WHEN THE SMILE FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS FAKE ... THAT'S CAMERA OBSCURA

Rosanne Dingli’s Camera Obscura – released today, March 23, in paperback and all ebook editions by BeWrite Books – is a thriller reader’s dream, and one photographer’s nightmare.

The very title sets the scene, hinting that behind what the innocent lens sees lies dark mystery, evil and death.

Pages turn at shutter speed as characters snap into life in their desperate bids for discovery and truth and their yearning for understanding and love.

                      
 So, without further ado, here’s what Camera Obscura is about:

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Photojournalist Bart Zacharin’s camera doesn’t lie … but his mysterious new lover Minnie Cuff lies for a living.

Love-struck Bart can’t get that into focus until he follows her from Australia on her flimsily excused trip to Europe and becomes embroiled in an obscure web of international organized crime, deception and murder.

Minnie’s a fake. Her humdrum job as a computer programmer, her deceptively carefree style and her passionate affair with Bart merely provide a plausible front for her sinister role as key player in a ring of ruthless museum raiders and smugglers of priceless artifacts.

Bart tries to take charge in a lover’s fierce hope to reform her on a dash around some of Europe’s most colorful port cities that becomes a frantic race for life itself, with deadly danger throwing its shadow at every twist and turn.

Fast moving yet poignant, Camera Obscura is one hapless man’s struggle with obsessive love that competes with a million-dollar crime empire: a search for meaning and belonging, thwarted by everyday happenstance and misfortune.

As in her previous novels ‘Death in Malta’ and ‘According to Luke’, the characters in ‘Camera Obscura’ become as real as Dingli’s meticulously researched locations. True paintings, stamps, and rare antiquarian books delicately spice pages that seem to turn in the wind as her breakneck-speed story keeps the reader in chair-edge suspense, right up to a startlingly unforeseen and unforgettable climax. NM

A plot as convoluted as the winding streets of Malta; a breath of the Mediterranean from various venues; two people – one abandoned, one exploited – searching for a primal need: the love of a father. And each, in his own way, finding it.

Particularly telling are the author’s descriptions: “Their red tail lights tunneled away through the narrow street,” and “He needed silence: he needed noise;” and, “… he spoke into the square ahead of him, the words entering the narrow street before him, ahead of the clatter of his feet.” Lovely, graceful sketches, each with a definite edge, intrigue the reader at every turn.

Reading such lines is very much like wading into a pond and stepping into an unexpected hollow, over one’s head, into depths never imagined. Dingli’s use of language does not impede the flow of her story; rather, it lends richness to the narrative, calling upon sensory and philosophical reader-identification that propels the story forward on several multilayered levels.

A sophisticated, smart, and deeply engaging novel that should attract readers everywhere.
                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                             Simon Lang
                  (Simon Lang is the nom de plume of acclaimed US author and script writer Darlene Artell Hartman)

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Camera Obscura is available in print and ebook editions now from all major online bookstores. A free thirty-page mini-book brochure including cover, book notes, reviews, author biography and picture, and a generous extract can be read, downloaded or printed out HERE.

Rosanne Dingli, who has a personal blog, is the award-winning author of six collections of short stories. Her previous novels – each published by BEWRITE BOOKS – are Death in Malta and According to Luke. They are available in print and ebook editions everywhere and details and free mini-book brochures are at the BeWrite Books BOOKSTORE.

Author Rosanne Dingli

Born in Malta and extensively traveled, full-time author Rosanne is dedicated to the thorough historical and location research that pepper her spell-binding work to add that vital dash of irrefutable authenticity. She now lives in Western Australia.

For those interested in the details: Author: Rosanne Dingli. Editor: Hugh McCracken: Cover art, text design and technical preparation: Tony Szmuk. Extra input: The BeWrite Books team. Print Distribution: Ingram: Ebook Distribution: BeWrite Books Digital Distribution Division.

Happy reading and a relaxing weekend, folks. Neil, Tony, Hugh and Sam at BeWrite Books,

IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD WHILE ALL OTHERS ...

I've heard it said by men wiser than I'll ever be that if you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs ... then you simply don't understand the problem.

Well, I guess Tony Szmuk and I don't understand the problem, or the current panic in the publishing industry; especially at the small independent houses.

Let's see: What don't we understand? Why are we keeping our heads? Why are we making all the wrong moves as a result?

*Wise men say: The end of traditional publishing is nigh because of the threat posed by the mushrooming ebook culture. Publishers simply aren't geared up for such drastic change. It's taken them by complete surprise. No fair ... no fair!

BeWrite Books says: We've been covering all titles with ebooks from the very start. We invested  early this year in new hardware and software and are well into converting every title in our cataloge into various formats that can be read on ALL digital reading platforms from PCs to dedicated-ebook-reading devices to smart phones.

*Wise men say: Smaller publishers without an official US presence must use a third-party US 'publisher' to place their ebooks in the massive new US online ebook stores for Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's PRS series, Apple's iPad, etc, etc, and pay IRS tax at source, or wrap up the digital side of their houses.

BeWrite Books says: We've been onto this for six months, and with the expert  advice and assistance of specialised US lawyers, our additional official registration as a US publishing house came through last week. We can now deal direct with ALL online ebook stores.

*Wise men say: Latin America and China are out of reach to smaller independent publishing houses.

BeWrite Books says: So far this year, our agent in China has placed six BeWrite Books titles with major publishers for translation and mass-run paperback on the Chinese mainland and BB had over seventy titles exclusively represented at last week's massive Beijing International Book Fair. Our own BeWrite Books English/Spanish agency for Latin America opens later this year.

*Wise men say: Publishing Down Under is dying. Publishers are pulling out or simply expiring in droves. It's On  the Beach. It's the end of days. Run away ... run away!

BeWrite Books says: Our fully-staffed Australian bureau opens in Adelaide in October/November to cover Oz, New Zealand and Pacific Rim countries. We closed a deal for print and distribution there in August.

*Wise men say: Especially for 'unknown authors' self-publishing is the only option now. Publishing houses can no longer afford to take the risk.

BeWrite Books says: The number of submissions by 'unknown authors' to our house has more than doubled. this year. Our editorial and release schedules for the rest of 2010 and most of 2011 are full of books by debut novelists.

*Wise men say: Things will never be the same in publishing.

BeWrite Books says: You only just noticed?

*Wise men say: Only fools rush in.

BeWrite Books says: Right on. But the late Sir Robert Baden-Powel told his scouts ... be prepared!

So that's it in a nut shell. See why we're keeping our heads? It's not because we don't understand the problem. It's because there is no problem. We foresaw the change ten years ago and got ready to embrace it, not to be taken by surprise and be reduced to panic.

Cheers, chums. Neil

Author Enemy Number One Isn't Piracy ... It's Obscurity

From the fables of Aesop and the earliest books of the Bible, through Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Douglas Adams, this writing life has always been about making words stick. Literature is an inexhaustible goldmine of quotable quotes.

One simple line that registered with me recently, though, wasn't from a great man of letters at all, but from hard-nosed business scribe Seth Godin in the US. He said: "The enemy of the author is not piracy but obscurity."

Simple, memorable, to the point ... and oh so bloody true!

Take ebook piracy, for instance. The big boys of the publishing industry are frantically trying to safeguard their investments by slapping Digital Rights Management padlocks and geographical restrictions on their best sellers. At least, war on piracy is their official line.

Who're they trying to kid? The rawest young intern in the mail room knows that it's just as easy to scan and pirate a paper book as it is to hijack an electronic copy online. The most pirated books are, in fact, books that have not even been officially published in digital form. (JK Rowling, who flatly refuses to allow her publishers to release ebooks of her Harry Potter series has seen all her novels offered as free ebook downloads all over the net in all digital formats, available within hours of official launch of hardback, courtesy of the pirates.)

We've said this before, so I won't go into detail again, but -- in a nutshell -- DRM and geographical restrictions do not discourage piracy as is claimed, they merely greatly inconvenience the honest customer, garner superfluous sales ... and actively encourage frustrated readers to turn to the black market.

So that's out of the way. Piracy ain't the enemy.

But what about obscurity? How about those brilliant authors whose names are so massively and universally unknown that no self-respecting pirate would even bother to run up his Jolly Roger to give chase?

How do we turn an author into someone worth ripping off? What's the recipe for buccaneer bait?

Answers on a postcard please ... Neil