It’s Friday…you know what that means! BookChatter tonight at 9PM EASTERN TIME ZONE. This week I’m moderating the chatboard, so PLEASE feel free to pop in and chat while you watch the show! Tonight’s guests: Holly Christine, Red Adept, Eric Mueller, Eddie Wright, Kevin Gerard, Dave Erickson, and Moriah Jovan.

 Backword Books is running a contest!!

Grand Prize: A package of seven books by Backword authors: Homefront by Kristen Tsetsi, Spam & Eggs by Andrew Kent, The Brightest Moon of the Century by Christopher Meeks, Threshold by Bonnie Kozek, Broken Bulbs by Eddie Wright, Waiting for Spring by RJ Keller, and North of Sunset by Henry Baum.

Second Prize: 1 of each goes to 7 different entrants.

The rules: We want to hear your thoughts about self-publishing – a blog post about the merits of self-publishing and how it might change the face of publishing in the future.   What will self-publishing look 25 years from now, 50 years from now?  How has self-publishing made strides in recent years?  That sort of thing.  The drawbacks of self-publishing are welcome as well, but a scathing attack on self-publishing probably isn’t going to do it for us.  Basically, we want to know: What’s your opinion about self-publishing?

The main requirements for the contest are:

1. The post links back to www.backwordbooks.com, as well as the URL for this contest.

2.  We’d also like to hear which book you’d most like to receive from our list – perhaps where you heard about the book first and why it interests you. This will help us choose where to send books for second prize winners.

Please let us know of your entry because we want to compile them all in one place.  We’ll judge entries based on…well, purely subjectively: what we think is a good, well-reasoned post.  We hope it’s a good way to get a discussion about self-publishing spreading throughout the blogosphere.

Deadline for the contest is September 30.  Click here for more details.

Thanks, good luck and have fun!

A group of self-published/indie authors have banded together to make their books available for free in ebook format to deployed soldiers. Detailed information is available at Mark Coker’s Smashwords blog.

If you know a soldier who has an ebook reader, or who is able to read novels on their computer (for example, I have a Mobi Reader on my PC, and I read novels in PDF directly from my computer) and might be interested in this program, please, please, PLEASE click on the above link. Or you can contact me directly either here in the comments section or via email at rjkeller.wfs@gmail.com and I will get you in touch with author Ed Patterson, who is heading up the program.

As of Sunday 800 ebooks have been ‘dropped.’ I am so excited and so proud to be a small part of this program.

Participating authors (if you know of one who is not listed, please let me know and I will gladly add him or her to the list):

Maria E Schneider
Kristen Tsetsi
L.K. Campbell
Elmore Haimes
E.J. Ruek
Leslie Nicholl
Jim Chambers
Kelly Abbell
Chuck Austen (Illustrator)
Willam Woodell
Lloyd Lofthouse
L C. Evans
R. J. Keller
Laura Eno
Moriah Jovan
Andrew Kent
Marva Dasef
Al Past
E. Patrick Dorris
Trish Lamoree
Stanley Morriss
K. Raven Rozier
Sharon Cathcart
Alan Baxter (Australia)
Susan Helene Gottfried
Brandan Carroll
Lisa Pietsch
Joshua T. Calkins-Treworgy
Eugene Docema
S.A. Rule (UK)
Holly Christine
Joe Cottonwood
Sarah Barnard (UK)
Jacamo Petersen
Mike Monahan
Randy Lalonde (Canada)
Joan Szechtman
Wally Rabini
Belinda D’Allessandro (Australia)
Olin Thompson
Jeff Hepple
Tim Chambers
&
Edward C. Patterson

In case you missed it, here’s Friday’s BookChatter.
A fun, and informative, time was had by all!

I said it yesterday, but I’m gonna say it again today:

Several Backword Books members (including yours truly) will be guests on Stacey Cochran’s BookChatter http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bookchatter THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 at 9 PM, EDT. That’s right…well before bedtime!

Join us! Call in! (914) 803-4571

When I say “Join in” I really do mean it. Whether you’re a writer or a reader, this show is for you! If you can’t afford to call, or if you’re just plain shy about having your voice heard ’round the net, you can take advantage of the chat feature at Ustream and ask a question/make a comment that way. You can ask about one of the author’s books (there’s nothing a writer loves more than talking about his or her book), about publishing, self-publishing, or whatever comes to mind at the time.

The more people who participate, the more interesting and fun the show will be. So PLEASE participate!

Several Backword Books members (including yours truly) will be guests on Stacey Cochran’s BookChatter http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bookchatter THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 at 9 PM, EDT. That’s right…well before bedtime!

Join us! Call in! (914) 803-4571

In the meantime, check out our wicked cool new video. Yes, I said “wicked.” And so should you.

I’ve updated the bio at my website and posted a new F.A.Q. there. (Thanks to Kristen Tsetsi for providing the questions.) If you have a question about something not already discussed there, please drop a line in the comments section of this post, or email me at rjkeller.wfs@gmail.com

 I don’t often write book reviews because, to be perfectly honest, I’m not that good at it. But I’ve read so many good books this year by some very excellent indie authors, and I feel very guilty about not doing more to help out both them and their potential readers by shining a spotlight on ’em. So today I’m going to remedy that by telling you about one of my favorite indie books, “Homefront” by Kristen Tsetsi.

The official synopsis:

A cab driving former English professor (Mia), an unpredictable alcoholic Vietnam veteran (Donny), an anti-war soldier (Brian), and a morbid mother in-law (Olivia) come together in this realistic, sensual, and darkly humorous semi-autobiographical tale of waiting through a war deployment.

~~~~

The loved ones they leave behind experience similar psychological traumas that create a very personal homefront war, one often misconstrued by the media — “as well as by those with no first-hand deployment experience — as simple “missing” and “worry.”

Homefront sheds needed light on the highly under-documented internal battles suffered by those left waiting. Each true-to-life character in Homefront (Mia, the professor-turned-cabdriver whose boyfriend deploys to Iraq; Jake, the boyfriend; Olivia, Jake’s mother; Denise, a disgruntled soldier’s wife and friend to Mia; Donny Donaldson, an alcoholic, maybe-Vietnam veteran and Mia’s cab fare) responds to the war in his or her own unique, and painfully intimate, way.

I’ve never experienced someone close to me going off to war. My dad and uncle were both in the military during Vietnam, but that was before I was born. Guys I knew in high school joined up, and were deployed in the first Gulf War. I’ve got cousins who’ve been involved in this war, and I know ‘kids’ from our town who are involved as well. But it’s all so disconnected.

There is no disconnect with “Homefront.” It brings the war home in a way no news report or even memoir could have done. As I read, I became Mia. I slipped inside her skin, and through her into the skins of every woman (or man) whose husband or wife or lover is over there, their lives in danger every moment. It made me understand how it is have your own life so eerily on hold, as your every breath and step and heartbeat wonders, “Is this the day? Is this the moment? Is he gone forever…right now?”…while your own life moves forward anyway. 

 Here’s where you can grab a copy of it for yourself (which I heartily recommend you do):

Backword Books

Smashwords

Scribd (free)

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Powell’s Books

You may remember that I was supposed to post a character bio for Tess yesterday. You may have noticed that I didn’t do so. There is a reason.

I finished the bio and, in fact, scheduled it for posting. I was going to set up a subpage off the Waiting For Spring page for the bios, so that they wouldn’t get lost among the other posts on the main blog. Still, it was looking a little cluttered and wasn’t easily accessible. I put the problem to friend of mine, who came up with an awesome idea. Instead of putting the bios here on my blog, I should create a Waiting For Spring wiki page.

Personally, I think it’s a brilliant idea and am going to take the suggestion. I’ll post the link as soon as I get the site set up. Once it is, I’ll start posting content. The cool part is that readers will be able to post content as well. Whoo hoo!

So stay tuned.

In the meantime, some things you probably didn’t know about Tess:

• Her middle name is Susan. (This fact did not make it past first draft stage.)
• Birthday: November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving.
• Other than a smart-ass mouth, a lack of height and a love of the Boston Red Sox, she inherited nothing from me directly. Believe me when I say that a fictionalized version of my life would be a damned boring book.

In other news, on Friday September 4 at 11pm (Eastern Daylight Time) I’ll be a panelist on Stacey Cochran’s new online tv show, BookChatter. Hopefully this will be a recurring gig. We’re going to try to set up a video link for me, instead of a phone link like last week. If it works I’ll have to wear actual clothes while doing the show instead of my pajamas (like last week). I’ll most likely wear my Mary Kay Suede lipstick, too. Be sure to check it out, and to call in. That would be awesome.

(914) 803-4571

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