflect, to be conscious about your choices, and helps prioritize your time and attention. The beauty is you do not have to wait for New Year’s Eve to begin! You can start any day, anywhere, any time. Become is a 24-week inspirational, goal setting, journal, which reminds you of your awesomeness and helps you focus on the good things in your life.

About the Author

Hope Mueller leads a consulting firm, Hunter Street Press, and is studying for her mBA. Hope is passionate about making a difference and founded Hunter Street Charity (www.hunterstreetcharity.com) and the Mueller Family Scholarship. She is an author, motivational speaker, and coach. Hope splits her time between Northern Illinois and Nevada with her f=husband, four daughters, and delightful grandson.

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Nonfiction Feature: Blessed to Have Been Abandoned by Monica Kelsey #promo #nonfiction #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours @mkwebsiteandseo

The Story of The Baby Box Lady

Date Published: April 9, 2021

Publisher: MindStir Media

She went from being ABANDONED, to saving abandoned babies.

Poignant, brutally honest and triumphant; Blessed to Have Been Abandoned is the true story of Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. Follow Monica's story as she discovers the secrets of her painful beginnings, the painful journey of her birth mother, wrestling with being abandoned as an infant, yet being given the gift of an amazing forever family. Watch as Monica's personal struggle births the vision for a national organization that is saving the lives of abandoned infants across the United States.

A heart wrenching yet ultimately victorious story, Blessed to Have Been Abandoned will take you through the pain, struggle, valleys and mountain tops of Monica's life, all of these pointing to the amazing hand of God. A testimony to God's faithfulness and His plan and purpose, this book will encourage your own heart and help you find purpose through pain and we trust it will bring Glory to God, the Author of each one of our complicated, messy and inspiring journeys.

Praise

"Monica Kelsey's Blessed to Have Been Abandoned: The Story of the Baby Box Lady is an uplifting inspirational story of how one woman answered God's call on her life, transforming her difficult beginning into a mission to protect the most vulnerable among us in her home state and beyond. It's exactly the kind of story we need. Highly recommended!" -J.J. Hebert, #1 bestselling author

About the Author

Monica Kelsey is the founder and Executive Director of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, a 501c3 non profit whose mission is to prevent infant abandonment and give mother’s in crisis a safe, legal and completely anonymous option of surrendering their unharmed newborn. Monica’s personal story of being abandoned at birth by a teen mom who had been raped and hidden away for her entire pregnancy propelled her to speak on behalf of babies like herself as well as her birth mother who desperately needed a safe option. Monica is also a firefighter/paramedic and knows first hand how important first responders are to state Safe Haven laws.

Purchase Link

Amazon

Friday, October 22, 2021

Fantasy Feature: Crop Burner by @GavinBWrites #blogtour #bookreview #giveaway #fantasy #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

The Tale Of Fearn & The Deamhon

High Fantasy

Date Published: 10/11/2021

Publisher: Global Book Publishing

-- Along with awesome power comes the greatest test of will --

Despite his humble farming roots, young Fearn displays incredible powers. Blessed by Dainua to harness the strength of every soul surrounding him, he’s known as an Asinta and could help the kingdom vitally. However, due to dark events that marred the name of those akin, Fearn finds himself distrusted by the superstitious villagers and even his own father, Dair . . . effecting untold sorrow.

To overcome the ancient ills of prejudice will not be easy. Luckily, there’s magic, too, beyond the spatial world — in words. As taught to be a “teller of tales” by Dair, who long has honed the craft, Fearn learns with creativity to also quickly capture minds. When wicked comes to visit, however, one mentor alone will guide the boy — a mentor with a story that has yet to end with due revenge.

Fearn soon shall discover the cost of love and loyalty — of hate and betrayal — and venturing to save his land, he’ll run the risk of losing himself, as deamhons play for keeps.

Review

First off, I loved the originality this story had. There was diversity in the writing, it wasn't a cookie-cutter fantasy, it had the elements I loved but also pushed the envelope. Gavin Black managed to surprise me in multiple parts.

I loved how this unfolded, it was steady in the pacing just high-paced enough.

About the Author

Gavin Black lives with his wife and two boys in Reno, Nevada. Growing up, he spent his formative years in the hospital due to a congenital lung malady. He found an escape in fantasy and science fiction novels, beginning with the books of David Eddings and followed by so many of the greats: Tolkien, Heinlein, and Asimov, among others. He was always drawn to stories with deep character development and that defied readers’ expectations. When not writing, he can be found playing board games with his family and friends, reading, or discussing the varied merits of many a pop culture franchise.

Gavin and his wife, Ann, met at Renovation, the 2014 WorldCon. Together, they enjoy attending numerous conventions – always in cosplay! – including D23, WorldCon, Wizard World, and any others that come within 100 miles of Reno. Gavin’s favorite panels always include learning more about the creation process in any media form. He’s also attended courses by Neil Gaiman and Brandon Sanderson on the ins and outs of writing fantasy.

Before he began writing, Gavin imagined up dozens of worlds and characters, often inspired by the unique folks he met traveling while working as a systems engineer for different gaming companies. Although only a few have found their way into his first novel, he swears he has a never-ending supply for future tales!

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Thursday, October 21, 2021

Historical Fantasy Feature: The Eagle's Lady by @miriamnewman #promo #releaseday #giveaway #historicalromance #fantasy #rabtbooktours @RABTBookTours

Historical Romance / Fantasy Romance

Publisher: DCL Publications

Date Published:10-22-2021

Son of an impoverished, dying chieftain, Ari raided for booty and slaves so he could feed his people. He was a heathen, probably a murderer, and it was a sin to lie with him.

About the Author

Hailing from Pennsylvania, Miriam Newman has developed a prolific writing career that began in her twenties, although she published her very first novel some time later in 2009. She was published in poetry before catching the romance writing bug. Fantasy poetry driven by myths and legends has been her passion for as long as she can remember and she brings that background to her writing, along with a lifelong addiction to horses, an 18 year career in various areas of psychiatric social services, and many trips to Ireland, where she nurtures her muse. Her published works range from contemporary fantasy romance to fantasy historical, futuristic, science fiction and historical romance. It was in Ireland that she wrote The King’s Daughter. Ireland is her favorite place in this world. “I connect there with something I can’t even explain,” she says fondly.

Miriam spent many years working in Social Services, and after retirement, she found herself working part-time in local government. Currently, she lives in rural Pennsylvania with a “motley crew” of rescue animals. Her passion for animal rescue and fostering has included a number of fur babies, from horses to dogs to a pig that appeared on her porch one morning. Also a lover of great books, the one that she finds most responsible for her venture into fantasy and recommends is The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

Fans of Ms. Newman can follow her online at the following locations:

Website

Blog 1

Blog 2

Amazon Author Central

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