BREAKING NEWS: Books (2)

Sympathy for the Troll

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:24:45 +0000

During the Q&A after the US premiere of Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, last fall at the New York Film Festival, someone asked about his interest in shit. The provocation was not altogether inappropriate: Carax’s forty-two-minute essay film begins, after all, with Monsieur Merde, a recurring character in three of his last four major films. With overgrown nails […]

Interview With Author Dean Jeffrey Kropp

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 13:36:00 +0000

1. What inspired you to write this book?

I am originally from the Chicago land area. I grew up with plans to play baseball for the Chicago Cubs or White Sox during the season and be an auto mechanic during the winter months in Florida. Fate had other plans for me as I started cooking professionally in 1976. After culinary school which finished in 1979, I was trained by a Swiss-German pastry chef in the art of pastry making. Throughout my 25-year career in the kitchen being the pastry chef in 400-room hotels and cooking for movie stars on sets, I competed in culinary competitions. Competing in these competitions took a lot of time and energy besides working 10 to 12 hours a day, six-days a week in the kitchen. So, I set out to discover who, what, when, where and why these culinary competitions started in the first place.

2. What exactly is it about and who is it written for?

This book is about how this culinary competition event began in 1900, Frankfurt, Germany. I mixed in the restart of the Olympic Games in 1896 as I take the reader through the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s and how the Culinary Olympics were restarted post-World War II. The book is written for chefs, about chefs, and for the future of the culinary arts. It is also written for the audience that likes to watch cooking competitions on TV.

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

I hope that readers will have a new understanding of what chefs go through in order to come up with new menu ideas to present to their patrons. It isn't easy to make a menu today for a restaurant. There are many issues with food now and many allergies that patrons suffer with physically. So, chefs have to consider all of these alternatives when organizing a menu. Competing gives the chefs a chance to get out of the kitchen, come up with new menu ideas, and see what other countries are cooking, along with food trends that are coming up in the culinary arts, as well.

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

I was inspired by a photo I discovered from a 1950s chef's magazine that had a chef pouring sauce on the world. I translated that photo to reflect my pastry background and I wanted to keep the title simple and easy to remember. I know from my marketing research that the public didn't know about this event. So, it's a secret, until now. I am exposing the secret in the book.

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

Very funny and true. Just run! I would say always write from the heart. But consider this, they have to start marketing before the book is published because marketing is very complicated now. The Internet has thrown an axe into the entertainment industry. This includes everything from podcasts to books, TV and movies. All of the different platforms that have developed, due to the Internet, have created their own satellite orbits, as I call them. It is the job of the marketeer to figure out where and what satellite markets they want to get into and then proceed to make those connections to start the marketing process. Or go and climb Mount Everest, then the marketing may not seem so difficult to conquer. I also highly recommend producing a book promo video so their readers get a taste of who they are in person. Here's the link to my video; https://youtu.be/Rhx5F7TFp2M

6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading?

This answer is anybody's guess. From what I have seen so far, the book world will become a bit more complicated because there are people out there who say they can publish your book and/or promote your book for a lot of money, but they don't have the experience to accomplish that part of the deal, or they don't have the connections either. These people are only eager to get their hands on your money. Be careful who you pick to work with today for tomorrow. Business has become complicated because the writer rarely gets to meet the publisher or editor in the book market of today, which adds to the anxiety of writing a book.

7. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book?

I had to live the life of a pastry chef and compete in American Culinary Federation sanctioned cooking competitions as well as compete at the Culinary Olympics in Germany. So if I hadn't lived that life, there is no way I could have come up with the book. The American Culinary Federation was formed in 1929 in New York City. They have about 14,000 chef members today.

8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?

I don't compare my writing style to anybody else because I am breaking new ground with this book. If I had to give an answer for this question, I would say it's similar to the book, Olympics in Athens 1896—The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. I only say this because that book is historically documenting the restart of the Olympic Games which is what I did with my book, documenting the start of the Culinary Olympics in 1900. By no means am I a scholar or accomplished professor. I am the Dean of Chefs. I know a lot about the culinary arts and I am sharing my knowledge with the world.

9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

My career ended abruptly in 2000 after suffering critical injuries from a car accident. Then a second car accident in 2004 finished me off. So, my running joke is, "The first car accident knocked me out and the second car accident finished me off." I endured years of physical rehabilitation to pull myself back together. I rejoined the Big Apple Chapter in 2010 in order to get some kind of feeling that my life was back to normal. I produced the newsletter for six years for the organization. If I never went back to the chefs' association, I would have never been told about four books that were donated by Chef Arno, a chef member of the association. He donated these four books—that floated over the Atlantic from Frankfurt to New York City in the 1960s— to the Culinary Institute of America. These books are from 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902, that Herr Banzer published back in Germany. They were the original books from the German Chefs' Association in Frankfurt. They documented how the Culinary Olympics started and what teams came to compete at the event in 1900. I wouldn't have the history of the event if I had just given up back then. Besides, I beat colon cancer in 2010 too. So I had to carry on with my life and make it count.

10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

TV producers want their viewers to think that cooking competitions on TV are new. Maybe they are new to the viewing public, but they are not new to the arena of the competing chef. I am inspired by what people go through in order to get something started that might work or not work. Read my book to get inspired to accomplish something with one's life, no matter how big or how small it is, everything matters. There are many people in the cemeteries with unfinished dreams. Conquer your dreams and you might make the world a better place.

About The Author: A Grand Marnier soufflé for Bill Cosby, stuffed cabbage rolls for Hulk Hogan, a velvety chocolate mousse for John Belushi, latticed apple flan for Demi Moore, glazed salmon ala parisienne for James Earl Jones, veal casserole for Hockey great Wayne Gretzky, and steak tartare for Dave Thomas of Wendy’s. European trained pastry/catering chef Dean Kropp has catered to the stars. After graduating from the JJC Culinary Arts Program in Joliet, where they shot Prison Break, Dean has held a wide range of posts, both domestic and abroad. For example, he was Executive Pastry Chef at both the Wyndham Rose Hall in Montego Bay (Jamaica) and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, former stamping ground of Elvis. Kropp competed in culinary competitions from garde manger—cold food to pastry—where he won bronze to gold medals. Now he has used his culinary training to write about the history of the Culinary Olympics. The name of the book is—The Cooking Olympics-World’s Best Kept Secret. Kropp went to the extent of recreating recipes for his book, then linking a QR code for each recipe, so the reader can watch the Dean of Chefs in action cooking each one on YouTube.

For more info, please see: youtube.com/@thedeanofchefs

Do You Need Book Marketing & PR Help?

Brian Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, with over four million page views, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over four million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” Copyright 2025.

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

“Other Everests: one mountain, many worlds”

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:56:46 +0000

Released in late 2024, 100 years after the most infamous mountaineering event in history, Other Everests: one mountain, many worlds is not a retelling of the Mallory expedition, but rather an attempt to widen the framing of Everest beyond western mountaineering exploits. Everest has often been seen through the eyes of western explorers and been limited to tales of heroic exploration. This book is a direct attempt to change that and bring “together new perspectives on the historical and cultural significance in the modern world.”

The book is a collection of 16 diverse articles on Everest that range from histories of indigenous labor force to women on Everest to how performers of contemporary theatre are working to “decolonize” Everest. These varied perspectives provide unique viewpoints on the world’s largest mountain and contain some great new academic contributions.

Other Everests: One mountain, many worlds, Paul Gilchrist, Peter Hansen, Jonathan Westaway (eds) (University of Manchester Press, November 2024)

The first chapter focuses upon the etymological history behind the Tibetan name for Everest, Chomolungma, and explains the mountain is named after the goddess of the same name who in Tibetan belief was integral to the “broader sacred geography that stretches across the Himalaya and back through multiple Buddhist lineages and community histories.” The Nepali name Sagarmatha was promoted by Baburam Acharya in 1939, was unlikely to have been used much or at all by locals until it was officially adopted by the Nepali government in the early 1960. While it’s now internationally still known as Everest, there was even a short-lived proposal to name it Mount Elizabeth after the Queen following the first ascent by Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

One chapter focuses on the role that expeditionary archives, such as those belonging to the Alpine club or Royal Geographic society, can have on research. Research on the contents of such archives can “offer potentially powerful corrective to some enduring myths about exploration and mountaineering in the age of empire.” The analysis of archives of porters and equipment logs can “yield evidence of stories and perspectives that go beyond those of the climbers themselves.” This can also be used to cross check potentially fanciful claims made by climbers.

There are chapters on “occidental escapism in the high Himalaya” which over time have led to a cultural “imagined geography of the Himalaya as a fabled, far away frontier.” One chapter focuses on indigenous labor forces operating on Everest from 1921 and 1953 and attempts to introduce often overlooked local perspectives, particularly for Sherpa women. A chapter on the 1979 Slovenian Everest expedition explains that the expedition generated a powerful sense of nationalism during the Yugoslav period. It allowed Yugoslavia to highlight its separation from the USSR, and the expedition received generous government support “so that Yugoslavia could show the world during the cold war that it was autonomous and successful with its own political and ideological activity.”

Other chapters focus on how mountaineering has changed in Everest in recent decades as part of a “series of profound transformations reshaping contemporary alpinism in Nepal.” Another chapter focuses on the female climbers and the how perceptions of hyper-masculinity are often forced upon female climbers.

While the diversity of the chapters is a strength, it does mean the book occasionally lurches from vastly different topics and some articles are stronger than others. It is also important to note that few of the contributors are either Tibetan or Nepali.

Everest’s role in the world is far more complex and diverse than being a mere backdrop for Western climbers, and the book provides numerous examples of not just how important it is, but also highlights how much space there is for new, innovative theoretical and academic approaches to it.

Maximillian Morch is a researcher and author of Plains of Discontent: A Political History of Nepal’s Tarai (1743-2019) (2023)

PaperBack: “One Grave Too Many”

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 19:04:00 +0000

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.

One Grave Too Many, by Ron Goulart (Ace, 1974). The last of four novels featuring Southern California private eye John Easy.

Cover illustration by Tom Adams.

Israel: Life By the Sword

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 17:56:52 +0000

Toward the end of October 2023 I was taking a taxi home in Tel Aviv. Just after we entered Shapira neighborhood, near the central bus station, the driver turned on the radio to the ongoing terrible news from the south. The Israeli ground operation in Gaza had just begun; there were heavy fights around Beit […]

Bluesky Dreaming

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:58:00 +0000

I’ve had it with Elon Musk. Since his acquisition of the social networking site Twitter (sometimes known as X) in 2022, the South African billionaire car-maker and conspiracy nut has turned what was once a useful Web service into a haven for right-wing hatemongers and disinformation purveyors. His reprehensible embrace of convicted felon and sexual predator Donald Trump in last year’s U.S. presidential race, and his efforts ever since (as some kind of unelected co-president) to undermine our nation’s democratic processes, have turned many stomachs, my own included.

Other than by voting and by protesting (both collectively and singularly), there’s sadly little I can do to stop Musk’s destructive endeavors. But I don’t have to support them—and I would be doing so were I to remain a contributor to Twitter.

I joined Twitter years ago, together with Facebook and Google+ (the last of which shut down in 2019). Although I’m not a busy social-media user (I don’t post my favorite recipes or cute photos of cats), I thought those sites might help me to promote the latest additions to my Rap Sheet and Killer Covers blogs. Back then, Twitter was a relatively more responsible platform, willing to prevent or at least flag the dissemination of propaganda. I found it even brought some new readers to my blogs. However, Musk’s purchase of the site and his subsequent elimination of guardrails curtailed my interest. The last time I posted to The Rap Sheet’s X page was in April 2024, and I won’t be putting up anything else while Musk is in charge.

This week I debuted a new Rap Sheet page on Bluesky, a rival “microblogging service” that was launched in 2019 and has grown dramatically since Musk assumed control of Twitter. It claims to have more than 29 million users so far. That’s far fewer than the 106 million Americans said to spend time on X, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. And visiting Bluesky doesn’t make me want to take a shower afterward. It’s actually very muck like pre-Musk Twitter, but with a more upbeat air, fewer trolls, and less political rancor. (There are still those pesky cat shots, though. They’re inescapable!)

Undoubtedly, there will be naysayers. People who contend that Musk and his agitprop machine simply cannot be beaten, and that alternatives on the order of Mastadon, Threads, Bluesky, and others will eventually lose their value as draws for dissenters. They may be correct. In the meantime, though, there’s plenty of space on the Internet for these services to take their shots at success.

I’ve posted only a handful of things on The Rap Sheet’s Bluesky page to date, mostly links to stories that have already appeared in the blog. As with every new toy, though, one can’t help playing with it, experimenting to see what it can do, so expect more from it in the near future. Thus far, the page has only 21 followers, a fraction of the 581 who were keeping track of the old Twitter page. But abandoning Musk in his hour of greed is well worth that loss!

Come join me, if you’d like!

The Ungovernable Economy

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:26:27 +0000

“Capitalism is predicated on atomized individuals, democracy on shared publics,” writes Trevor Jackson in the Review’s January 16 issue. Reviewing Martin Wolf’s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Jackson examines capitalist democracies past and present to find where the economic system of capitalism and the political system of democracy have aligned and where they have diverged. […]

Julie Strong, author of The Tudor Prophecy

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 14:00:31 +0000

I wanted to write a fictional happy ending to my own tumultuous childhood. From a long distance.

Julie Strong – 25 January 2025

The Back Flap

England, 1541. An ailing Henry VIII reigns from a contested throne. In parallel story lines, The Tudor Prophecy follows two young women, Lady Alice Grantmire and Hester Vaughan, cousins who each suffer greatly from the King’s unjust decrees. Lady Alice and her mother are evicted from their estate and take residence in a cottage where they earn a subsistence selling herbal remedies–until they are accused of witchcraft. After being molested by the King, Hester is summoned to her estranged father’s home in Wales. There she becomes betrothed to a Welsh bard whose mentor has visions foretelling the ascendancy of Henry’s second daughter, Elizabeth. When Hester encounters the eight-year-old Lady Elizabeth, the two forge a relationship whereby Hester can persuade the future queen to temper her own rule with mercy. This epic, literary tale–a Game of Thrones meets Little Women–is also for readers who loved the Wolf Hall trilogy by Booker-Prize winner Hilary Mantel.

About the book

What is the book about?

The Tudor Prophecy is an historical novel which tells the story of two young women who traverse the perilous times of the English Reformation.

It opens in spring, 1541 when the main protagonist, Hester Vaughan, lives with her uncle, Sir Hugh Grantmire, his wife, Lady Maud and daughter Lady Alice, in their home near London. Hester, guilt-ridden over the death of her mother in childbirth thirteen years before, cares for her younger brother, Dickon, who suffers from epilepsy. Sir Hugh is arrested for adhering to the Roman faith and when his family is evicted, Dickon faces incarceration in Bedlam hospital. Hester, trained in herbalism, gains an audience with Henry VIII; she hopes to heal his agonizing leg ulcers, and that, from gratitude he will marry her. Instead, he molests her. While Hester is unconscious, he thrusts a precious ruby ring into her dress pocket.

Alice falls in love with Sir William, a young, dispossessed nobleman she meets at court, but then she and Lady Maud are forced from their home. The women and Dickon find shelter in a cottage and eke a subsistence selling herbal remedies until a neighbor denounces them as witches. William is arrested for wounding a constable and imprisoned in Newgate gaol.

Hester’s dying father recalls her to his home in North Wales where she falls in love with Gareth, a young bard. Gareth’s teacher tells him that Hester will play a role in the ascension of Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth. Hester’s Welsh uncle plans to attack Henry, and believes his gods will smile on him only if he sacrifices a virgin of his own kin. Hester narrowly escapes but is married off to her cousin who tortures her to obtain the ring. Gareth rescues Hester and takes her to Holywell, a healing shrine , where the nuns restore her to health. There Hester meets eight-year-old Lady Elizabeth. They form a relationship based on their common experience of early mother loss. Hester persuades Elizabeth to temper her future rule with mercy. Hester and Gareth wed and return to North Wales.

William escapes from gaol and he and Alice marry. The couple and Dickon travel to Wales where they reunite with Hester.

When did you start writing the book?

1999

How long did it take you to write it?

25 years

Where did you get the idea from?

The softness of the clothing; the velvets inspired me to write about Tudor dresses.

I wanted to write a fictional happy ending to my own tumultuous childhood. From a long distance.

No better place than the Reformation for tumult.

My heroines have different characters and different motivations, but after several terrifying experiences find love and peace.

I wanted to show the grief that giving up the beliefs of the Roman Catholic church caused the ordinary people.

The goddesses have always been dear to me. And the Welsh goddesses persisted in the Welsh people’s imagination, when English goddesses were long forgotten.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

The book is two thirds the length of the first three drafts. I struggled to choose which parts to cut out to make it less than 500 pages.

It was hard to synchronize the two heroines’ parallel story lines.

What came easily?

The writing itself.

Imagining how the historical figures would behave under given circumstances.

Researching the culture of 16th century England, such as dress, food, customs, beliefs, remedies, and manners of the time.

Creating the fictional characters, especially the two heroines, and giving them desires, and in the case of Hester, an underlying desire (she thinks she wants power, what she really wants is love) and having them undergo terrible hardships to bring about their fulfilment.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

I used some elements of my early childhood in creating Hester.

Do you have a target reader?

Chiefly women ages 15 and up.

But anyone interested in the consequences to English society of the Reformation or who just wants to read an exciting, uplifting story.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I write free hand whatever comes into my mind without censoring it.

I try to include dialogue but without stopping to put in quotation marks or attribution.

I do this in the morning, then later in the day type up on computer, doing some light editing as I transcribe.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

Once I have characters and some idea of what I would like to happen I just write, and if my characters disagree with me, I let them take the reins.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I do the light editing in transcribing, and will edit a chapter, if I have left gaps for certain details, like dates of events. But the main editing is once I’ve finished.

Did you hire a professional editor?

I did when the book was in its first draft, 18 years ago. Although I received excellent feedback it was far too early in the writing process for it to make sense to hire a professional editor.

A year ago, when I realized I wanted to publish the novel during my lifetime, I hired a professional editor. It was a very positive move and made all the difference between having a manuscript and an actual book.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

No. I prefer total silence when I write.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

Four years ago I queried a few agents.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

I had been attending Anne O’Connell’s (of OC Publishing) Paradise Writing Retreats in Nova Scotia for about seven years and had a sense I would like her to publish my novel. It was in October of 2023 that Anne had invited Marianne Ward, her Associate Publisher, to talk about the editing process.

It was during that talk that I felt that the time had come to bring my novel to light, so worked with Marianne for ten months editing the manuscript, until it was ready for publication.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

It was professionally done. As part of the process with OC Publishing, they contracted Rebecca Wilson, a local artist to create the cover image, and David Edelstein, lead designer at OC Publishing designed the book cover and interior.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

Part of the partnership agreement with OC Publishing includes marketing support during the months leading up to the launch of the book, including a virtual book tour. There are also sell sheets that go out to select bookstores, assistance in developing my author profile for Amazon Author Central and Goodreads (hopefully up soon), an author webpage on the publisher’s site with links to the sales pages at Amazon and other online retailers, assistance in setting up social media (such as an author page on Facebook), sending out advance review copies to podcasters, bloggers, and reviewers, and we have scheduled a launch party for January 25th, the day The Tudor Prophecy is released. I hope to have a website designed and launched in the New Year as well.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

If you have a story inside of you and it won’t let you rest then you owe it to your story and yourself to publish it.

It is reasonable to try the traditional route, but for me, at this stage in my life, my priority was to have the book available to readers and I am grateful that Indie, or as with OC Publishing, hybrid publishing has made this possible.

About You

Where did you grow up?

England

Wales

Australia

Where do you live now?

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

What would you like readers to know about you?

I am a retired family physician who practices shamanism, that is healing illness due to spiritual causes.

I have three grown children and three grandchildren

I give local talks on “The Goddess in Antiquity”

I enjoy the New Yorker comics and pickleball

What are you working on now?

Memoir

When I was 10 my father took my younger sister and myself from Wales to Tasmania to live in an orphanage. It was a pivotal time in my life and inspired me to follow a career in medicine and to study Classics.

End of Interview:

Get your copy of The Tudor Prophecy from Amazon US or Amazon UK.

The post Julie Strong, author of The Tudor Prophecy first appeared on The IndieView.

Interview With Author Michael Finlayson

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 13:41:00 +0000

1. What inspired you to write this book?

You may find it hard to believe, I admit I am not an avid book reader and sadly most of the 600 plus books I possess are in the main non-fiction with technical and historical bias. The thought of writing a novel never really occurred to me until the early hours, one morning in the mid 1990’s when I awoke to the sensation, I had just lived through a totally traumatic series of events only to realise it had all been a dream from which I had escaped unscathed! Well perhaps not, for the rest of that day my mind was focused on the myriads of events the dream had embedded in my head, and I just could not shake myself back to my conscious self. Several weeks passed throughout which the dream continued to haunt my very existence, I found myself toying with scenarios and sub-plots with which to counter the aggressors. I’m sure my dear late wife thought I was going a bit mad, but she encouraged me to pick up a pen and make a few notes saying, “if you think it will make a good book then write it”. I am sorry to admit this all happened almost thirty years ago when I had no idea how to use a computer, and so the initial manuscript took quite some time to complete starting with an electric word-processor with a very small LCD window. I soon upgraded to an IBM 486 PC and the finished work was saved to a set of five 3.5inch floppy disks and there it stayed due to lack of confidence until December 2022. More of that later in note ‘3c’.

2. What exactly is it about — and who is it written for?

The essence of the story was imprinted on the night my dream took place. It all began with a man having tried his hardest to keep afloat the family business, realised he had failed to do so and as a result felt totally despondent. Deciding to drown his sorrows in the time-honored manner he eventually staggers onto a super-yacht just to take a look at what could have been.

The owner of the yacht returns in the early hours amid a personal crisis for both him and his shipping company and immediately set sail together with his beautiful daughter and the yacht’s crew, it is the daughter who finds the stranger aboard out in the mid-Atlantic! The plot twists and turns from a suspected smuggling operation which eventually leads the nsuspecting strangers to face a group of Neo Nazis intent on holding the world to ransom through a sophisticated donor-missile system. The main characters are thrust into several days of utter mayhem amid a blossoming love affair, one of which by simply having found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘Reichsburger Resurgence’ is written for fans of action adventure with an intriguing and I feel utterly believable plot line tied by an emotional thread holding things together.

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

I would like to feel the readers will find the story:

a. Intriguing. The storyline of the book finds our heroic strangers battling against all the odds as various facts force them to reconsider their original intentions. Several false starts eventually lead them to face a formidable foe.

b. Emotional. There is ample cause for emotional turmoil as the small group face up to the many dangers, they encounter let alone the unexpected feelings generating between two of them.

c. Thought-provoking. I have written the story in the belief that if you stop to consider how technology is marching on relentlessly the possibility of such a threat to the fragile peace the world balances upon it’s entirely possible this type of situation could easily become reality. Consider this fact; In December 2022 we witnessed several high-ranking German officials arrested, they included an Aristocrat, a judge, senior police and military figures, politicians etc. The authorities had uncovered a credible plot to overthrow the Federal Government of Germany and replace it with a Republic form of government using force if necessary! This news broadcast I saw at 06.00 hrs. on 7^th December alone prompted me to retrieve my manuscript from the floppy drives to revise and update the contents.

d. Above all enjoyable. I hope the readers find the story an enjoyable read, moments of tension are relieved periodically by humour and emotion, the nice kind although there are several moments of the not so nice kind.

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

The title originally decided was ‘Terror in the Tyrol Mountains’ however following the actual news broadcast on December 7^th, 2022, when numerous members of the Reichsburger Movement were arrested en-masse in various locations in Germany following the foiled 2022 German coup d'état plot to overthrow the FDR in favor of forming a republic I decided to re-title the work to ‘Reichsburger Resurgence’ due to media reports saying Germany has seen a growth in the Reichsburger Movement. The cover design is of my own imagination and features a scene within the novel. I used my experience within the railway industry to imagine how such an underground base could be built without anyone noticing its construction, albeit during WW2. The cover design shows high ranking Reichsburger members secretly arriving at the base with our hero filming their triumphant arrival at gunpoint, the crate contains the all-important computer hardware required to hold the world to ransom.

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

Several women walk children down a flagstone path to a hot spring in the cozy opening scene of Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird. The children play while the women enjoy the warm water. The narrator has been married for five years to a factory worker. He works while she takes care of the children.

But conversation between the women gives lie to any sense of normalcy. “Sometimes I try to remember all the children I’ve raised so far,” the narrator says. “If I include the ones I’ve forgotten, the number must easily be over fifty.”

Nothing in the world of Hiromi Kawakami’s novel is quite as the reader expects.

Akutagawa-Prize winning author Hiromi Kawakami is one of the most widely-recognized contemporary writers from Japan, probably best known in English for her literary fiction. Still, she studied science at university, writing a thesis on the reproductive cycle of sea urchins. She edited a Japanese science fiction magazine and then taught middle and high school science. Under the Eye of the Big Bird, recently translated into English by Asa Yoneda, shows off her science expertise, especially in biology. Although science fiction elements like time travel or gravity anomalies appear in her other work, this novel is certainly the “hardest” sci-fi by Kawakami to appear in English to date.

Epic in scale if not in size, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a far-reaching, far-ranging story of the end of the human race. It takes place over many thousands or even millions of years as shrinking numbers of human beings stubbornly cling to existence on the planet Earth. Tiny, unconnected communities have found their own ways to survive. One community genetically-engineers children in a factory using material from whales and rabbits. Another carefully censors the ideas in the community, rejecting anyone who develops unique abilities or “transformative potential” as also potentially dangerous. A third, suffering from a shortage of men, sends the same man to father children with women all over the sparsely-populated community.

Like many of Kawakami’s other works in translation, there are also feminist themes in play here. In particular, the novel is an extended consideration of the role of mother—sometimes played out to its metaphorical extremes. A woman has raised at least fifty children, many of whom are now forgotten. An “F” allows her children to “eat” her in a bizarre reimagining of breast feeding. (Translator Asa Yoneda does a laudable and noteworthy job rendering the different ways Kawakami plays with sex and gender in the novel, such as identifying those who can bear children as “F”s and those who cannot as “M”s.) Most importantly, mysterious “mothers” observe, teach, and supervise human development without actually being a part of it—“mothers are only mothers, after all, and there is no need to speak of them as if they were people.”

Motherhood is ambiguous in a great deal of contemporary Japanese fiction, and it’s ambiguous here, too. Many of the women in Kawakami’s novel are ambivalent about motherhood at best. “Even the thought of children [doesn’t] appeal to me,” the narrator of one story complains. “All they make is mess and trouble.”

“Don’t be silly!” a friend responds.

“We have to make the children and raise them, because that’s how we maintain the biological diversity of the genetic information we need to preserve. That’s the only way the world keeps going.”

The circular logic overlaps with themes in the work of other contemporary women writers from Japan—notably Sayaka Murata, author of Convenience Store Woman and Life Ceremony—who are increasingly frustrated by the government’s attempts to promote pregnancy and childbirth to halt Japan’s plummeting birth rates. Many contemporary Japanese women might have a character respond, as Kawakami’s does, “Don’t you think there’s something strange about the way we live just to be made and raised, and to marry, and raise children, and then die again?”

Kawakami’s novel is a meaty and intellectually-satisfying work of speculative fiction, both structurally and thematically. Each chapter seems to begin with a new narrator—often, but not always, a new “I” the reader must work to identify. Characters appear in the interconnected stories, sometimes under other names, sometimes as myths. Time skips and jumps at unpredictable intervals. A narrative arc might finally reach its end with a few lines many chapters after it began. The titular “big bird” reveals itself only slowly, its role in the human communities opaque. A “solution” to the puzzles the novel presents suggests itself, only to fizzle out. The reader only glimpses the overall situation governing Under the Eye of the Big Bird after reading all of the novel’s fourteen loosely-connected chapters—and even then only if she squints.

But Under the Eye of the Big Bird is more than an excellent work of speculative fiction. Like all great literature, it takes up some of life’s biggest questions about what it means to be alive, to love, and to be human. (“You’re a very human human,” a mother tells one character. “You create things, and you destroy more than you create.”) And to this catalogue of great questions, Kawakami adds, “How will the human species face the end?”

Alison Fincher (@readjapaneselit.bsky.social) is the founder and host of the Read Japanese Literature podcast and co-editor at the Asian Review of Books for Japanese fiction.

Penguin Random House Acquires Melbourne’s Text Publishing

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 23:35:43 +0000

More than three decades since its founding, Melbourne's Text Publishing is acquired by Penguin Random House Australia.

The post Penguin Random House Acquires Melbourne’s Text Publishing appeared first on Publishing Perspectives.

Close To Home: SushiNero

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 22:51:54 +0000

Little known fact about me is that sushi is my favorite food. So when new sushi places open up around me, y’all best believe I’m going to go try them out. Especially when that sushi restaurant is actually a fusion restaurant featuring Japanese small plates and Spanish style tapas.

SushiNero opened this past September in downtown Miamisburg, Ohio, and is open Tuesday through Thursday for dinner, as well as Friday and Saturday for lunch and dinner.

Initially, I went to SushiNero for their soft opening back in September, and have been a handful of times since. Every time I go, I am always amazed by the delicious drinks, fantastic food, and superb service, so I’m extra excited to be sharing SushiNero with you all today.

My favorite style of eatery is tapas and small plates places, because I love to try a variety of different dishes. Plus I’m a huge fan of sharing with friends, and tapas make that so convenient! SushiNero’s menu is priced in a way that makes it so you can really get multiple things and it still be an affordable meal.

I also like that they clearly show what is and isn’t vegetarian.

For their cocktail menu, they have some fantastic bartenders ready to make you a cocktail, as well as wine, sake, and beer.

And, if you’re not feeling alcohol, they’ve got ramune and milk teas!

Every time I visit SushiNero, I aim to try something new, so I’ve had quite a few things on both the food and the cocktail menu. For this past visit of mine, I went with a friend on Taco Tuesday, so of course I wanted to try their Yellowtail Tacos:

The best thing about how they do their tacos is that the shells are wonton. They are so light and crispy, and the sushi rice is such a nice contrast of texture, and the wasabi aioli was flavorful without being overwhelming. I love these little tacos!

For Taco Tuesday they also do $2 off their ‘Nero Margaritas:

These margaritas are quite unique, as they have Chambord in them, which really adds a whole new layer of flavor. There’s just the right amount of simple in it to make it lightly sweetened, and the acidity of the lime makes this a very balanced cocktail. It was so good, I had two of them! And saved four dollars, no less.

My friend and I also split some fried pork dumplings:

Fried dumplings are one of my favorite things to get at any Asian restaurant, and these are no exception. The outside was so crunchy and perfectly golden brown, and I love the dipping sauce.

Though I do aim to try different things every time I visit, I really wanted my friend to try their Takoyaki, so even though I’ve had these before I decided it was well worth a repeat:

Takoyaki is something I’ve tried a handful of times, and never really been that impressed by it. However, SushiNero’s Takoyaki has exceeded my expectations and become my new favorite spot for this dish. Usually my issue is that the octopus is too chewy and rubbery, but I don’t run into that problem with these. I also love how generous they are with the toppings on these bad boys. That sweet Worcestershire sauce is seriously yummy! These always come out piping hot and fresh, and even if you don’t usually care for octopus, I would really recommend these.

Of course, a sushi roll was in order, so we tried the Usagi roll:

The hardest part about visiting a sushi restaurant is choosing a roll. SushiNero is no different, as all their rolls sounded pretty dang good. I did find it interesting that this one was vegetarian, though, and decided to give it a whirl.

The Usagi contains plantain, asparagus, red bell pepper, ponzu marinated tofu, and then is topped with avocado, chimichurri, and toasted rice pearls. This roll was light and fresh from all the veggies, and I loved the creamy avocado and bright chimichurri on top. I think my favorite part was the toasted rice pearls, as that was something I’d never tried before and they were superbly crunchy. I really enjoy a lot of different textures in a roll, and the Usagi has got just that.

Finally, my friend and I topped this meal off with some saffron cheesecake:

I am a cheesecake fanatic, but I can honestly say I’ve never tried a saffron variety before. The cheesecake was soft and creamy, and the saffron had a really interesting flavor on the back end that kept me going back for another taste. Our server mentioned it was the last slice, so I’m glad we got to try it!

The owner of this fine establishment, Lauren, was nice enough to indulge me with a few interview questions.

Q: What made you want to open a fusion restaurant? Why those two cuisines specifically?

A: Our chef is from Japan, so these are a lot of his favorite foods.

Q: How’d you come up with the name SushiNero?

A: Our chef speaks Japanese and Spanish, and he says there is no one word for “sushi chef” in Spanish. “Cocinero” is a chef, so he made up sushi-nero to mean sushi chef.

Q: What’s your favorite dish on the menu?

A: MY favorite dish… that’s hard to pick just one. The specials he puts out are always the most creative dishes, but they come and go. On the main menu I might pick the Iberian roll just because it’s just so different. It has fried shrimp, and seared steak on top with chimichurri for some heat. It’s the perfect starter roll for people who are unsure of raw fish.

Q: What’s been your favorite thing about running SushiNero these past few months?

A: My favorite part about running this restaurant has been the amazing support from this community. I’ve never been a part of a restaurant that has had such a warm welcome so quickly. The mayor frequents the restaurant and tells people she knows to come try us. Local business owners check in to make sure we are in the know and included in town events. We have a lot of people come in to eat who say this is their first time eating sushi and then have become regulars!

Thank you to Lauren for allowing me to do a mini interview! I love learning fun facts about small businesses.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been to SushiNero a couple times, and other than the Takoyaki, I highly recommend the Picasso Roll, the Atlantico Roll, the fried shumai dumplings, the Kiwi Drop Martini, and the Matcha Mango Punch. You really can’t go wrong, though!

Are you a sushi fan? Would you try saffron cheesecake? Let me know in the comments! Don’t forget to follow SushiNero on Instagram and Facebook, and have a great day!

-AMS

‘Between Eternity and Change:’ The Mauri School at Venice

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 22:06:09 +0000

The seminar of the Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri at Venice explores 'Constants and Variables of the Publishing Profession.'

The post ‘Between Eternity and Change:’ The Mauri School at Venice appeared first on Publishing Perspectives.

The 2024 An Post Irish Winner: Donal Ryan’s ‘Heart, Be at Peace’

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 17:17:21 +0000

Three of six 2024 shortlisted titles in the An Post Irish Book Awards were published by Penguin Random House imprints.

The post The 2024 An Post Irish Winner: Donal Ryan’s ‘Heart, Be at Peace’ appeared first on Publishing Perspectives.

2025 Children’s Book Week Poster by Julie Flett Revealed

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 16:24:55 +0000

The 2025 Children’s Book Week poster by the extraordinary Julie Flett was revealed yesterday in PW Children’s Bookshelf. This joyful image is the perfect visual representation of this year’s theme, An Ocean of Stories. Flett shared some of her thought process in creating the poster with us.

“I had so many thoughts on our connections to water. I thought about Autumn Peltier’s work, and all of the people who are working to care for the water at this time.

I also thought about all of the stories we have as children and our relationship to the water. I remember when we’d drive out to my grandma’s place in the summer, I’d jump out of the car and run straight to the river behind their place to start looking for frogs and turtles. I’d spend hours out there sitting on a rock, dipping my hand into the water or peering into the deepest parts to day dream. And then thinking about the summer we spent in Nova Scotia by the ocean and all of the sea creatures we got to know there.”

Julie is a Cree-Métis artist based in British Columbia, and the first indigenous artist to create a Children’s Book Week poster.

Carl Lennertz, Every Child a Reader’s executive director said “The choice of Julie Flett for the 2025 Children’s Book Week poster is another important milestone in our work to shine a light on a vastly under-recognized world of incredibly creative people.”

Want to receive free copies of this amazing poster? Sign up to participate in Children’s Book Week this spring and you will get two posters delivered to your library, school, bookstore, or home.

Learn more about the celebration and sign up here!

View From a Hotel Window, 1/24/25

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:03:48 +0000

20 years ago, I went to my first non-Worldcon science fiction convention, a little convention called Confusion, up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. I had such a good time I’ve come back to it every year since then (not counting the year it and everything else was cancelled because of COVID, of course). I consider it my “home” convention, which is a very nerdy thing, but well, welcome to me.

And this is where I am again this weekend! I’ll be doing a reading and signing and otherwise be hanging about in the bar, because that’s what I do at conventions. And it’s occasioned a very typical hotel view. Look at that parking lot! It’s parkinglicious!

— JS

Why Is The Romance Genre So Popular?

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:45:00 +0000

No genre has more popularity than romance books. These books traditionally outsell other novels. It has been that way for many years. From mega-selling authors Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts, to EL James and Beverly Jenkins, fans buy tens of millions of copies of romance books every year.

It should not be a surprise.

Look at all of the people who are lonely and not in a relationship or even dating. Look at all of the married couples who long for something other. And everyone wants to explore some kind of fantasy, especially when it has become mainstream to discuss so many varieties of sexual encounters involving so many new gender and coupling situations.

Romance books are incredibly popular and for obvious reasons. They give you permission to entertain any unusual or desired location, relationship, sexual practice, and physical dynamic. You can live through what you read — without disease, judgment, consequence, or losing whatever it is you currently have. It is a risk-free way to explore what turns you on.

Romance is a wild west category these days. These books are no longer about the pursuit of love, the allure of affairs, and straight sex between two consenting adults, one male and one female. We have erotica, LGBTQ, and niche couplings that include vampires, aliens, bestiality, clones, transgenders, and robots. We have always had books littered with rape fantasies, sex slave romps, incest, prostitution, kinky sex, and people violating their stations in life to bang at will. Romance books are about taboo screwing or a perfect love — and Americans simply lust for such stories.

Romance books are challenged to please readers who already are exposed to porn’s raunchy, 24-7 available, free videos, the ever-available R-rated streaming shows, and unrated big-screen movies. The challenge for authors is to keep pushing limits without appearing absurdly extreme or out of touch with both traditions and current trends.

The pandemic screwed up human relations and we have not quite recovered. We attempt to fill the void of dating with pseudo physical contact via sexting or porn. Swipe right has replaced dating. Escorts and online sugar daddy sites fill a big void for some. Intentional celibacy is up. Society is simply moving away from dating, commitment, and romance.

Some of that void gets filled by romance books. These books can’t be hugged, say I love you, or caress your soul during sex, but they can let you feel you are not alone and allow you to normalize your need or desire to live a more isolating lifestyle.

Niche sub-specialties of romance books have expanded with the public change in social mores and the legalization or legitimization of many proclivities and curiosities. There is something for everyone.

The captivating stories of romance books have an enchanting power to transport us beyond our everyday lives and sexual practices. We are, when we read, engulfed in a new realm, one brimming with deep love, strong desire, and the allure of experiencing forever ecstasy. In a world where happily forever-after lives rarely exist, reality can often be harsh, unpredictable, and painful. But, romance novels serve as a vaunted escape into our deepest desires, wildest imaginations, and darkest thirsts.

In the imaginary and ever-expanding realm of romance novels, readers find a welcome form of escapism from the difficult demands and daily routines of ordinary life. Romance books transport us to unachievable worlds that are filled with unrivaled passion, unbridled desire, and pure, heartfelt emotions.

The demographic of romance readers, according to the promoter for bestselling author Colleen Hoover, has dropped in age. No longer is it mainly women ages 35 to 54. Now, it is 18-54. Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X have one thing in common: romance books.

Many readers of romance thirst for what they have not experienced or can’t have. They want amazing sex, enthralling lives, and beautiful people who love them while giving them a freedom to live passionately and without restraint. Readers are trying to supplement reality with fantasy, to make it palatable, or they are looking for inspiration and a roadmap to leap into foreign, even forbidden territory. For either reason, romance book sales will continue to heat up.

Sevareid’s Law: “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”

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About Brian Feinblum

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab re

Publishing Graphic Novels Means Taking Chances: PW Talks with Mark Siegel

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000

This year, longtime Macmillan graphic novel imprint First Second Books will roll out a sister imprint, the adult-focused 23rd Street Books. We spoke with Siegel, who founded both, about the market for graphic novels for adults and why now was the time, data be damned.

We Didn’t Start The Fire: PW Talks with Anders Nilsen

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000

“We’re All the Products of Housework”: PW talks with Emily Callaci

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000