Swimming with the Fishies!

Another buddy of mine over at From the Write Angle is publishing his ebook! Pete Morin's Diary of a Small Fish is now available. Pete has an awesome sense of humour and this is sure to be a great book. Here's the blurb:

When Paul Forte is indicted by a federal grand jury, everyone suspects prosecutor Bernard (don’t call him “Bernie”) Kilroy has more on his mind than justice. Then the FBI agent in charge of Paul’s case gives him a clue to the mystery: Kilroy is bent on settling an old family score, and he’s not above breaking the law to do it.

Paul is already dealing with the death of his parents and divorce from a woman he still loves. Now, with the support of an alluring grand juror, Paul must expose the vindictive prosecutor’s own corruption before the jury renders a verdict on his Osso Buco.
 
Sounds great, doesn't it?
 

Pete Morin has been a trial attorney, a politician, a bureaucrat, a lobbyist, and a witness (voluntary and subpoenaed) to countless outrages. He combines them all in this debut novel.
Pete’s short fiction has appeared in NEEDLE, A Magazine of Noir, Words With Jam, 100 Stories for Haiti, and Words to Music. He published many of them in a collection titled Uneasy Living, available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When he is not writing crime fiction or legal mumbo jumbo, Pete plays blues guitar in Boston bars, enjoys the beach, food and wine with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two adult children, and on rare occasion, punches a fade wedge to a tight pin surrounded by sand or water. He lives in a money pit on the seacoast south of Boston, in an area once known as the Irish Riviera.

Pete is represented by Christine Witthohn of Book Cents Literary Agency.
 
Here are the links where you can check out Diary of a Small Fish! It's only $2.99! :)
 
Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
 
It's so exciting to have another friend step into the ebook waters. I'm buying a ton of ebooks lately. How about you? Have you been reading more books electronically too?

Straddling Genres

I'm over at From the Write Angle today talking about what to do if your story straddles more than one genre. How do you address that in your query letter? I hope you'll pop on over and join in the discussion.

I've turned off the comments here in the hope you'll hop on over there :) Thanks!

Worst Movie Ever!

Ninja blogger Alex J. Cavanaugh is at it again. This time we're talking the WORST movies ever. So much fun! Be sure to check out Alex's place for the links to other participants! :)

Okay, I have to preface this by saying I don't watch tons of movies. I tend to wait them out and find out what the reviews are before I watch them. So I haven't actually seen that many terrible ones. But...

I'm a big Star Trek fan. This is not a secret. However, even I was bored out of my skull during most of the first Star Trek movie made. I think I almost fell asleep in the scene where they flew over V'ger - longest, most boring scene ever. The best thing about this movie? They didn't give up and actually made more - so I got to see Wrath of Khan! :)

I don't remember it very well, but when we were little, we watched The Blob with my family. It was supposed to be a horror movie (I think - unless it was supposed to be a parody??), but we laughed all the way through it. :)

Those are 2 of the worst movies I've seen. How about you? What's the worst movie you've watched?

If I Could Be...

The wonderful Talli Roland is releasing her 2nd book in ebook format today. Of course you remember her great debut novel, The Hating Game. Her new book is Watching Willow Watts and it is fabulous!! The main character, Willow, decides to take on the identity of Marilyn Monroe in the book, so Talli thought it would be fun to have a blog party finding out who we'd like to be. Check out Talli's blog for a list of everyone who is participating today :)

In reality, I'd choose to be myself, but I love this kind of thing, so let's play. Lots of choices immediately come to mind. Michaelangelo, whose mind would be an incredible place to visit. Roberta Bondar the first woman Canadian to travel in space. Nora Roberts whose books have brought such enjoyment to so many. JRR Tolkein so I could live in the mind that created Middle Earth. Billy Joel or Elton John - to know the power of such musical talent. Jacques Cousteau whose explorations of the sea are legendary. Jane Goodall. David Suzuki. My grandmother...

And then there are the characters: Anne Shirley. Jo March. Sam Gamgee. Katniss Everdeen. Maniac Magee. Nancy Drew. Hercule Poirot.

So many great choices! I should probably choose a real person, but, for today (I might change my mind tomorrow!) I'd choose to be...

Lessa from Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern series. I've loved this series for years. Can you imagine riding a gold dragon and fighting thread? Lessa didn't lead the easiest life - none of dragon riders do - but it was also full of challenge, joy, and dragons! Love it! (I'm frest out of dragon rider leathers, so I took the easy way out and posted a picture instead!)

Don't forget to check out Talli's new book - here's the link to Amazon.com.
So, tell me, who would you be?

Virdis

My good friend, Calista Taylor, has released her first novel! Virdis is a wonderful steampunk mystery laced with a hot and steamy (pun most definitely intended!) romance.

The main character, Phoebe, creates an herbal, Virdis, which entrances the elite of Victorian London because of the way it enhances the senses. Phoebe's a fabulous character - she's strong and intelligent and she refuses to be constrained by the strict Victorian rules. You're going to love her!

When one of the guests at Phoebe's club is murdered and her lover (who happens to be a very handsome charming tinkerer) returns from a mission to help the Cause, Phoebe's life is thrown into chaos. And the stakes get upped from there. Calista comes up with incredible twists and turns in the plot and she's not afraid to tackle any subject. Kind of reminds me of Phoebe... :)

Calista herself is incredibly creative. She created the fabulous cover herself. She's also currently working on a steampunk craft book - and she's making all the crafts herself. This book will be published by Fox Chapel Publishing - the tentative date is May 2012. I can't even sew on a button...

Virdis is currently available on Amazon for $0.99 and for FREE on Smashwords. Click on the links to take you there. The 2nd book in the Virdis series will be available soon, so you won't have long to wait! Enjoy!

Oops!

As you probably know, I'm not the savviest person when it comes to html and technical issues. I can do a lot of computer things well, but these things... not so much. Our family motto often is, "Technology hates me..." Yeah, not great as mottos go, but often accurate. :)

So, somehow someone attached some nasty html stuff (malware) to my blog. Several kind souls left me DMs and emails letting me know there was a warning up when they hit my blog. I'd never heard the word malware and when I checked out my blog, I couldn't see anything wrong.

I Googled the problem and found some helpful sites. The first scan told me there were no viruses. The 2nd said I had 'suspicious' html attached to my blog. Hmmm....

I Googled some more. Then I had to verify I owned the blog. Surprisingly difficult to do. Especially because the code they gave me didn't work. And then I had to insert html into the code section of the blog template - you know the section - the one with the nonsense words, letters, numbers running around knowing more than me. Yeah, that one. I had to find a spot and insert code.

And cross my fingers, toes, eyes & nose when I pressed Save Changes. I tend to break universes when I Save Changes. Surprisingly it (finally) worked. That of course took a while and only verified I owned the blog.

The technical explanations on how to find & safely remove malware are written in... okay, I'm not sure what language it is, but I don't speak it. (I REALLY need to take a course.)

I eventually guessed deduced that the problem was hiding in my blog roll. So, my apologies, but the blog roll had to go. I've since rescanned my blog and it says Clean (yay!!!). The Google Gods & Goddesses haven't emailed me back yet, but the warning screen appears to be gone.

So I hope no one else gets this malware thingy, but I thought I'd warn you that it's going around. I've heard of several people who've had it.

I run daily virus scans and update my virus thingy everyday. That didn't seem to matter. I don't know how it happened, so I don't know what advice to give. Just thought I'd warn you! Hope you stay safe!

Back to Business

Wow! Labour Day weekend is here. Hard to imagine. Summer has FLOWN by -- again. Can't be because I keep getting older can it???

My summer was filled with...

A lot of this,

A little of this,

A LOT of this,

A whole bunch of this,

A lot of this too (I revamped my whole Math program)

And best of all, lots and lots of this,

So what was your favourite part of summer? Are you ready for fall?