AMERICAN CIVIL WAR'S DARK CLOAK-AND-DAGGER UNDERBELLY EXPOSED BY FORMER NYPD UNDER-COVER COP

Popular BeWrite Books author John Bray is triple-qualified to have written today’s new release, Code Name: Caleb …

He is a dedicated and expert researcher into the American Civil War; as a former under-cover cop, he has long and first-hand experience of secret infiltration techniques and their deadly dangers; and now, as a full-time author, he displays the talent it takes to write up a storm! 

Code Name: Caleb is the sequel to his gripping Ballad of Johnny Madigan in which penniless Johnny lied about his age to become a Union Army soldier, survives horrific injury in the last of the war’s bloodiest battles in which he fought, and is then recruited by the secret service to risk his life out of uniform … as a spy. Read about The Ballad of Johnny Madigan HERE.

In Code Name: Caleb, Johnny – older than his years, but much younger than believed by the army, battle-hardened and now a master of espionage – is sent back to New York to penetrate an underground counterfeiting gang supplying forged US currency to the enemy South.

His assignment takes him to Canada where a murderous Confederate spy ring is plotting an armed uprising to take over New York City and hold it hostage.

Johnny’s dream is to return to childhood sweetheart, Deidre, who kept his hope alive when he was a destitute youth in the city’s slums, but there is more than the daily risk of sudden death keeping him from her as he enters the very heart of the conspiracy.

Suspected by some plotters, he is seduced by a beautiful woman – herself a key member of the gang – whose orders are to expose him as a Northern agent.

Will the war-toughened, but still romantically naïve, Johnny see through sexy Letitia’s love ploy to complete and survive his vital mission and to be re-united with Deidre, or can the conspirators lower his guard with Letitia’s wily help, make their bold, history-changing plan succeed … and see Johnny dead?

Bray’s immaculately researched and race-paced 'Code Name: Caleb' thrusts the reader into the murky depths of intrigue, plot and counter-plot that became the dark underside of the War Between the States.

Author John A. Bray

John Bray is a seventeen-year NYPD vet, who retired as a lieutenant attorney prosecutor and took early retirement to practice as a crime lawyer before becoming a full-time fiction writer and Civil War researcher. He knows what makes the man who is code-named Caleb.

And John is also author of BeWrite Books’ The Confidential, the first of a series featuring intriguingly-flawed anti-hero Dante Falconieri, a police detective who lives in the murky shadows, assigned to the dirtiest undercover job of all … trapping fellow cops on the take from crime lords. Read about it and download the free brochure HERE.

Code Name: Caleb is now available in all digital editions for all electronic reading platforms (from PCs and laptops, through the full range of ebook readers and tablets to smart phones and iPods) at all major online ebook stores.

It is also available direct from the BeWrite Books Bookstore HERE, and you can download a free mini-ebook brochure, with cover, book notes, author biography and picture, and chapter one HERE.

For those interested in the details … Author: John Bray. Editor: Hugh McCracken. Cover art, text design and technical creation of digital editions: Tony Szmuk. Distribution: BeWrite Books. Additional input: the BeWrite Books in-house team.

Happy weekend, folks. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al at BB

MAGDALENA BALL SCORES A HAT TRICK WITH BEWRITE BOOKS

Magdalena Ball’s third BeWrite Books work chalks up a hat trick for yet another of our outstandingly talented and productive BB authors.

On the heels of her critically acclaimed Sleep Before Evening and ground-breaking Repulsion Thrust science-based poetry collection, we release internationally today – in paperback and all ebook editions – Black Cow.

***

Freya and James Archer live the high life in a luxury home in Sydney’s poshest suburb, with money, matching Jags, two beautiful teenage kids … and they couldn’t be more despondent.

James wakes weeping each morning, dreading the pressures of a long and grueling work day ahead, and Freya is struggling with her foundering real estate career.

Global recession is biting in Australia, and the Archers are afraid.

In a desperate bid for happiness and security they shed the fragile trappings of success and cruise over into the slow lane to take an unmapped turn-off on a country road and live off the land in a remote old farmhouse on the peaceful southern island of Tasmania.

But is this an end to their old misery or the beginning of an even greater one?

The rich poetic and literary quality of Ball’s second novel delves into the lives of very real characters as they dig deeply into both the earth and into themselves to discover where their heartaches are really buried. NM

WHAT EARLY REVIEWERS SAY

Fast-paced, gorgeously-written and stunningly perceptive, Black Cow is not only a great read; it is a timely and important one. Joan Schweighardt. Gudrun’s Tapestry and other novels

A novel of our time. We follow the characters through all the compromises, adjustments and hard choices that must be made in hopes of a life of wholeness and integrity. This is a life affirming story. Judy Johnson. The Secret Fate of Mary Watson

A masterpiece. Ball’s seamless exploration of the faulty human-condition and the urgent notion that money means success is brilliantly interwoven with the gentle quietness of unconditional love, invoking the realization that life is precious, and small enough to cradle in the palm of a baby’s hand. Jessica Bell. String Bridge and Twisted Velvet Chains

***

Author Magdalena Ball

Like her literary work, Magdalena Ball travels well. Born in the USA, she attended an Oxford University in England and later settled with her husband and children in Australia.

Apart from her full-length books, her short stories and poetry have been widely published and praised. Also she heads the expertly astute reading team at the world-popular COMPULSIVE READER literary review website.

Black Cow is available in paperback from all major online stores or on order from your local brick-and-mortar bookshop now (Feb 24). All ebook editions are available direct from the publisher's bookstore (strictly at Recommended Retail Price only) and any leading (and many second-storey) online ebook retailers and from iTunes to be read on all electronic reading platforms from PCs and laptops, through the full range of dedicated ebook-reading devices, tablets and smart phones.

Free downloadable, read-on screen and print-friendly brochures for Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust and Sleep Before Evening are available at the BeWrite Books bookstore HERE. These free mini-books – exclusive to BB – include book notes, author biography and picture, reviews and a generous extract from Magalena's and all other BeWrite Books titles. And because of their ingenious presentation, they're great fun to boot.

For those with an eye to publishing detail – Author: Magdalena Ball. Original cover art: Aaron Jasinski. Editor: Hugh McCracken: Design and technical preparation: Tony Szmuk. Print Distribution: Ingram. Print: Lightning Source. Digital distribution: BeWrite Books. Additional input: The BeWrite Books team.

Happy reading and a wonderful weekend to you all. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al at BeWrite Books.

VISIONARY SF LEGEND KARL KOFOED SAYS THE FUTURE IS NOW!

Double congratulations today to far-seeing and world-renowned Science Fiction artist and author Karl Kofoed.

*The second of his ‘Jupiter’s Reef Trilogy’, The Farthest Reef – sequel to Jupiter’s Reef – is released (Friday Feb 17).

*And Karl becomes the first established BeWrite Books author (with three earlier BB titles under his belt) to use to advantage our new Ebook-First policy with top quality digital editions published before paperback becomes available: A little like the traditional expensive hardback before cheap paperback release system in publishing, only in reverse ... and with much increased author royalties to boot.

(There’s a detailed explanation of BB’s groundbreaking Ebook-First principle on our made-over 2012 website HERE).

In his four decades as a leading light in Science Fiction circles, Karl has always looked far ahead, and with uncanny accuracy of vision ... eyes on the skies, but feet firmly on the ground.

He was the first to tell us: “Gentlemen, the future is today!” His wise words have since become our house slogan.

***

THE FARTHEST REEF

Interplanetary explorer Alex Rose broke all the rules, faced all the dangers, and made the greatest discovery in human history ... life teeming beneath the dense clouds of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

And that’s enough for one man’s lifetime. He thought.

He and his forbidden wife, the gorgeous Sensor clone Mary Seventeen, are in peaceful retreat on Ganymede, awaiting the arrival of their first child.

But their contentment is shattered by urgent orders to take up an even greater challenge: the first faster-than-light mission to another solar system.

Escaping an Earth ravaged by war, the starship Goddard, a gigantic self-contained biosystem with a crew of over a thousand, embarks to the red dwarf Lalande 21185 on its maiden voyage. Alex and Mary must go along, with their shuttle, Diver, to explore the orbiting and ancient gas giant planet, also named Lalande.

Since a reef of complex and possibly intelligent life had naturally evolved on Jupiter, what alien life – or even civilizations – might have developed on a much older planet? Would its existence destroy any chance of Goddard, the Noah’s Ark of mankind – from succeeding? Alex and Mary’s assignment is to find out.

The Farthest Reef is the sequel to Jupiter’s Reef and the second in Karl Kofoed’s ‘Jupiter’s Reef Trilogy’. The series will conclude with release in spring or early summer of The Infinite Reef.

Like his celebrated illustrated work, Kofoed’s writing lures the reader with a palpable and thrilling sense of a world as alien to humans as it is full of wonder … and peril. NM

***

Author Karl Kofoed

Karl Kofoed’s artwork, by the way, contributed to NASA’s recent Cassini Mission to Saturn, providing what the mission chief deemed the most potentially accurate views of the planet’s moons. His unearthly but amazingly prophetic scenic predictions became the water cooler talk of astronomers around the world.

There’s more about Jupiter’s Reef and the new Farthest Reef in the BeWrite Books bookstore HERE, where there are also exciting free mini-ebook brochures containing book notes, author biography and generous extracts, which can be read on screen, downloaded or printed out.

Both titles are available now in all ebook formats for all electronic reading platforms – from PC and laptops, through all dedicated ebook-reading devices, tablets and smart phones – direct from BEWRITE BOOKS or from all major and many independent online ebook retail stores.

You can read about and see more Karl Kofoed’s work, and that of his futuristic jewelry creator wife, Janet, on their website and experience the breath-taking artwork that inspired NASA on its Saturn mission by looking around the site.

INFO. Author: Karl Kofoed. Editor: Hugh McCracken. Cover Image: Karl Kofoed. Design and technical preparation: Tony Szmuk. Additional input: The BeWrite Books team.

Happy weekend, folks. Neil Marr et al at BeWrite Books

NEW RELEASE FROM BEWRITE BOOKS. CEMETERY RIDGE. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR THROUGH ONE PAIR OF EYES

There’s a special place in our hearts for novels of the American Civil War that don’t conform to the traditional and often depersonalizing fictional and factional reconstructions of that horrific conflict.

Civil wars: Surely the most bitter and emotionally devastating wars of all to those who fire their muskets, jab their bayonets and unsheathe their swords and knives against their own countrymen.

Civil wars are not fought, won or lost by the remote politicians who spark their outbreak, but by ordinary folk, plucked from their private lives, loves and dreams, dressed in uniforms, forced into conformity, armed and thrown into baffling and bloody killing fields, every moment frantic with worry about their far off friends and families back home.

Even those who don’t die and who escape physical maiming can hardly be called ‘survivors’ when a civil war is officially declared to be over and political differences settled around conference tables. And they never know what, if anything, will be left of what they long to return to. Civil war more than any other form can leave dead men walking.

I once asked my late grandfather to describe the horrendous WWI battles he’d struggled through (by no means unscathed physically and psychologically). He told me he couldn’t. Because of the blinding smoke, flares and shell bursts, the deafening roar of artillery and the screams of men and horses, and a soldier’s instinctively intense focus on the very next step he takes, he never knew what was happening more than a few feet away.

Whether a battle had been won or lost, an attack successful or failed was unknown to the fighter until an officer 'officially' announced the outcome and recited the lengthy roll call of the day's dead and missing. I’d have to read the books the generals write, he said. They, you see, could stand back and scan the field. Granddad didn’t have their over-view of mass combat – because he was in the midst of it.

But WWI wasn’t a civil war. The War Between the States was fought by boys and men who shared the same language, the same religion, similar backgrounds and home lives ... and often even the same families.

Today’s BeWrite Books’ release of Kirby McCord’s Cemetery Ridge is about human beings: A book for all eras because it goes so far beyond the warmed-over and obvious. It’s about one confused soldier who saw more than most of what civil war really meant to those caught up in it – whether on the battlefield or in small villages and farms far, far away from the infamously bloody clashes recorded by historians.

***

                                             
                                                  In 1863 America is a Vast Graveyard

Confederate soldier Travis Anderson lives in hell. Friends die excruciating deaths and he is wracked by his own private torture as he, in turn, kills his countrymen in horrific face-to-face combat.
 

At the height of his misery and terror he is ordered on the most desperate mission imaginable … to save his beloved Texas from invasion by crossing the embattled land to deliver a secret peace proposal to the enemy.
 

Can the daunting task reconcile his burning doubts and guilt and redeem the honor of a reluctant warrior? Will his passion for a beautiful, married woman free him from his nightmares and exorcise the bloody ghosts that haunt him?
 

Or will his hopes be buried, along with the Dreams of the South, on Cemetery Ridge?
 

Anderson’s odyssey reveals to him and to the reader the horrendous scale of the American Civil War. Misery and horror is not limited to the notorious killing fields of Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. 

Death is everywhere. It inhabits the quaint village of Gainesville, Texas, the tree-dotted hills of Indian Territory, the plains of southern Kansas, the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, the caves of Kentucky, the farms of Indiana, and the highways of Ohio.

                                                                 
                                                                                 ***

Author Kirby McCord

About author Kirby McCord: When he left the fast track of big city life as a real estate attorney in Dallas and moved with his wife to rural East Texas to raise horses, Kirby’s love of history and of writing was re-kindled. He concentrated on researching the American Civil War and even became involved in battle reenactments to get a closer feel for events than intensive book research alone could provide. His debut novel, Cemetery Ridge is the result.

For more information on this book, its author and for a free extract, please click HERE for our mini-ebook, downloadable, print-friendly full brochure (max five seconds to load). Or you can simply read it on screen right now.

Cemetery Ridge is now available from all major online stores in paperback and all ebook formats for all electronic reading devices. You can also buy ebook editions direct from the publisher’s bookstore on the BeWrite Books website homepage HERE.

For anyone interested in those behind this book … Author: Kirby McCord. Editor: Hugh McCracken. Text and cover design and technical preparation: Tony Szmuk: Other input: The BeWrite Books team. International digital distribution: BeWrite Books. International print Distribution: Ingram Book Company.

Best wishes for a happy weekend. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al at BB

FLIPPIN' GREAT -- NEW BEWRITE BOOKS FREE MINI-EBOOKS

BUT BEWRITE BOOKS MINI-EBOOKS ARE FULL-SIZE!

BeWrite Books’ exclusive idea of free mini-ebooks covering all its titles is proving a huge success with browsers, readers and authors ... after just four weeks of the mass launch of well over 100 on New Year’s Day.

The feedback has been flippin’ amazing. And everyone’s a winner.

Each of these wee productions of between thirty and seventy pages carries full-colour cover and includes book notes, reviews, author biography and picture, and a generous extract from the book itself.

They make browsing a pleasure, reader selection foolproof, and are proving a wonderful, easy-to-use promotional tool for authors to boot. It’s the ‘good old days’, 2012-style.

Each title in the BeWrite Books catalogue is now covered by its mini-ebook. They can be read on our website’s bookstore HERE and freely downloaded, printed out or shared on other websites, other blogs, and even in emails by hitting the buttons at the bottom of the displays or simply by copying and pasting their individual URL/s.

Pages can be quickly turned by clicking on the little arrows at either side; but so far, folks -- even died-in-the-wool ebook readers -- tell us they enjoy the special thrill of seeing an ebook look and perform like the old treebooks they used to love. Using a finger or thumb to turn the pages on a touch screen or your cursor on a PC or laptop, the pages curl over like those of a traditional treebook and display two pages at a time like a paperback or hardback.

Just for fun, turn on your sound and you can even hear the cracking ‘paper’ pages as they flip ... hence the name of the special software BB Editorial and Design Director Tony Szmuk used to create them over the closing months of last year, ready for their launch: ‘Flipping Books’.

(I guess the smart US developers of this marvelous, but darned expensive, software were unaware of the fact that ‘flipping’ is a UK euphemism for the other F-word. That’s OK. We’re grown-ups.)

Browsers and readers tell us the mini-ebooks remind them of the unhurried experience and warmth of the old local brick-and-mortar bookshop ... in days of yore when they still had one.

After coming-up six decades as an avid reader and forty-seven as a pro-writer and editor, I no longer have a love affair with print, but if you still feel nostalgic, I just read of an app that actually allows you to smell paper as you read an ebook. Potty but true! No doubt there'll be an app for paper mold stinks and virtual book worm (the insect variety) disintegration of ebook volumes soon.

My IT-pro son, Alex, told me when we were discussing the legitimacy of 1960s and 1970s novels as historical fiction: ‘Get real, Dad; these days youngsters feel nostalgic before lunch about what they had for breakfast.’

If you visit the BEWRITE BOOKS BOOKSTORE, click on any title. That will take you to that book’s individual page. Scroll down to ‘Brochure’, click on that and – voila – you have your free mini-ebook. (Please allow five seconds or so for upload because these are real ebooks in their own right and not mere extra website pages).  For a shortcut, HERE'S AN EXAMPLE.

You’ll notice on the left of the screen display a table-of-contents panel to easily skip to the portion of the mini-ebook you want to see. But if you close this, you will have the book presented at full size and can flip through its pages at leisure. And if you click on ‘full screen’, it’s even more impressive.

By the way, these mini-ebooks are now to be created ahead of a new title’s release. As soon as a book is prepared for publication and a release date is set in stone, the mini-ebook will be created. So you’ll notice a new feature at the foot of our bookstore’s front page: ‘Coming Soon’.

Currently featured is Cemetery Ridge, to be fully released in paperback and all digital editions on February 10. But click on it now and you can read its covering mini-ebook to see if it’s one for you. (It’s HERE if you’d prefer to go direct.)

Have fun with your free mini reads, folks. And happy weekend. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al at BB