THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO ENHANCING SEXUAL DESIRE by Rachel Greene Baldino and Judy Ford

In 2005, I (Rachel Greene Baldino) had published a relationship/self-help/anger management book with a very small publishing company that ended up going out of business in 2006. I still believed in the message of that book, however, and periodically, I would “shop the concept around” to literary agents. One literary agent out in Sacramento, CA, named Andrea Hurst expressed some mild interest in the ideas contained in that previously published book, but she was more interested in pitching me as a potential writer to an editor she knew about a different relationship-oriented project. So, at her suggestion, I submitted a mini-proposal to that editor and was later invited to be one of two writers to work on the book. Judy Ford, http://www.judyford.com/, a Seattle-based therapist, artist and the best-selling author of several self-help books, is the co-author of the book. Judy has successfully counseled many couples (as well as individuals and families), over the course of her long and distinguished career as a therapist. In brief, Andrea Hurst http://www.andreahurst.com/ took me on as a client, and the editors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide series http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/cig/index.html  at Penguin offered me a book contract to co-author the book with Judy. It was an exciting time, a dream come true!

Once the ball got rolling, it all happened very fast. Just to give you a sense of the time-line: I sent my initial query letter to Andrea Hurst about in November of 2006. She told me about the project she wanted me to submit a proposal for in December. I actually submitted the proposal and got the book contract during the usually very quiet “publishing world” week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Judy and I researched and co-wrote the book in the first half of 2007. It was intense but exciting, and of course the subject matter is very interesting. The further we progressed in our collaborative writing process, the more we could see just how many people our book would help, and that inspired us to keep writing more and more. The book was out of our hands by the summer time, at which point it was edited by the Penguin editorial team, and published on December 4, 2007.

The book is part of the Complete Idiot’s Guide series, which is published by Alpha, an imprint of The Penguin Group, and it is called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Enhancing Sexual Desire. Obviously, a book like this is for mature readers only, even though it is neither excessively explicit nor graphic in nature. Rather, it is filled with many playful, commitment-enhancing, intimacy-building, divorce-preventing, desire-boosting tips and strategies for all monogamous couples who want to recapture the vitality and passion of their honeymoon phase, whether they have been together for one year or ten years or thirty years or longer.

Rachel Greene Baldino and Judy Ford are the authors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Enhancing Sexual Desire.  You can visit their websites at www.rachelgbaldino  and www.judyford.com.

ST. JOHN OF THE MIDFIELD by Garasamo Maccagnone

There is a soccer trainer in Michigan by the name of Jordan Mitkov. As in the story, by chance, our paths crossed when my son Garrett went out for a team Jordan trained.

There was a moment early in the relationship when Mitkov explained to Garrett and I what type of individual and what type of temperament was needed to play the midfield position. He elaborated that a midfielder had to be a good person, a person who would sacrifice for the team, an individual with strong enough character to be willing to give up the ball and the glory for the sake of the team. For around ten years, that conversation burned in my mind while I wrestled with how to build a story around it.

Meanwhile, during that period of time, my son Garrett, who was considered to be an extraordinary player, had to deal with injustices based simply on the fact he was playing on a team coached by Mitkov and assisted by me. For instance, once after a game at an indoor complex, my son Garrett was approached by the Director of the boys program with the Olympic Development Program. Two other boys, who witnessed the discussion, now play for the University of Michigan varsity soccer team. The Olympic Development Program is sponsored by the national and state soccer organizations as a means to identify superior soccer talent.

In this particular case, I watched from the other side of the field as the Director put his arm around my son while talking to him as they walked. When the boys came over to my side, one of the boys, named Santos, told me the director was really hot for Garrett to play on the ODP team. “Coach,” Santos said to me. “He said if there was ever a player meant to be on ODP it was Garrett.”

Two weeks later, when I arrived at the ODP tryout, I noticed a blank stare on the Director’s face when I walked up to sign Garrett up for the team. His Adams apple plunged like a fishing lure underwater when he recognized me as Garrett’s father. Two hours later, when the names were called off from the first cut list, my son’s name was read aloud. My son, who was the leading scorer in the league, and considered to be one of the best players in the State, was cut from the ODP team on the very first cut.
It was from moments like that, and many others I could write another complete novel about, that the story of “St. John of the Midfield,” was incubated.

The book chronicles the hypocrisy, the hyper-sensitivity and the antipathy, of the soccer establishment toward an aging coach whose approach to the game is totally misunderstood. Unfortunately, in life, and in the story, those who are innocent get caught up in the destructive force such hatred brings about.

“St. John of the Midfield,” is a story that clearly defines for the reader the nature of good and evil. Though the soccer theme is only one thread of the entire story, the treatment of Jordan Mitkov and my son was the catalyst for the creation of the story.

Garasamo Maccagnone is the author of ST. JOHN OF THE MIDFIELD.  You can visit his website at www.garasamomaccagnone.com.

PROSPERITY: A GHOST STORY by Deborah Woehr

Prosperity: From Concept to Reality

The Main Character

I was sitting at my kitchen table when I found myself envisioning a woman standing on an island in the middle of Hell, searching for the soul of her dead husband. My first manuscript, Black Roses, was still a chapter or two away from being finished, but I had to jot this idea down in my notebook. I finished Black Roses, and then set to work on my new novel.

Coming up with the heroine was the easiest part of creating this story. I named her Amanda Thorne and drummed up a description of her appearance in my mind. Her backstory went through several revisions. The first draft involved her trying to cope after her husband’s suicide. It was depressing as hell. Worse, it was boring.

My final draft of her backstory, which became the basis of the first chapter, involved her waking up in front of her husband’s grave. Her husband, Joel, is screaming at her. “You put me here! I’m going to kill you!”

He had almost succeeded in killing her when she visited her mother’s grave inside that cemetery several months before. She was six and a half months pregnant at the time and lost her son. Her father had been responsible for Joel’s murder, but she hid this from the police, who considered her the prime suspect.

Is Joel’s ghost drawing her out to his grave while she is asleep, or has she lost her mind? That’s the question that I wanted to plant inside my reader’s minds. Joel’s family isn’t helping her, especially the mother, who insists that Amanda hound the police to search for her son’s killer. The final straw was the day her sister-in-law gives birth to a son. Amanda decides that she has had enough of them and the sleepwalking and flees San Jose, California for good.

Imagine pulling over to the side of the road for the night, thinking that you’re going to wake up in the same place, only to wake up as you’re driving along a foreign stretch of road and having no idea how long you’ve been driving in your sleep. I don’t know if that has happened to anybody, but I thought it would give Amanda a great jolt.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading about clairvoyants and discovered an interesting twist. The majority of the clairvoyants I’ve read about became aware of their abilities when they were young children. However, there are a few cases where trauma induces clairvoyant ability.

While Amanda had always been able to find missing items for her friends, she had never experienced seeing ghosts. She was raised by an atheist father, so she didn’t believe in an afterlife, much less ghosts. I thought this would be a good personal struggle.

The Setting

Originally, I had called this place Hell’s Corner because the theme of the story involved black magic and a cult. Plus, the setting is in rural Arizona. Several months into the story, I nixed the idea because it wasn’t working. For one, I was working with up to six points of view, which caused the story to fragment. I decided to change this into a ghost story and the town’s name to Prosperity. This change fit very well with Amanda’s clairvoyance, so it stuck.

Haunted places are ripe with history, so I kept asking myself what would be a good reason why this town is teeming with ghosts. I’ve always had a morbid fascination with world disasters, such as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. There are very few personal accounts from survivors of this disease. Researchers have commented about this numerous times, speculating that the disease was so horrifying that people simply wanted to forget about it once it passed.

Those comments stirred my imagination about the psychological aspects of facing this type of virus. Then I began to think about the antagonist’s role in the story. Eventually, I wrote a novella about Prosperity’s backstory, entitled God’s Last Twilight, which chronicled a murderous love obsession before and during this pandemic.

Because of this backstory, Prosperity wound up having two antagonists: the original one who wanted to be avenged for his murder and the second, who had used the pandemic as the perfect cover-up for her murderous love obsession.

Publishing Options

While writing and rewriting this story numerous times, I researched the different avenues of publishing. My first choice was the traditional route. In the beginning, I had the fantasy that Prosperity was going to be listed on The New York Times bestseller list. This fantasy was crushed when an established author said to me, “Getting your book traditionally published is akin to winning the Lotto.”

Translation: It’s not going to happen.

I was so upset that I almost gave up writing on the spot. The next morning, I returned to my computer and began writing. I had already sent a query to two New York literary agencies before I had received the reality check from that author. So it was no surprise when I received one-line rejection slips from both agencies.

By this time, I was researching the print-on-demand (POD) industry. I didn’t like what I saw. Most of the books listed on these websites had pitiful covers and a poorly written synopsis. I ordered a copy of A Certain Slant of Light, by Chandler McGrew because his was the only synopsis that hooked me. The book’s cover didn’t match the theme of his story at all. It was a paranormal thriller that involved a young girl who was trapped between Heaven and Hell after she took her life. The story was great, but it wasn’t edited.

After I wrote my review on Amazon, McGrew contacted me via email to thank me. I responded back to him with questions about his experience with the POD. He wrote back to me and told me how he had sent a copy of his published book along with his manuscript to a major publisher. This earned him a 4-book publishing deal. His testimony gave me some hope, but I knew that I would have to write an exceptional story if I had any chance of breaking into the traditional arena the same way he did.

I was still struggling with plot and character issues at the time. As I worked through subsequent drafts, I researched the self-publishing option and found it to be more expensive than POD. However, after reading the long list of famous authors who had originally self-published their books, I became determined to publish Prosperity one way or the other.

My focus returned to the POD market for the next five years, although I wasn’t happy to read the horror stories from writers who had decided to go that route. These writers often lost thousands of dollars in production costs. If that wasn’t bad enough, they found out that these publishers had locked them out of their rights so they couldn’t publish their books anywhere else. After hearing these stories, I decided never to sign up with any of these companies.

Then I began hearing complaints from writers who had managed to land traditional publishing contracts, only to back out of them when the publisher failed to publish their books for a variety of reasons. A couple of these writers were relatives. After learning about what they went through, I decided that traditional publishing wasn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

I kept waiting and watching for something better to come along. That something finally came in 2004, when Bob Young launched Lulu.com. While Lulu uses POD technology, its target audience is self-publishers, which was perfect for a control freak like me.

2004 was a pivotal year for me because not only did I discover a cost-effective way to publish my book, but I also discovered blogging. Blogging proved to be a very effective marketing tool because I was able to network with my potential readers and build friendships with them over the course of three years.

I’m hopeful that 2008 will be an equally pivotal year. Thanks to the Internet and its evolving technology, the playing field for debut authors has opened wide.

About the Author
Deborah Woehr is a writer, designer, and problogger who lives in San Jose, California with her husband and two children. She earned her A.S. in Computer Graphics in 1993 and began writing in 1997, publishing one short story and several articles. Currently, she is a freelance writer for Syntagma Media. In 2006, she edited and published the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, a collection of essays and poems written by bloggers. Her novel, Prosperity, will be available on Amazon in February. For more information about her books, please visit her website at http://www.deborahwoehr.com/blog/

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LADY OF THE ROSES by Sandra Worth

After my debut novel THE ROSE OF YORK: LOVE & WAR was published, I heard back from readers who wanted to know if I was planning to write a book on a secondary character in the book, John Neville, Lord Montagu (the Kingmaker’s brother). It seems he touched a lot of hearts. I wasn’t planning one at the time, but the seed my readers planted in my head germinated over the years, and eventually turned into LADY OF THE ROSES.

Based on history, this is the story of young Isobel Ingoldesthorpe and Sir John Neville, medieval ancestors of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill, who cultivate their love as violence erupts all around them in England’s Wars of the Roses . . .

Sandra Worth is the author of the historical fiction novel, Lady of the Roses (Berkley Trade, Jan. ‘08).  You can visit her website at www.sandraworth.com.

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LADY OF THE ROSES VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR ‘08 will officially begin on Feb. 1, 2008 and continue all month. If you would like to follow Sandra’s tour, visit http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/. Leave a comment on her blog stops and become eligible to win a free copy at the end of her tour! One lucky winner will be announced at www.virtualbooktoursforauthors.blogspot.com  on February 29!
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Sandra’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/ and choreographed by Jean Lauzier.

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THE OVUM FACTOR by Marvin L. Zimmerman

Every novel starts with an inspired writer – a person who draws from a fountainhead of emotions and feelings they have accumulated from reading the fictional works of others.

As a young boy, I was especially fascinated by tales of great adventure that took place in far off lands and overlapped with tales of tragic love – the best kind of all since it is short-lived and never withers. Books such as Knight Without Armor and Lost Horizon by James Hilton, captivated me from the moment I opened them and became immersed in their tales of people struggling against almost insurmountable obstacles.

At the time I could not realize it. But reading these masterpieces was setting the stage for my own novels some forty years later.

In The Ovum Factor, I have tried to create a story that pulsates with the same restless energy that drives its protagonist through one seemingly impossible trial after the next. The plot overlays a tale of adventure and survival with the emotional angst of an unlikely hero who becomes separated from the woman he loves just when she needs him most. His struggle to survive and find what he desperately seeks is made infinitely more complex by the fact that the person he loves depends so much on him.

From the moment the hero, David Rose, awakes in his Manhattan apartment asking himself: What am I doing with my life? until the time he finds himself alone and critically injured in the deepest Amazon jungle, there will be a steady escalation of tension. And if this were not enough, the stakes are the highest possible – maybe even the very survival of mankind in the face of ecological degradation and climate change.

The reader who gives my first novel a chance will I hope be rewarded a story that will transport them from the centers of high-finance in New York to the California Institute of Technology in beautiful Pasadena – from China to the crime-infested slums of Rio de Janeiro, and finally into the hidden depths of the Amazon jungle. In between, there will be more twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code.

By the end of his journey, David will have completed both an actual and a metaphysical journey toward his true destiny – something that should prove emotionally satisfying for the reader.

To view The Ovum Factor video trailer, please go to
www.youtube.com/TheOvumFactor

To learn more about the book and the author, please go to www.theovumfactor.com

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Marvin’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/ and choreographed by Dorothy Thompson.

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THE RIVER, BY MOONLIGHT by Camille Marchetta

Sometime in the late 1990s, while they were on vacation, friends of mine wandered into a gallery in the town where they were staying. It was purely by chance. But they loved the paintings they saw on show there and were intrigued by the artist, a young woman, beautiful and obviously talented, who had killed herself after a nervous breakdown.

When they returned to Los Angeles, where we were all living at the time, they told me what they had seen and the little that was known about the artist. An interesting story, I thought, and expected that to be that.

But it wasn’t, as it turned out. The story kept coming back to me, popping up in my head even while I was finishing my second novel and working on various television projects. I couldn’t stop thinking about that young woman. Why had she done something so awful? How terrible could her life have been? How did her family and friends deal with it? Who were they? Who was she? The questions just kept coming and coming.

That’s the way it is for me. Ideas for my work come from just about anywhere. From incidents in my own life, of course (though I never write about myself in any straightforward sort of way). An anecdote over dinner, an overheard conversation in a restaurant, an item in a newspaper, even a line in a book can start me wondering. It’s not the thing itself, really, but what it means to me that seems to matter. And usually I’m not even aware at the time how much of an impact what I’ve heard or read has had. It’s only later, sometimes years later, that I realize how deep an impression it’s made.

The process is always the same. Woody Allen made a joke about it in Annie Hall, something about taking a notion, developing it into an idea, turning it into a concept. It’s a great laugh line in the film, but that’s how it goes. When a seed gets planted, if you can’t root it out, it starts to grow, taking on substance, shape. It becomes a story, with a beginning at least, and a climax.

From the fragments I knew of the young artist’s life, I constructed a character, my character, Lily Canning. I considered changing the time period, as I changed so much else (the locations, the cast of characters, everything, really). But the more I thought about it, the more 1917 seemed the perfect year for my story – a country in turmoil, on the verge of war, an ongoing revolution in the art world, a society moving into the modern age. It seemed the right backdrop for the issues I wished to explore — despair, death, grief, how people deal with them, how some indomitable souls not only heal, but thrive.

I did endless amounts of research on suicide, on the history of the era, on New York City and the Hudson River Valley, where I chose to set my story. And when I felt comfortable enough in the period, when I knew it as well, perhaps better, than I know my own, I began to write.

Working in television, on shows like Dallas and Dynasty, I was required to write an outline for each script I did. Left to my own devices (meaning whenever I’m not paid for it), I never work from one. So, writing a novel for me is like setting out on a voyage to an unknown country. This time, as I went along, I discovered Lily’s beautiful home in Minuit, a fictional town on the Hudson. As I needed them, her parents, cousins, friends put in an appearance. I took time out to get to know them before traveling on. By the time I reached the end of my travels, I had touched on all the issues that had piqued my interest to start with, and I understood a little better why Lily had done what she did. And I had my new book, THE RIVER, BY MOONLIGHT, finished at last.

It took me a long while to reach that point. For readers, it will be a much shorter journey, but one I hope you’ll find as interesting as I did.

If you’d care to read an excerpt, please visit my website. You’ll find my biography there, as well as information about my other novels, and links to related sites. And you can leave a message for me there, too. I’d like that.

Camille Marchetta is the author of The River, By Moonlight.  If you would like to find out more about the author, visit www.camillemarchetta.com. 

Leave a comment and on Feb. 29, one lucky blogger will receive a free copy of Camille’s book!  Winners will be announced at www.virtualbooktoursforauthors.blogspot.com.

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HEAVING BOSOMS by Ashlyn Chase

Heaving Bosoms. Sounds like words in a bodice ripper romance from the seventies, right? Well, with my irreverent tongue firmly in my cheek, I thought, wouldn’t that make a wonderful title for a romantic comedy? Oh, yes. I must remember that one. So I typed it into my idea file.

Now, I should let you know that my idea file is only for me. Therefore, I can put my most wackadoodle ideas in there without editing myself.

Sometimes I go back and shake my head at something I had thought was brilliant and hit the poof button before I make anyone groan. That’s what I call ‘delete.’ So, I let the title sit in my folder, didn’t want to make it go poof, and then one day a friend was telling me a story and I realized, Ah HA! This is the perfect story for a title like Heaving Bosoms.

Here’s the explanation in a nutshell. My dear friend and fellow writer Liana went to a fair with her mother one fine summer day. They were simply walking along and chatting when Liana suddenly disappeared from view! She had fallen into a hole and twisted her ankle. Much to her chagrin, two hunky EMT’s showed up to take her to the hospital. Thank goodness it was only a sprain.

In the retelling of this story, another writer and friend said to Liana, “Well, if you weren’t so top-heavy, you would have stayed upright instead of falling over.” My funny title sprang to mind and the rest is history—or a contemporary romantic comedy, as it were.

Ashlyn Chase is the author of the romantic comedy, Heaving Bosoms (Cerridwen Press, Dec. ‘07).  You can visit her website at http://www.ashlynchase.com/ or her blog at http://www.ashlynchase.blogspot.com/.

Ashlyn’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Book Tours at http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/ and choreographed by Jean Lauzier.

If you would like to win a free copy of Heaving Bosoms, leave a comment and you will be eligible!  Winners will be announced here!

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MARWAN: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A 911 TERRORIST by Aram Schefrin

After 9/11, I realized that I knew nothing of the people who had attacked us, or the reasons why they had done it. I read up on al Qaeda, then on Islamic fundamentalism, then on Islam itself and the history of the region. Then I felt I understood what was behind the attack – but I still didn’t understand the people who had done it.

I live in Florida, and many of the events of the plot happened here. I read the coverage in the Florida papers, which was much more detailed than what I could find in the national press. (For example, the wind chime at the door of Ziad Jarrah’s house was mentioned in a local article.) It was that kind of detail which convinced me that there was a story here which could be thickly painted as any good novel should be.

I went to the places the hijackers had stayed in Florida. I couldn’t understand how anyone who had experienced America as they had could have hated us so much. By then I knew generally what motivated islamists – and it was a broad spectrum of motivations, not just religion. Putting that knowledge together with what I knew of the involved individuals, I was able to tell a story which included all those motivations by assigning each to a character who, in fact, mostly acted because of it. Only Marwan, the lead character, is more a product of my imagination that what I have read in the newspapers – and that’s because I gave him more complexity.

I thought – and I think – the book is important because it’s critical that people understand that the so-called “clash of civilizations” is not inevitable; that there are things that could have been done, and still could be done, to avoid the likelihood of more 9/11s. We must understand the enemy to protect ourselves, and that particularly includes understanding what drove them personally – their frustrations, their humiliations, their unmet needs, etc. Why were they so willing to kill themselves? Or were they really willing? Why did they turn to extreme religion? Et cetera. I think I have explained some of that.

Once I put together enough of the little details from press reports to get the flavor of the people and the events, I decided that non-fiction couldn’t possibly get deep enough into their heads. So much had to be deduced and imagined. That made the story perfect for fiction.

I was working on another book at the time (it will be coming out shortly), but I put it aside to write Marwan. My agent, John Ware, helped me with the editing – he’s brilliant at it. Then we submitted the book.

As I point out in my Author’s Note, New York publishing houses, in 2003 when the book was circulated, were still deep in grief. They considered it insulting and outrageous to present a book about 9/11 which was written (more or less) from the terrorists’ point of view – even though the book made no attempt to excuse their conduct, which I consider to be sociopathic. I could not sell the book.

In the meantime, no one has attempted what I did with Marwan. I still think it’s important that people understand what the 9/11 attack was really about. So I published it through AuthorHouse. I believe it’s a book that needs to be read. Fortunately, those people who have read it or reviewed have also said that it is a well-done piece of fiction – so there’s pleasure to be gleaned from the writing itself, although pleasure is not the point of reading this book.

Incidentally, before I put the book out in print, I podcasted it serially at podiobooks.com and elsewhere on the web. The reaction to the podcast has been heartwarming. I hope I get the same warmth from the response to the print book.

Aram Schefrin is the author of the literary fiction novel, Marwan: The Autobiography of a 911 Terrorist.  You can visit his website at www.aramschefrin.com.

Aram’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion.  If you would like to visit his official tour page, click here.

Leave a comment and at the end of his tour, you could be the lucky winner of a FREE  copy of his book!  All winners will be announced at www.virtualbooktoursforauthors.blogspot.com on Feb. 29!

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