25 for 25 - More Free Books!

The Devil Can Wait by Marta Stephens

We are offering an exclusive opportunity for people to get their hands on 25 pre-publication eBook copies of Marta Stephen's' latest novel The Devil Can Wait.

The book itself isn't out until November 2008, so this is a chance to read this book before anyone else. All we ask is that you promise us a review of 25 words. Why 25 words? Well 25 copies for 25 words! We'll then choose a winner at random from those we receive and the winner will get a signed copy of the paperback upon publication.

We'll use the reviews in promotion and publicity with your name on prominent display, including posting it on Blippr, the new site for reviews of 160 characters or less.

So for your chance to receive this pre-publication eBook (pdf) before everyone else, send us an email and we'll send the eBook to the first 25 people who email us here. And then you send us your review before November 1st 2008.

Here's the book's info:

The city of Chandler, Massachusetts is plunged into terror when the bodies of three local teenagers wash ashore. While homicide detective Sam Harper hunts down the guilty, a sinister plot emerges overseas. From the Vatican to the jungles of South America, a cursed black pearl ring, the demonic prophecy it represents, and the men who pursue its powers find their unfortunate way onto Harper's turf.

Enthralled by the ring's story and a front-page spread, newspaper reporter Jennifer Blake agrees to pick up the ring at a local pawnshop for her former college professor. When she does, unforeseen events shoot Blake to the top of Harper's prime suspect list. Soon, the seemingly unrelated cases converge and the heat is on for Harper to expose the truth behind a Vatican secret and stop the self-righteous man who does the unthinkable in the name of God.

ISBN: 978-1-905202-86-7 (paperback) 978-1-905202-87-4 (eBook)
Price: £8.99. $15.99 (US), $16.99 (Ca), €11.99
Page count: 316
Release date: 3rd November 2008
Excerpt
Author’s blog

Prestwick by David Hough

BeWrite Books has signed author David Hough to publish his breathtaking new airborne action thriller, Prestwick. The high-octane international drama sees three crippled aircraft and three desperate pilots in a race to a single landing strip. Only one can make it. Will it be the shattered 747 with hundreds of surviving passengers on board, the US Airforce jet with its frightened crew of young fliers, or the other one ... the one whose crash would spark World War Three?

Title: Prestwick
Author: David Hough
Print ISBN: 978-1-905202-84-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-905202-85-0
Release Date: Summer 2009
Distributors: Bertram Books, Gardners, Baker & Taylor, Ingrams

For more information and updates about titles coming soon from BeWrite Books, please email us with the title of the book in the subject line.

Last day for free eBook download - Disremembering Eddie by Anne Morgellyn

To celebrate the release of Anne Morgellyn's latest Louise Moon novel, Pincushion. BeWrite Books are giving away free eBook copies of Disremembering Eddie. Disremembering Eddie is the first in the Louise Moon series.

Download your FREE pdf copy here. Or it can also be dowloaded from our shop here.

Pincushion was released on September 6th 2008.

The free download of Disremembering Eddie will be available until 12th September 2008.

Pincushion

Outrageous artist August Stockyard - attention-seeking heir to a media and property empire - dies in typically theatrical fashion … and the mischief that drove his life's work culminates in the bequest of adjoining houses to his pregnant girlfriend, Cressida, and to his former comrade-in-arms, Louise Moon.

But was August's demise simple suicide or was it the result of a kinky sex game that went wrong? Had he cleverly planned to shame his distant father and take revenge on his ruthless uncle, the obese and grasping millionaire who now had his sights set on Louise?

Or was it a game from the grave to throw the two women with whom August had been obsessed into a fight to the death as reluctant and mismatched neighbours?

Pincushion is the third and latest in a series of psychological thrillers that chart the adventures of Louise Moon and her precarious love affair with brilliant but unconventional pathologist and former boss Chas Androssoff.

More information

All BeWrite Books are available from: BeWrite Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson and other online booksellers and to order from high street bookshops.

Book Giveaway - Free copy of Pincushion by Anne Morgellyn

BeWrite Books has again teamed up with Bibliophilia.org to offer a lucky reader the chance to win a signed copy of Anne Morgellyn's latest novel, Pincushion.

This exclusive contest is open to Bibliophilia members only. But joining Bibliophilia is free and easy to do.

If you can answer this simple question, then simply sign up to Bibliophilia.org and send in your entry.

Name heroine Louise Moon’s lover Chas Androssoff’s medical speciality:

a) Dentistry
b) Gynaecology
c) Pathology

The winning entry will be chosen on 18th September 2008.

Bibliophilia.org is a free online members-only writers’ workshop where critique is exchanged and a place for writers and readers of all interests and skill levels. They publish artistic and literary works on all subjects - anything that is apt to be attractive to the web visitor and that evinces a love of the arts and language.

Pincushion

Outrageous artist August Stockyard - attention-seeking heir to a media and property empire - dies in typically theatrical fashion … and the mischief that drove his life's work culminates in the bequest of adjoining houses to his pregnant girlfriend, Cressida, and to his former comrade-in-arms, Louise Moon.

But was August's demise simple suicide or was it the result of a kinky sex game that went wrong? Had he cleverly planned to shame his distant father and take revenge on his ruthless uncle, the obese and grasping millionaire who now had his sights set on Louise?

Or was it a game from the grave to throw the two women with whom August had been obsessed into a fight to the death as reluctant and mismatched neighbours?

Pincushion is the third and latest in a series of psychological thrillers that chart the adventures of Louise Moon and her precarious love affair with brilliant but unconventional pathologist and former boss Chas Androssoff.

Powerful in its metaphoric compulsiveness, bleak, disturbing, intelligent … DM Thomas

Excerpt

About the Author

All BeWrite Books are available from: BeWrite Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson and other online booksellers and to order from high street bookshops.

Print ISBN: 978-1-905202-82-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-905202-83-6
Price: £6.99
Pages: 188

Peter Tomlinson - The Genre Strike

One Author Who Believes Pigeon Holes Are For The Birds - Part One

Peter Tomlinson put his literary life on the line when he turned his back on the genre stereotypes agents, publishers and retailers love to slot into their gold-lined pigeonholes – and he’s never looked back.

After bravely ploughing an independent furrow in a field of his own, the first two novels in his Petronicus Legacy series have already been released and the third in the trilogy is under contract and its first draft is complete.

But even with a solid reputation as the author of nearly 300 poems in eighty poetry and short story magazines in the UK and abroad, the path less trodden – avoiding all genre models – was no easy route for Peter. Mainstream houses turned down flat his first four novels and two one-act plays because they didn’t fit neatly into their well-ordered catalogues.

Only when he submitted his fifth novel to an independent press with a more open mind did he pique interest … and not only interest in that book; the publishers were so impressed that they immediately offered a three-book deal for Peter to get to work on following his 80,000-word The Stones of Petronicus with The Time of Kadrik and The Voyages of Delticos to make up a series.

And, said Peter at his home in rural Shropshire: “There are heavy hints that the series won’t end with a mere trilogy.

“You see, each book is absolutely self-contained; the lead characters in each are different, but descendents of characters past, the time setting is different, but is the result of times past, the situations are different, but are extensions of situations past … there’s a common thread of development that bonds them. Making up history as I go along means that I could tie together as many Petronicus books as life allows me to write.”

It’s as though Peter developed a genre of his own when he took his first character, Petronicus the scribe, and placed him in a time and country that, ‘real world’ as it is, can’t be identified … but which is, certainly, a million miles from the land of fantasy.

He said: “There were times when I felt I was getting nowhere as publisher after publisher told me they just weren’t interested in me if I couldn’t produce a book that would fit their lists so that they could easily identify a target readership for the marketing boys and retailers. But I was determined to go my own way.

“So I lowered my sights from the major publishing houses and looked around for a reputable small independent. I found BeWrite Books and we just seemed to click. Far from being frightened off by the fact that the book fitted no established genre, they not only went for it, they immediately signed me up for two follow-ups.

“Stones of Petronicus came out last year, Time of Kadrik was published in the spring, and I’ve just completed the first draft of Voyages of Delticos for a winter release. Together, they’ll make up the trilogy, The Petronicus Legacy.

“The novels are not typecast in the mode of conventional adventure/historical fiction; the location, characters and civilisations described are entirely fictitious. I take readers into places they have never been before and to meet characters they will meet again only in their dreams … or maybe their nightmares, as one reviewer put it.

“The first book follows the theme of a perpetual search for truth and the nature of human existence. All the books explore the relationships between old and young as they complement each other through interaction of enquiring and often precocious youth and the steadier more experienced wisdom of the elder.

“There is no conflict between them except, at times, some understandable impatience. Together they face great dangers as horror and wickedness descends on their idyllic world, and here we see how the combination of youthful energy and mature wisdom triumphs.

“But never could the work be labelled ‘fantasy’, in spite of a touch of the mystical and the introduction of some pretty fabulous creatures. My characters have no magical powers and they face purely human struggles in an earthly landscape. The result is education in its purest form.

“And it couldn’t be written off as ‘adventure’ because so much of the adventure is of the mind. It’s not ‘historical’ because there’s no factual framework. And it couldn’t get by under that vague and confusing ‘literary’ banner because … well, because there’s always a beginning a middle and an end to the stories.

“The books couldn’t even be classified in terms of potential readership; they would appeal as much to young people as to mature adults, as much to a female as a male audience. And if there’s the slightest whiff of ‘coming-of-age’ (another genre these days), you’d be hard pressed to say whether the coming-of-age applies to a young character, an old character or even a whole civilisation.

“In Petronicus, for example, we have the young apprentice to life learning at the side of the master craftsman as the two main characters journey through the joys and tragedies of their lives together.

“Sure, I can understand why it is my books would confound publishers whose first question is ‘what genre?’ But I wasn’t about to compromise my work to squeeze it into a narrowly defined slot to suit commercial trends.”

Although there is conflict and great danger in the lives of the principal characters, Peter avoids falling into the trap of relying on gratuitous violence to carry the story along. The writing creates vivid images in the minds of his readers and he often crafts his writing in terms of acts and scenes in a visual drama. Perhaps unusually for an author, he is predominantly an ‘imager’ and this visualisation – actually being an eye witness to what he creates – is demonstrated in his writing. He has often said that reading is better than watching film; the scenery is better.

In his second novel, The Time of Kadrik, which is set in the same fictional landscape ten generations later, Peter casts his players onto a much wider canvas. Here we are introduced to different characters in a different time. The principal player is Kadrik who we follow from boyhood into maturity as he is forced by catastrophic circumstance to question the beliefs on which the survival of his community depends.

With only his wife to support and encourage him, Kadrik lives through several lonely years until his fate is decided by an inescapable imperative and a resolve that comes to dominate his life. In order to save his community from complete collapse, the very young Kadrik must embark on a perilous journey both geographical and intellectual. He undertakes this journey in the company of three unlikely companions: a nameless outcast and two members of a mysterious humanoid species known as the Men Half Made.

“Even so,’ Peter insists, “I avoid straying into the realms of fantasy. The ‘quest’ is a very human endeavour toward human goals. The Men Half Made are not mythological mermaids; they’re merely an earthly breed apart. And, although I draw heavily on a lifetime of historical research, there can be no confusion between the books in this series and a historical novel because of the way I’ve used what I’ve learned to create an entirely new and fictitious historical base. I’ve travelled widely to research the backdrop to my scenes. But, again, I’ve used what I’ve learned to create a new reality rather than a Neverland. A reader might occasionally think he’s worked out where in the world the characters are playing out their roles – but he’ll soon find that he’s mistaken.”

BeWrite Books editor, Neil Marr, said: “One of the beauties of being an independent press, driven by factors that are by no means entirely commercial, is that we have the freedom to experiment with work that doesn’t necessarily fit some tried and tested, money-spinning formula.

“Peter’s books break new ground – and that’s their problem in the mainstream where genre is all important. Big-business houses – their marketing departments and their retailers – are tied to established best-selling formulas to keep afloat. A small independent like BB is free of those restrictions.

“In the end, it’s the reader who benefits. Peter’s work is consistently at the top of our ‘most reviewed’ lists. Readers who read the first couldn’t wait for the next … and already, we’re getting emails from people desperate to know when the next will be available. These books are fresh, you see. There’s nothing else like them out there."

Read Part Two here

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from The Stones of Petronicus, The Time of Kadrik, The Voyages of Delticos

Visit The Petronicus Legacy site

Click here for Peter Tomlinson's biography

Free eBook download - Disremembering Eddie by Anne Morgellyn

To celebrate the release of Anne Morgellyn's latest Louise Moon novel, Pincushion. BeWrite Books are giving away free eBook copies of Disremembering Eddie. Disremembering Eddie is the first in the Louise Moon series.

Download your FREE pdf copy here. Or it can also be dowloaded from our shop here.

Pincushion will be released on September 6th 2008.

The free download of Disremembering Eddie will be available until 12th September 2008.

Pincushion

Outrageous artist August Stockyard - attention-seeking heir to a media and property empire - dies in typically theatrical fashion … and the mischief that drove his life's work culminates in the bequest of adjoining houses to his pregnant girlfriend, Cressida, and to his former comrade-in-arms, Louise Moon.

But was August's demise simple suicide or was it the result of a kinky sex game that went wrong? Had he cleverly planned to shame his distant father and take revenge on his ruthless uncle, the obese and grasping millionaire who now had his sights set on Louise?

Or was it a game from the grave to throw the two women with whom August had been obsessed into a fight to the death as reluctant and mismatched neighbours?

Pincushion is the third and latest in a series of psychological thrillers that chart the adventures of Louise Moon and her precarious love affair with brilliant but unconventional pathologist and former boss Chas Androssoff.

Removing Edith Mary

Louise Moon is in the removal business … removing bodies.

But when old Edith Mary is unceremoniously hurried to a pauper's grave, Louise finds herself haunted by the living and the dead.

Dogged by a psychotic stalker and ridiculed by her colleagues, Louise risks her career, her love and even her life to discover if unmourned Edith Mary - as anonymous and insignificant in death as she was in life - died of a simple stroke or was murdered.

In an absorbing sequel to her psychological chiller, Disremembering Eddie, Anne Morgellyn explores the meaning of death as seen through the eyes of those in the trade - disillusioned Louise, her cynical and ghoulish, sometime boyfriend, Chas the pathologist, the publicity-seeking show biz psychiatrist, the cost-obsessed corpse disposal boss, the time-serving coroner's officer, the shrewd undertaker.

Morgellyn lifts the shrouds from a fact of life we seldom have the courage to confront and lets us peer into the methods and minds of a shadowy cast of characters whose all-but secret business is death. Disturbingly entertaining. Uncomfortably honest. Unforgettably compelling.

print | eBook

Disremembering Eddie

Mortuary technician, Louise, blows the whistle on former lover, Eddie - a colourful and corrupt government minister.

Then his body is wheeled into her morgue.

She is torn between the new man in her life, the cool pathologist who performs the autopsy, and her obsession to bury all of Eddie, emotionally and physically … even his stolen heart, hidden in a jar behind her washing machine.

In a psychological chiller of suspicion, betrayal, paranoia and guilt, Morgellyn dissects the raging debate surrounding disposal and ownership of corpses and organs. But, more than anything, her book is a post mortem examination of relationships … relationships between the living and the dead.

print | eBook

Free eBook offer ends: 12th September 2008

All BeWrite Books are available from: BeWrite Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson and other online booksellers and to order from high street bookshops.