Cover Talk: DARK MONEY by Larry D. Thompson

Title: DARK MONEY           

Author: Larry D. Thompson

Publisher: Story Merchant Books

Pages: 420

Genre: Legal Thriller

DARK MONEY is a thriller, a mystery and an expose’ of the corruption of money in politics.

Jackson Bryant, the millionaire plaintiff lawyer who turned to pro bono work in Dead Peasants, is caught up in the collision of money and politics when he receives a call from his old army buddy, Walt Frazier. Walt needs his assistance in evaluating security for Texas Governor Rob Lardner at a Halloween costume fundraiser thrown by one of the nation’s richest Republican billionaires at his mansion in Fort Worth.

Miriam Van Zandt is the best marksman among The Alamo Defenders, an anti-government militia group in West Texas. She attends the fund raiser dressed as a cat burglar---wounds the governor and murders the host’s brother, another Republican billionaire. She is shot in the leg but manages to escape.

Jack is appointed special prosecutor and must call on the Texas DPS SWAT team to track Van Zandt and attack the Alamo Defenders’ compound in a lonely part of West Texas. Van Zandt’s father, founder of the Defenders, is killed in the attack and Miriam is left in a coma. The authorities declare victory and close the case---but Jack knows better. The person behind the Halloween massacre has yet to be caught. When Walt and the protective detail are sued by the fund raiser host and the widow of the dead man, Jack follows the dark money of political contributions from the Cayman Islands to Washington to Eastern Europe, New York and New Orleans to track the real killer and absolve his friend and the Protective Detail of responsibility for the massacre.

For More Information

• Dark Money is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

 Larry D. Thompson Talks About His Cover DARK MONEY

The cover for DARK MONEY was designed by Buffalo Creative Group.

I submitted a page and a half synopsis of the book and in a matter of weeks received two proposed cover. I chose one of them. The cover features a costume ball mask with blood dripping from it. Certainly, it is eye-catching, the kind of cover that would cause a reader to want to pick up the book. The mask idea comes from the opening scene. It’s a political fund raiser shortly before Halloween where everyone is to come in costume. It is a DARK MONEY fundraiser and the symbolism of the mask is obvious. With certain of these political organizations, the government does not require the donors to disclose their names. All of the funds are veiled by a curtain, and no one can look behind it to see where the funds come from. As to the blood, there is an assassin at the fundraiser who kills one person and critically wounds the governor of Texas. Jack Bryant, the protagonist, must then lead the manhunt to find the killer and the person who paid for the attack. So the bloody costume mask works very well to draw the reader into the story.

Larry D. Thompson was first a trial lawyer. He tried more than 300 cases throughout Texas, winning in excess of 95% of them. When his youngest son graduated from college, he decided to write his first

novel. Since his mother was an English teacher and his brother, Thomas Thompson, had been a best-selling author, it seemed the natural thing to do.

Larry writes about what he knows best…lawyers, courtrooms and trials. The legal thriller is his genre. DARK MONEY is his fifth story and the second in the Jack Bryant series.

Larry and his wife, Vicki, call Houston home and spend their summers on a mountain top in Vail, Colorado. He has two daughters, two sons and four grandchildren.

For More Information

• Visit Larry Thompson’s website.
• Connect with Larry on Facebook and Twitter.

Cover Talk: Banished Threads by Kaylin McFarren

Title: Banished Threads (Book 3 – Threads Series)
Author: Kaylin McFarren
Publisher: Creative Edge Publishing LLC
Pages: 258
Genre: Romantic Suspense

A valuable art collection disappears turning a treasure-hunting duo into crime-stopping sleuths committed to vindicating family members in Kaylin McFarren's action-packed suspense novel, Banished Threads.

While vacationing at the stately Cumberforge Manor in Bellwood, England, Rachel Lyons and Chase Cohen attend an elegant dinner party hosted by her uncle, Paul Lyons, and his aristocratic wife, Sara. Before the evening ends, a priceless collection of Morris Graves's paintings are stolen from her uncle's popular gallery, throwing all suspicion onto his wife's missing granddaughter. Determined to clear Sloan Rafferty's name and, in the process, win Paul's favor, Chase scours the countryside looking for answers. In his absence, the police accuse Rachel's uncle of an unsolved murder and secrets surrounding her grandmother's death and the deaths of Sara's former husbands turn his wife into the most likely suspect.

With the true villains hell-bent on destroying Paul Lyons and his family, solving both crimes while ensuring her uncle's freedom not only endangers Rachel's life but that of her unborn child. Will Chase save them before the kidnappers enact their revenge or will the ultimate price be paid, as predicted by a vagabond fortuneteller?

First place - 2016 Hudson Valley RWA Hook, Line & Sinker Contest

For More Information

• Banished Threads is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

Book Excerpt:

A lone figure stood in the estuary lookout nestled in the trees above the North Sea on the Holderness Coast, waiting with restless anticipation as Gwen Gallagher approached the cliff's edge. A quick adjustment to the night-vision binoculars allowed the watcher a closer view of the twenty-eight-year-old secretary as she savored the last autumn sunset she would ever see. The crisp, cool air picked up speed, leaving her long black hair sailing like a ghostly pirate's flag behind her. It lifted the hem of her black skirt slightly, exposing her white shapely legs and black suede booties to the wintry elements. Her pale blue eyes swept across the landscape, appraising the beauty surrounding them. She raised her chin toward the darkening sky and smiled, obviously believing the note she had received, inviting her here, had come from her married lover.
As Gwen moved even closer to the edge, the watcher inhaled a deep breath. All that remained between this ludicrous woman and the vividly blue ocean was two meters of solid rock. From the lookout vantage point, there was barely enough light to confirm that she was staring down at the tossing sands and churning water, mesmerizing in the early evening breeze. All it would take was one push, and she would feel the rush of wind through her hair and see the crystal-blue sea one last time as she slammed headlong into the jagged rocks below.
The watcher's heart was fluttering erratically now as Gwen stood balancing on the brink of extinction. The sky darkened, and gray waves slammed into the rocks, blasting sea spray high into the air. By all appearances, she had become preoccupied by the black storm clouds collecting overhead and the hard-hitting raindrops striking her cheeks. The wind was whipping now and had started to voice its howling rage. Meanwhile, the watcher climbed down from the lookout and stepped hurriedly across the uneven ground, arriving only six yards away from the scene where Gwen now remained frozen in place. The soles of her shoes held her stoically to the uneven mafic rock as the rising wind whipped and swayed her body like a frail willow. For a brief moment, the watcher was uncertain of what to do next. Then Gwen turned around suddenly and stared back in a trancelike state. Another step forward resulted in waking her.
"What are you doing here?" she called out. "What do you want?"
The watcher remained silent and took another step forward before pulling out an engraved, freshly sharpened steak knife. A look of fear crossed Gwen's rain-streaked face, making it impossible not to smile.
"Go away! Leave me alone!" she screeched. She took a final step back to distance herself, just as a massive wave hit. The spray washed over her and sent her plummeting fifteen meters down. The watcher dropped on all fours to maintain a protected position on the slippery, stony ground. Minutes later, the surge passed, and it was now safe to stand. A quick assessment confirmed the dangling binoculars were safe and in excellent working order, but the engraved knife had been washed away. After stepping down to a new viewpoint, it was easy to ascertain that Gwen had been injured from the fall and was now trapped in the jagged rocks below. She looked up at the watcher and called out for help, screaming at the top of her lungs.
Bloody idiot. If someone should hear her, they could interfere, and that would ruin everything.
Five minutes passed as poor Gwen continued to scream. Then, as good fortune would have it, the wind rose again. With the crush of another wave, she was pulled under and swept out to sea.
The watcher smiled and was about to leave when a tiny fraction of light picked up something on the ground. Careful inspection confirmed it was a gold hoop earring, plucked from its owner—a marvelous souvenir to add to the prized, growing collection. After the watcher slipped it into a pocket in the yellow hooded slicker and removed the binoculars, a pleasant thought came to mind. Since it had become a moral right and obligation to dispose of the unworthy and undeserving in the Cumberforge Manor, it wouldn't be long before Gwen's lover would be joining her and the rest of the moneygrubbing fools who had been personally escorted to the bowels of hell.

Cover Talk: The Drafter by Kim Harrison

Title: The Drafter
Author: Kim Harrison
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pages: 560
Genre: Thriller/Suspense/Sci Fi/Fantasy

Book Description:

 

Detroit 2030. Double-crossed by the person she loved and betrayed by the covert government organization that trained her to use her body as a weapon, Peri Reed is a renegade on the run. Don’t forgive and never forget has always been Peri’s creed. But her day job makes it difficult: she is a drafter, possessed of a rare, invaluable skill for altering time, yet destined to forget both the history she changed and the history she rewrote. When Peri discovers her name is on a list of corrupt operatives, she realizes that her own life has been manipulated by the agency. Her memory of the previous three years erased, she joins forces with a mysterious rogue soldier in a deadly race to piece together the truth about her fateful final task. Her motto has always been only to kill those who kill her first. But with nothing but intuition to guide her, will she have to break her own rule to survive?

Cover Talk with Kim Harrison

I’m Kim Harrison, better known for the urban fantasy series, the Hollows, but now have turned my sights to crafting the SF thriller, The Drafter.  I’ve always been fascinated with how cover artists put together something to get the right reader to pick up the book. I am lucky to have two covers for The Drafter, a more literary image for the hard cover that was aimed to grow my male audience, and a more thriller-oriented image for the mass market to hit my usual urban fantasy readers. I’m hard pressed to pick my favorite of the two, but the image of a woman confidently running into danger does convey the action, strength, and pacing of the book.

Being traditionally published, I have less say in the cover than someone self published, but that’s never bothered me. I was given a choice of several covers, and we finally settled on one, giving it some further tweaks to get the Opti symbol on the cover and the colors to allude to crisp, clean action. I also asked for the burst, which is the small blot of color that highlights the “also includes” message that had originally been on the back, and all of this leaving space for hopefully a few nice words for some of my peers.

I know cover purists demand that their cover be a recognizable scene from the book and the figure on it match the image of the main character, and I will admit that once I know what the cover model is wearing, I might tweak the text to include it, but it’s rare that I will ask the cover artist to bring anything closer to the reality of the text. For example, Peri Reed would never have hair that long; it’s a huge liability in a fight. She’d be wearing something more polished, too, and perhaps have a sexy, brooding man running beside her. But the image we went with conveys the feeling of the book: danger, urgency, independent thinking, bold action, and a futuristic setting that is not too far from our own to be unrecognizable. And that works for me.

Cover Talk: From Ashes Into Light by Mouw Gudrun

Title: From Ashes Into Light
Author: Gudrun Mouw
Pages: 240
Genre: Literary/Visionary Fiction
Publisher: Raincloud Press

From Ashes into Light is a transpersonal tale of epic tragedy, spirituality, family, and personal redemption. It is told through three distinct voices: the haunting story of Ruth, a Jewish adolescent during Kristallnacht in World War II Austria, Saqapaya, a stalwart Native American from coastal California during the time of the Spanish conquest, and Friede Mai.

Friede is born during WW II to a Bavarian soldier and an East-Prussian mother. As those around her struggle with the inevitable chaos and paradox of war, young Friede opens her heart to gruesome enemies, at times helping her family members escape atrocities.

With war behind them, the Mai family immigrates to the US, where Friede, her veteran father and ex-refugee mother, struggle with reverberations of trauma, suspicion and prejudice. Upon leaving home, Friede meets her spiritual guide and confidant in her fiancé’s Rabbi, who helps her see that the voices from her past are teachers and the horrors of history also contain beacons of light.

Cover Talk with Mouw Gudrun

Planning the book cover actually started with the title, because I did a lot of back and forth with the title. There were many, let’s say two dozen, versions of the title and nothing really seemed right. The second-to-last title was Out of the Ashes. And it was for this version that my publisher paid for a designer to make a cover.

The two of them worked together on a version of the cover, showing me about four versions. The three of us agreed on a black cover with a feather through which you could see a vintage photo of a WWII-era city. I liked it, since much of the story takes place during WWII, and there is also a Native-American element and the feather conveyed some of that.

But after the first batch of ARCs (Advance Copies) were printed, my publisher changed her mind. She decided she wanted a more feminine cover. Also, right after that, a poet reviewer came up with the title: From Ashes Into Light. The change was subtle, but the title finally clicked.

At first I was skeptical the cover needed to change, because I liked the first cover. But then I saw what the publisher ultimately she came up with, probably the eighteenth version of the cover, and I was glad she changed it.

She did something fun too, which was post a poll on my Facebook page, letting my friends pick which direction to go with the cover. We got about thirty votes over 3 versions of the cover. Then from there, she did about five more versions to get the final cover we have now.

The final cover ended up using the same overhead picture of a WWII-era city, but instead of sepia, it was a mixture of rich purples and blues. Over that is a play of ash and dark and light, just the right element to add some mystery and connect readers to the title, From Ashes Into Light.

Some complaints we’ve had about the cover is that it looks contemporary and the book is historical fiction, but the subject matter of reincarnation is so radical and visionary. So ultimately I feel the publisher captured just the right blend of both.

Health & Wellness Author Dr. Gabrielle (Gabby) Pelicci Talks About Her Cover 'Blissful Business: A Gorgeous Guide to Creating Your Dream Career in Health & Wellness'

Designer Annette Wood did my book cover.  It’s a collage of many of the images inside the book. Each image was hand-selected to capture the feeling of Blissful Business. Annette and I decided to create a collage after discussing the best way to capture the beauty and spirit of the interior of the book.  Since the book is deigned to help health & wellness practitioners build a purposeful and profitable holistic business, we chose images that reflected that message – yoga, candles, flowers, nature, community.  These are elements that have been part of my work for 15 years.  I came up with the title “Blissful Business” because I am blissful when my business is running smoothly and I believe that everyone should have the same experience with their work – joyful, happy, satisfying pleasure of doing work that you love and having a positive impact on the world.

I spent over a year designing and writing this book so that it would be super easy to understand and super effective in helping others to have more success no matter what stage of business that they are in. I really had to dig into all of my experiences and extract the wisdom that allowed me to travel around the world as a massage therapist, open a wellness center, teach yoga and meditation, become a professor of holistic health and more. I wanted to create a blueprint because I never had one – and I wished that I had! It would have been so helpful to have a guideline instead of trying to figure everything out by trial and error.

I wrote this book because really wanted to share everything that I’ve learned and I wanted the information to be affordable and accessible to new practitioners like yoga teachers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, naturopaths, nurses, homeopaths, energy healers and other light-workers. There is so much information out there and it can be really overwhelming.  This book is a simple, easy guidebook that covers all the critical things that you need to know to be prosperous – and the style of the book which is reflected on the cover – is both creative and practical - a combination of both left and right brain thinking – a truly holistic approach.  

About the Author

Dr. Gabby is a leading expert on Holistic Medicine and TV Host at Miami-based Health & Wellness Channel.  Dr. Gabby has traveled to 40 countries, worked with thousands of clients – including celebrities and high profile people – and has more than a decade of teaching experience under her belt at top universities in Mind-Body Medicine and Holistic Health. Dr. Gabby’s expertise is regularly featured in National and Local Media such as MSNBC, The New York Post, and the Huffington Post. Dr. Gabby is the Founder of Women in Wellness Career Training, a one-of-a-kind course and community designed to empower and inform you about how to build a purposeful and profitable holistic business.

Her latest book is Blissful Business: A Gorgeous Guide to Creating Your Dream Career in Health & Wellness.

For More Information

• Visit Dr. Gabby’s website.
• Connect with Dr. Gabby on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Book:

Title: Blissful Business: A Gorgeous Guide to Creating Your Dream Career in Health & Wellness
Author: Gabrielle Pelicci, Ph.D.
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 94
Genre: Health/Wellness/Careers

You started your health and wellness practice because you love what you do, have a passion for helping others, and you wanted to make a positive impact in the world.  But as good as all that sounds, passion is not enough to make you truly successful.

The opportunities for Health and Wellness Professionals are better today than ever before but many programs and teacher trainings do not prepare you to start, market, and grow a successful business. 

Does this sound like you?

•           You want to attract more clients or customers

•           You feel stuck and don’t know how to move to the next level of your business

•           You work very hard, but don’t earn what you want

•           You see others being successful and wonder how they do it

Blissful Business: A Gorgeous Guide to Creating Your Dream Career in Health and Wellness is a step-by-step manual to help you achieve your career goals.

This book will help you:

·        Get clear about your vision and mission

·        Create purposeful and profitable one-on-one sessions

·        Use teaching, presenting and publishing to attract loyal customers

·        Master Personal Branding, PR, and Social Media

If you're ready to fulfill your destiny by building a purposeful and profitable holistic business, then you’ve found the right book.   You’ll read several real-life examples of Health & Wellness students who completed the exercises in this book and discovered how to define success on their own terms.

This book is perfect for you if you are a massage therapist, health coach, yoga instructor, personal trainer, energy healer or heart-centered entrepreneur.

You have already invested so much time and money to get an education. Now get the expert support that you need to build a successful career in the Health & Wellness industry.

For More Information

• Blissful Business: A Gorgeous Guide to Creating Your Dream Career in Health & Wellness is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

Book Excerpt:

Watch the Interview with Dr. Gabby at Well Adjusted Mama Radio Show: